Players that could ensure themselves a place every week at Tannadice are getting splinters on their bums sitting on the bench.
Weird, alien things, like splinters.
And the Darfuris are so divided that it is hard to imagine them creating a coherent front.The mélange of parties, splinters and acronyms standing for just some of the dozen-odd rebel groups who are sending people to Libya, is a negotiator's nightmare.
Since re-integrating himself into the LDP would destroy his maverick image, the best way to do this would be by forming a new party from splinters of the LDP and its rivals.That, however, is just what Mr Koizumi himself would do if he were to call a snap election.
If he ceded the shoreline now, he would almost certainly lose the referendum which he has undertaken to hold in order to ratify any peace deal with Syria.With the central plank of his peace policy in splinters, Mr Barak will find it harder than ever to hold his disparate coalition together.
Though the IRA is effectively defunct and extreme Protestant groups have promised to junk their remaining weaponry within months, small but deadly splinters remain.
For the news industry, says Craig McKinnis at USA Today, a large American daily, the Kindle is "just one of the splinters" among many new distribution channels, from the web to mobile-phone applications to e-readers.
And since the Socialists in Madrid have brought in a dynamic new leader, the left may realign itself to scoop up supporters of various left-wing splinters across the country.
It is about young men being manly mostly and sometimes not; about soldiers doing soldiers' jobs; and about things mortars, shrapnel, splinters, bullets, gas that kill and maim.
The Irish gardai [police] have had particular success in recovering hauls of weaponry and helping to thwart a gun-running plan from the Balkans.The main role of the Real IRA and other splinters is as a drag on Mr Adams's leadership; IRA bombers unhappy with the peace process have a ready-made new home.
Full of faint Anglicisms, Rimbaud took words that made perfect sense in English such as "snowflakes" and translated them into French, as éclats de neige shards or splinters of snow making the familiar strange in both the language and content of his poetry.
