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Everyone on this site has football experiences, views, stories and opinions. Everyone also wants things to be better in the future too. These are bonds that make us who we are and this forum what it is.
I’ll share a few experiences with you now.
I will never forget an impromptu and inspirational 60 minute Q. and A. masterclass by Davie MacParland to a group of relative youngsters at Hampden in 1975 after Scottish Unis had played a friendly with his team.
It was “over the moon Brian” time for me on finding a £5 note in my shoe. This was after I played my first game (unexpectedly) as an S form in the Highland League when my club’s Aberdeen-based players had been held up by a road incident.
So happy and corrupted was I that I never questioned the widespread practice of giving money to amateur players thereafter so I’m part of the problem.
I also sat next to a young Jim Leyton who came to Butchart to watch himself on a match video after he had let in two goals when we dumped Deveronvale (where he was on loan) out of the Aberdeenshire Cup. It was the very early days of video and Jim had never seen himself on a tv before.
Every person in the SFM community will have equally diverse and interesting experiences and I’m going to share one more with you now in a little more detail.
In the mid 90s I was given an amazing insight into how Scottish football really worked. In many ways it hasn’t changed much since.
Back then I was part of a small group brought in to help find funding for the upgrade of Tynecastle with the urgent need to construct three new stands. At the time it was a massive requirement for a very financially challenged organisation and at a push there were potentially just about enough pots of monies available from several sources to trigger the investment from the Football Trust and squeak over the line.
The most critical pot was mobilising the fans.
My role was to find a way of getting them to come aboard working with some fine lifetime Hearts fans like the late Alex Kitson so it would all look like a Hearts Community rather than a Mercer initiative.
The then, colourful Hearts majority owner was under constant pressure on other fronts at the time.
The team was not really performing with relatively new manager Jim Jeffries trying to get best out of predecessor Tommy Mclean’s mixed bag of old pros and kids. Making things worse was a growing, highly critical and very vocal consortium of local business people trying to get Mercer out (and themselves in).
I guess you could say in today’s parlance that they were RHM and civil war was very much happening down Gorgie way.
Anyway I can’t now recall all the detail and apologies if my memories have fused a little but a key AGM type meeting for Hearts shareholders at Ingliston was coming up and there was an agenda that looked like it might hurt “The Chairman” as Wallace liked to be called.
Never any flies on him though, he had seen the danger signs and was ready in his own way.
He turned up with his trusted few and simply yet quite brilliantly hijacked the negative agenda and ignored the real issues. He didn’t have a solution for them and couldn’t implement the changes that were in reality needed but quite simply he kicked all the trouble into the long grass.
He did this because he fundamentally understood that most shareholders in the room were just ordinary football fans and wanted nothing more than to be able to talk about football the game, Hearts their club, who they were due to play next and who would be playing.
It was that simple.
Mercer’s message to all that night was “Yes things have been tough but our best possible future is with me”.
He rammed this home by confidently telling the assembled body that Hearts were on the up because we had a new manager who needed time and then blew everyone away by announcing he just signed three amazing new players for them, Giles Rousset, Bruno Pasquale and Hans Eskilsson. After the applause and mayhem died down he had won.
Bruno and Rousset were newsworthy in any Scottish football context one being a French International and the other an ex Juventus tough guy with a EUFA and a couple of Coppa Italia winners medals.
Oh and Eskilsson had amazing hair.
Mercer’s simple bit of insight, showmanship, brinksmanship, call it what you like, led to the survival of his regime.
In a parallel maybe to what the SFA did after their meeting with Craig at the Hotel Du Vin in Glasgow, Mercer had enough time to be ready for the trouble he knew was coming and used his power to ignore the real issues and the detail and move on with a big gamble.
Looking back Wallace got a lot right .
He understood what the majority of ordinary football fans wanted. He’d also learnt that good press was needed and came from feeding the football writers enough tasty exclusives so they’d look after him in a symbiotic relationship, the kind of relationship that remains much the same today.
Even back then in the days when there were less full-colour pages pre-allocated to certain teams to fill and more able journalists to fill them, the sports pages were about game reports and gossip rather than insight.
The packs of hacks all craved being handed tasty semi-exclusive stories.
It was and ever is thus and in those days the Daily Record was a wee gem with circulation nearer 700K than the 200K-ish today and amazingly all its costs were covered by it’s advertising revenue alone. The proud boast of Endell Laird was the purchase price was pure profit.
With hindsight Wallace may only have postponed the inevitable campaign by the RHM rebels that night at Ingliston. History tells us that the Robinson/Deans rebellion eventually forced their chance. They did have to dig much deeper financially than they ever wanted when their time eventually came, and soon fell out too, but that’s another story.
Wallace’s long grass was just never going to be deep enough to hide the issues he wanted to ignore but to his credit on his watch the stadium was upgraded and the first Scottish Cup since 1956 was paraded to the fans.
Mr. Mercer was an operator who like others before and since could see personal and business value in owning a club.
He cultivated friendly football writers.
He learned that the SFA could be difficult to deal with but much less so when you placed people on their various management boards. That was key to the inner power sanctums and brought you at best influence and at worst early warnings.
He may have been autocratic but knew you needed powerful friends at other clubs too and was always close with David Murray in particular.
So what has this little piece of retrospection and a handful of Finloch football stories got to do with a blog on SFM?
Last week I met Big Pink for the first time over a few coffees.
It was like meeting an old friend in the pub because of all the stuff we’ve lived through and shared over the last 5 or so years.
We talked about stuff and traded stories and opinions on life, football and about SFM what it does and what we are.
We got on to the subject of it’s future and with my business background he asked me to consider a piece for the blog about where the SFM, our fledgling business might go from here.
I maybe agreed too hastily because I have found it challenging to gather and spell out my thoughts.
So this is very much a starting couple of steps to bring in the SFM minds and set up future discussions following this blog and when we meet in Perth in April.
My starting point was to first consider what we are today.
It’s a personal view but to me SFM is a valued medium I come to most days. It’s for when I want to find out or to discuss what is happening.
It is populated with a bunch of people with different backgrounds, skills and insights, is always polite and often very funny.
I’d actually like to see more headline blogs because I enjoy them but our biggest value will always be analysis discussion and good humour.
SFM is fundamentally different to the MSM back pages that still offer us all a mono diet of whatever day-to-day gossip they have been spoon-fed by the Level 9’s of this world or made up and maybe embellished with a random phone call for a quote.
Yes their world is declining and will inevitably see fundamental restructure and change but that change has in reality nothing to do with how they cover and will continue to cover Scottish football.
I’d even posit (to use a wee word I’ve learned from the excellent JJ site I visit sometimes) that the red tops currently see their style of football coverage as a way of slowing their inevitable declines because it delivers the difficult to reach male audience their advertisers crave access to.
As a spectator I’d say the MSM in Scotland mostly seem to suffer from a polarised demographic focus/ bias too but that can never excuse their revisionism or the Spiers and Haggerty episodes we’ve just witnessed.
There is one benefit though. One you maybe hadn’t thought about from all the dreadful MSM football reportage.
The stuff they collectively generate enables all of us to have daily conversations with friends and strangers without actually saying anything about anything.
It gives us our daily top-up for the international language of football minutiae we all converse in every day.
I’ve been able to speak it fluently since I was in my teens. You know the kind of thing – the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the comings and goings and the toings and froings.
The good news, the bad news the made-up news – its all part of being involved with a team or indeed just being a football fan and it’s all conversation for the males of our species.
There are plenty of places I can and do get access to that kind of stuff but SFM isn’t and never has been a source.
I quickly found out that most of my pals don’t want to talk about side letters in the pub on a Friday, or the need for asterisked titles because they are more interested in tomorrow’s match and who will be out of contract at the end of the season.
Without being disrespectful in any way I think they are cut from the same wood as the majority of Mr. Mercer’s Hearts shareholders and if I’m honest part of me is too.
That has given our administrators and clubs too easy a ride.
Beyond the gossip it is fair to say in the last 40 or 50 years football has changed beyond all recognition.
It has become a source of power and money and as we know proverbially and in real life power can corrupt and money can be the root of all-evil.
The stuff happening at FIFA now can be no surprise to any fair-minded fan and I’d be inclined to think that there have been finagled decisions at the top for longer than the current stewardship of Mr. Blatter.
Way longer.
Football-land is a dirty world. A world where all the transparency is for show and real stuff has always been controlled and rewarding for those in the right places.
Closer to home football in Scotland is no different. Power and money have been the origins of our own North of the Border soap opera saga.
Its sometimes been very funny, often been entertaining too but is ultimately tragic and a sad indictment on our country.
Being Scotland nothing is ever as simple as it should be.
We started from a unique kind of place where for over a century we have had to live with an unhealthy, quasi-tribal, two-club duopolistic domination of all things football including the fans, the trophies, the money, the media attention and the administrators controlling our game.
The stark reality of 2016 is our biggest club/economy now finds its real ambitions thwarted, potentially forever, by its location in our restrictive league structure. It has nowhere currently to go and annoyingly the biggest league in the world is just over the border and part of the same country in political terms.
This is a destabilising influence on our game that won’t go away until change allows the next evolution.
Our second biggest economy as we now know had to cheat a little to keep up, post Fergus, and is now making its way back to the top end but with some truly nuclear baggage that I guess we still really only know the half of. Nothing will be simple in its return to what we’re told everyday is its rightful place. It too is a latent destabilising influence awaiting like a grumbling volcano.
What depresses me is the fact that the much-vaunted return of our dysfunctional duopoly is not a formula to recreate the European success we all took for granted for so long. Those days will never return.
The decline of the Scottish giant that was and is Rangers has dominated our thoughts because it encapsulates so much more than what is wrong with our game.
It is a huge business and establishment fall from grace. A shocking story that has become an elephant in the room to our politicians, our media and many of our fellow fans and is still playing out to deafening silence in some quarters.
In the manic run up to the decline of David Murray’s club we benefitted from insights from the seminal RTC and were bombarded with mass denials from almost everywhere else.
We witnessed the £1 sale to Craig Whyte, the subsequent McCoist European failure, the eventual slide into messy liquidation with tax issues etc.
Our administrators failed us all the way through because they had a different agenda.
Our MSM didn’t want to know partly because it involved more than regurgitating press releases and partly because it was real news for real reporters and not back pages gossip.
Their editors failed us there too, big time.
Now the revisionism and invention of the post-liquidation ephemeral club and company scenarios has been creative to say the least.
I remember Mr. Traynor’s initial headline and smile how he and others are now wading in a contradictory swamp of their own making. It’s all confusion when it needn’t be.
I only know the kind of stuff that really happened because of this site and its RTC predecessor.
Four or five years on and I think these guys (SFA, SPFL) acted like Wallace Mercer did at Ingliston and ran roughshod over process to “win”.
These well paid admin staff were never off-piste though and our clubs share complicity for their actions to varying degrees.
If I was Regan’s or Doncaster’s devil’s advocate I could just about comprehend that they acted because they feared for their TV revenues. The prospect of being without half of their duopoly ace card and the blue fans scared them and they were mandated by the clubs to maintain the status quo.
I don’t mean all the clubs but if we look at the key committee structures we’ll easily see who were in that inner sanctum at the time. They collectively decided to throw their rulebook out the window and there is no grass long enough to bury their collective actions because truth always outs.
Cast yourself back a few years not long before the St Valentine’s day 2012 news when the push was all for a 10 club league.
I remember Stewart Milne aggressively trying to sell us all a 10-club league because of the TV revenue it delivered (to the few).
At that time there seemed to be a collective “TV Gold Fever” prevailing in the cabal of top club chairmen that makes the real decisions and tells our administrators what to do.
Luckily they failed.
They nearly failed again too in 2012 with their tawdry 5 way agreement and we all owe a debt of gratitude to the late Turnbull Hutton whose personal integrity, bloody-mindedness and leadership meant a significant change to the premeditated 5 way plan that our top clubs had all signed off.
Since then we’ve all suffered from Armageddon and long may it stay.
SFM has been at the forefront of the last five years. A place where fans from all the clubs come together to question, analyse, give insight, balance, consciousness on all aspects of the meandering road that has been this story so far.
It’s all recorded on our archives somewhere too. We’ve noted and discussed the following and more –
- Two different signatures from the same club on the 5-way agreement
- Two different and concurrent memberships of the SFA
- Players TUPE-ing for free and no lawyers getting rich in trying to get them back
- Pre-season games being cancelled because of registration and insurance issues
- The Brechin game coming too soon for the paperwork
- The entry-round in The Ramsdens Cup for the old club or is it the new club?
- Record crowds, an even more aggressive songbook
- Ian Black getting a surprise call-up and a bit of a game to legitimise The New Rangers with their first cap
- Millions raised from a gullible city and desperate fans but still several last gasp saves needed to avoid new financial stramashes
- A charity that pays for holidays in America
- Quasi-legal stuff with dodgy parameters for questionable enquiries like Nimmo Smith
- Bryson and his logic that Spartans could and should have used to stay in the cup
- A “Hopelessly Conflicted Chairman” re-elected and a new one who has fitted in seamlessly
- Real legal stuff like HMRC appeals, and phrases like side-letters
- Charlotte Fakes and maybe even Fake Charlotte Fakes
- Fit and proper persons running our clubs
- Recorded conversations
- Onerous contracts
- Metaphysical concepts of what football clubs in our courts with big bucks being spent on our behalf by our administrators
There is and has been a whole lot more and more to come on the schedules too.
How much of this would I have found on our MSM?
Very little – so thanks to those who go the extra mile for us including John Clark, EasyJambo and others at the courts, Phil who will never go away, James Doleman and others too including JJ – all playing blinders where the hacks don’t dare.
Finally fast-forward to today.
Most Scottish fans probably know a little about the stuff I’ve touched upon and we’ve debated in depth. Not enough though.
But we have Darryl Broadfoot who is the SFA so we can all sleep rest assured each night.
Going forward we must address how we communicate as a medium to spread the word.
Ask yourself – Is what we do more important than knowing Rangers signed Dean Windass’s son from Accrington Stanley on a free because he’s going to play for England one day and stuff like that?
I’d say it is different although both have a place.
Our challenge is to create more impact with ours.
In finishing I have one serious starting proposal to make as a community but first a thank you.
Thank you to all the blog writers and posters because we have collectively created a site where real stuff can be dissected and discussed politely and in a non-partisan way.
Well done to the mods in particular and to our community In general
My simple proposal as our first step forward is to start a Wikipedia style library of the facts and keep it on our site.
Dates, happenings, people and all the stuff that will not allow any of it to stay buried forever in the long grass. The kind of detail that is in Auldheid’s amazing and resolute Resolution 12.
Chapter and verse whys and wherefores with dates and names.
This will achieve three things.
- It will create bedrock for us as a trusted media channel whatever we decide to become.
- It will put stuff factually into the public domain forever.
- It will contradict any highly paid revisionists trying to change what really happened for their own agendas into the future.
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causaludendi 18th February 2016 at 8:24 pm #
Too late to edit but my above post is supposed to also say: I take it Stranraer were trialling this much vaunted facial recognition technology?! How else do you explain this follow-up?
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It does not take any techno at all when your a minnow.
One of the ‘Well Bois has already been charged tried and convicted or elf same. Polis dawn raid etc.
A minor debate took place on our websites wondering just when Celtic or Rangers fans would be similarly treated.
Now we know.
But only of one half of the two.
We kind of thought that might be the result.
Empty stands etc….
john clark. 7 45pm
The spin machine went into overdrive to insist that the tax dodge was legal, that the knighted cheat did not cheat, that ‘side-letters’ were not evidence of cheating intent, and that even if they had been, the tax dodge was legitimate, on the best legal advice, etc etc etc.The dirty and unfortunately successful attempt by that monumental cheat ( and in my opinion, an attempt that was known about by some in Authority, who kept schtum) to cheat his fellow SPL club owners/directors was even ignored by them!-all of whom lost out in one way or another.As did all of Scottish Football, by the destruction of any belief that it is not rigged.And the SMSM more or less air-brushed that direct sporting cheating out of existence- knowing damn fine that SDM was calculatedly and cynically in fundamental breach of a fundamental SFA and SPL rule. They focused instead on the ‘legitimacy’ of the tax dodge, and not on whether it was legitimate!And I won’t dignify the idiot you quote by dirtying my fingers in typing his name.
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the sad part is our clubs are happy to play along, it’s a pity we dont have the ability or a big media platform to inform and persuade all fans to hold back season ticket sales until justice has been served.
the other thing is ,it might take the fans of the THE,to get physical with others next season sadly,for our clubs and media to reluctantly hold an honest conversation about how the SFA have let us all down.
next season will determine for many fans if this charade is to continue,do we have the numbers?
maybe we need to take a radical approach and start getting dirty, even if we have to insult our fellow supporter/groups out of their slumber, if we are the bampots ,then our fellow fans are THE complicit fools.
http://m.eveningtimes.co.uk/sport/14287788.Rangers_First_debate_new_Ibrox_fan_group_as_director_Richard_Gough_eyes_a_bright_Light_Blue_future/
You have to wonder who will effectively pick up the tab for Gough’s trip to Oz! Quite helpful that he will be in a position to hold influence, quite powerful influence I’d suggest, on the board of one of the potential ‘air-miles’ providers!
How many trips across the world have there been to raise money from wealthy ex-pats? And yet here they are, after 4 years of hunting wealthy RRMs, preparing to fleece the ordinary supporters, and claiming it as progress!
“We have already seen Rangers fans come together to effect change and we must now look to use that combined strength to meet the challenges ahead.” – What challenges are they, Richard? Wouldn’t have something to do with money, would it?
“My view is that rather than think of ourselves as individuals we should try to speak with that authority of as large a group as possible so that Rangers fans can actually influence the way in which the club is run as well as protect and preserve it for the generations to come.” – Who or what, Richard, does the club need protection from? Isn’t that something that comes within the purview of the board, that Real Rangers Men filled board? Unless, of course, there’s a danger from within!
A wee tip Richard. If you want to ‘protect and preserve’ the club for the generations to come, why not persuade your mate, the chairman, to offer up the (unencumbered) assets of the club as security for any loans the supporters make. That’s the sort of security that protects both the lender and the borrower, don’t you think?
Useful, too, that you timed your trip to Oz at a time you should perhaps have been making yourself available to the supporters to ask you questions, like,…’is there any truth in the rumours about some sort of Ticketus deal?’
State aid guy apparently receiving information from a unionist mp in regards emails sent to him by scotzines andy muirhead,if interested you can read it here…..
http://www.scotzine.com/2016/02/celtic-state-aid-obsessed-accuser-linked-to-attack-dog-gregory-campbell-mp/
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On the state aid thing though,we’ve got the scottish goverment (by their silence),the sfa (legal advice),the media (needing money),hmrc and bdo (allowing new club to phoenix with identical name) all pretending it’s the same club that has existed for over a hundred years.OK let’s accept this then,they are the same club….
Does this mean that the authorities have allowed this club to use taxpayers money to fund success on the football pitch?…..STATE AID….
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P.S. Haven’t not seen craig whytes list of charges,does anybody know if he has been charged with any tax offences….Cheers….
tangoed 19th February 2016 at 2:20 am #
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The ‘State Aid’ campaign against Celtic was in my view simply designed to blacken the club’s name, and in a way it succeeded. Most major news outlets, particularly the BBC, gave it large headlines. To the casual observer, mud sticks. Graham Spiers went as far as to describe it as a possible ‘great equaliser’ for Rangers. The whole episode reminded me how vulnerable an organisation or individual can be if someone makes false allegations based on nothing other than hatred. An already lazy media was never going to check out any facts relating to the matter. They had a major negative headline about Celtic and they used it big style. The sad thing is it was all because Rangers didn’t pay the tax they should have. Celtic simply HAD to have been involved in something equally major, because that’s just the way it is in Scotland.
.@RangersFirst now appear on the list of major shareholders of the club and have bought 2.8 million shares in Rangers….
And now with DCK’s men at the healm their share buying fan ownership plan is dead in the water because every penny that is raised in the future will go directly to someone’s RR pocket thus bypassing the silly shares thingy…A lot of TRFC now abandoning Rangers First as they see the writing on the wall.
Re this leaking of Scotzine’s email by Gregory Campbell or his secretary (Or maybe Chelsea fans?) to the mad State Aider guy, I hope Scotzine goes all the way with this as it seems the right hon, loyal GC is no for replying any more.
This was a personal, confidential e-mail with specific warnings tht it was not to be passed to third parties.
Go for the jugular Scotzine… please!
Don’t know if we have picked the wrong date for the meeting, but worryingly, only four tickets have been booked.
Could I ask that anyone who wants to go but has not yet booked a ticket to let us know of their intention to come? We will need to confirm the booking by the end of February, and so it is important to have an idea of numbers before then.
The date was picked so that there were no scheduled football matches on that evening. Maybe we have missed something else.
Either way, some foreknowledge would be good. Also, if we do have to cancel because of numbers, we will of course make a full refund to everyone who has paid .
Thanks folks …
Slightly OT perhaps, but there is an interesting article by Stephen Fraser “Examining The Academy System in Scotland” at http://www.blueprintforfootball.com/2016/02/examining-academy-system-in-scotland.html. He also promises a follow-up suggesting some possible solutions.
He makes some interesting points about the differences between kids’ and adults’ learning, letting young players learn from mistakes, and putting more emphasis on movement mechanics and mind-set when it comes to identifying talent.
If only we had a governance body that could devote some energy to real strategic matters rather than feathering their own nests and covering up past shenanigans…
They focused instead on the ‘legitimacy’ of the tax dodge, and not on whether it was legitimate!
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They focused on the legitimacy of the tax dodge to deflect us all from the flagrant AND PERSISTENT Breach of SFA rules.
The “title stripping ” (or not) debate arise from the breach of SFA rules , not any conviction for tax dodging.
Am I right ?
Big Pink 19th February 2016 at 9:26 am #
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You can add me to the list of attendees, although I haven’t paid yet.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/35605700
Is this the first worm, (sorry Clyde) to wriggle out of the open can?
quiet today so
, ‘overpaid players underachieving’ with Blacks bleeding Scotland’s newest club’ dry. trying to make them relevant .
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/pot-calling-kettle-black-rangers-7399958#pqmWOWwiYuFxj28l.97
Ross Mcafferty drivel piece. where to start with this crap. ‘Rangers* reject’ with’83 appearances in 3 seasons’, not to shabby. He gained solitary Scotland cap whilst in 4th tier, ergo must be better than messi!
The nub of the piece is to compare the plight of Man Utd, Black is apparently a dyed in the wool Red devil
interestingly, according to wiki, during signing negotiations Black waited to see which division the new club would be admitted to before signing on. But Sevco paid the cash.
The radar journalist, to be fair, does mention the L word, and does not mention back to where they belong.
‘The midfielder was a controversial figure in his time at Ibrox, playing 83 times as the club worked their way up through the leagues following liquidation’.
Gratuitous photo of black injuring Jelavic though to keep the kettle of simmering anger boiling
I wonder if it is proper that a Westminster Rangers Suporters Club is allowed to exist considering RFC are in liquidation after stiffing Parliamentary officers (HMRC) via DOS and EBT arrangements ? Or is a different club to “the former Rangers Football Club (Gregory Campbell) >
A couple (three actually) of obvious points in that BBC article re Clyde.
The relatively small suspended fine was as a result of there being no sporting advantage gained by playing Mullins. Whilst not a slight on Mullins (I assume) it does helpfully point out that Clyde lost the one game in question to East Fife. I wonder if that view would change had they won the game? Or a series of games? Or even a title or fourteen?
I notice the club was unaware apparently because of exceptional circumstances regarding a Director. Damn those clumsy company things, disrupting the splendidly isolated football club’s activities.
And finally I simply quote “However, the SPFL said in a statement: “Clyde FC admitted all alleged breaches of SPFL rules.” and will say no more.
easyJambo 19th February 2016 at 11:35 am #Big Pink 19th February 2016 at 9:26 am #—————————You can add me to the list of attendees, although I haven’t paid yet.
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I’ll shortly be buying two tickets as well.
Scottish Football needs a strong SFM.
normanbatesmumfc 19th February 2016 at 11:43
“….The SPFL board sub-committee found that all breaches were inadvertent’
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I merely observe that, by contrast, the great knighted cheat ,and sundry other cheats were FULLY AWARE of what they were doing and cynically tried to cover their tracks.
( How that knighted creature can appear in public is beyond my understanding:the damage he has done to Scottish Football is, all other things being equal, as bad in its own way as the damage done to banking by that other disgraced and disgraceful, ex-knight Goodwin)
So did Spartans mean to only add one signature to their registration forms? Surely not, so were those errors not inadvertent too?
Very confusing…
normanbatesmumfc 19th February 2016 at 11:43 am #http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/35605700
Is this the first worm, (sorry Clyde) to wriggle out of the open can?
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I have thought for a while that the SFA could be rebranded / reconstituted – not because the blazers admit they have to change for the better – but for them to put some legal distance between their previous TRFC-related dodgy decisions.
IMO, there will forever be the implied threat that any senior club could disagree with an SFA disciplinary decision, and they could take their grievances to the Court of Session – and without any further penalties from the SFA.
That precedent was established by TRFC.
Hope ok to post latest crowd-funding link
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/655420861/rangers-court-cases-round-2
The lads at MFC have Jim Spence on their podcast:
Episode 30 is now online…
Broadcasting legend and Dundee Utd fan Jim Spence joins Sparra, Busta and Jay to discuss a variety of issues.
Topics include Motherwell’s 3-0 win at Tannadice, James McFadden, ‘Well captain Keith Lasley, General Manager Alan Burrows, the League Cup revamp, the possibility of league reconstruction, Periscope within football grounds, Saturday’s trip to Perth, and much more.
LISTEN HERE.
http://www.mfc1886.com/?powerpress_pinw=2238-podcast
John Clark 19th February 2016 at 3:20
John you must be psychic, just reading
Shredded
Inside RBS The Bank That Broke Britain
Ian Fraser
Available on Amazon (Kindle) use Amazon on SFM site?
Interesting to hear Jim Spence say that he feels unfettered now that he is a freelance and is more able to voice his opinion without worrying about who he might offend. To be honest, since he left the BBC, I really haven’t heard much of him in public let alone heard him making any controversial comments. He was probably more outspoken on the Rangers issue and the authorities when he was still there.
Would he come on here – or even to the SFM get together at Perth – and tell us what he believes? If his views on the integrity issues are the same as ours, could he become a figurehead/spokesperson for SFM? Finloch’s wiki-initiative is definitely worthwhile, but we still need to find a channel to obtain more publicity for the ‘truth’.
Talking of Perth, BP, I will be going, but haven’t got round to buying a ticket yet.
Interesting to hear Jim Spence say that he feels unfettered now that he is a freelance and is more able to voice his opinion without worrying about who he might offend. To be honest, since he left the BBC, I really haven’t heard much of him in public let alone heard him making any controversial comments. He was probably more outspoken on the Rangers issue and the authorities when he was still there. Would he come on here – or even to the SFM get together at Perth – and tell us what he believes? If his views on the integrity issues are the same as ours, could he become a figurehead/spokesperson for SFM? Finloch’s wiki-initiative is definitely worthwhile, but we still need to find a channel to obtain more publicity for the ‘truth’.Talking of Perth, BP, I will be going, but haven’t got round to buying a ticket yet.
==========================
Get in touch with Busta or Jay at MFC they seem to know him pretty well.
Totally OT, but it’s not just us who have refereeing problems . The blokes with the funny-shaped balls have too .
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/35605712
nawlite 19th February 2016 at 6:52 pm
‘…Interesting to hear Jim Spence say that he feels unfettered now that he is a freelance and is more able to voice his opinion without worrying about who he might offend. …
_________
I suspect he will be under some kind of BBC contractual clause forbidding ( for ‘x’ period of time)disclosure of editorial policy, or discussions of programme content designed to give effect to that editorial policy, or other information on out-of-office ,non-official relationships between sports ‘staff’, ‘free-lancers’, ‘guests’, ‘pundits’, and senior producers/managers, and people in the upper reaches of the football world.
It may be many years, long after certain characters have gone unlamented to their career ( or actual!) graves before we learn just why BBC Radio Scotland was so ready to help propagate the Big Lie.
We have been very badly served by our newspapers.They at least have some ‘excuse’, relating to adverising revenue and other commercial pressures.
We have been betrayed by BBC Radio Scotland, which does not have even those flimsy ‘reasons’ for failure to tell the truth-always and every time.
It is being reported that year on year Daily Record sales have dropped 13.17% and the Sunday Mail dropped 12.43%.
Sunday Mail sales are now below 200K. This is supposed to be a national Sunday paper but less than one in twenty five of the population are now buying one.
These figures are ultimately going in the wrong direction particularly when compared to the free Metro paper.
While I’m not saying that Sports pages drive sales I do think they are a major draw when considering a purchase.
Where does this end?
Will the papers have internal editorial discussions regarding the way they report specific sports stories?
Will they have a think about policy and re-think their journalistic endeavours?
Will they re-focus their policy and begin asking appropriate questions of the authorities regarding the mysterious five way agreement, the awarding of a UEFA license, the continued use of a history to a club currently in Liquidation?
Will they also begin asking a specific club questions regarding funding, or lack of it, a possible sale of a portion of next seasons tickets, interest attached to the current loan used to pay off Ashley, the use of fan’s money, that was raised to buy shares, now being used as working capital?
OR
Will they just continue down the same road to oblivion?
They are now gradually getting closer to the whirl pool circling the drain.
Any intelligent individual would look at their sales and think “Why is our readership deserting us in droves?” and “What can we do to arrest the slide in sales?”
The X-Files recently returned to our screens. The initial series used to open with the phrase “The Truth Is Out There”. In Scotland our media don’t really need to dig for the truth as it is staring them in the face. All they need to do is start asking the awkward questions, by making the people in charge of our sport explain their ludicrous behaviour over the last four years.
In other words behaving like journalists!!
I noticed that the Rangers Fighting Fund are about to announce plans to build a new stand at the Auchenhowie Training Ground. You know, the one that was Murray Park for so long. Anyway. The RFF have raised almost £500,000 since 2012. A decent effort by any standards. I had a look on their website and they make it quite clear that the cash will only be used to help with the day to day running of the club. Their words, not mine. They also admit that avoiding Liquidation in 2012 was paramount to ensuring the continuation of the 140 year old history. Well dontya know liquidation it would seem was well and truly avoided by the glorious efforts of everyone within the RFF. 140 years unbroken history saved by the few gallant RFF members. Only………Why do they still have all the money ever collected to ‘Save’ the club resting in an account somewhere? Why was it not spent to avoid Liquidation as this is exactly what it was meant for? Is the fact that these funds are still hanging around proof that everything that the RFF have tried to spend the money on in the past just proven to be pointless. Building a new stand at the training ground? well that’s a great idea until the Real Rangers Men decide to take their money from them and send them out to get more. A bit like crowd funding really.( Respect to Mr Doleman)
The new plans are due to be unveiled on the 29th of February. Wonder what else is due that day. A court hearing perhaps?
I,ve just subscribed to being a non attendee at the Perth get together, I will try and reschedule things to attend, but in the meantime, I think it is important that it is well supported.
tearsofjoy 19th February 2016 at 11:18 am #They focused instead on the ‘legitimacy’ of the tax dodge, and not on whether it was legitimate! ****************************************** They focused on the legitimacy of the tax dodge to deflect us all from the flagrant AND PERSISTENT Breach of SFA rules.
The “title stripping ” (or not) debate arise from the breach of SFA rules , not any conviction for tax dodging.
Am I right ?
========================
That’s pretty much where we are at.
Title stripping seems fairly apt as athletics and cycling cheats are stripped of titles illegitimately won BUT they are then punished for the cheating by serving a ban and paying a fine (in addition to repaying any illegitimately won prize money). The stripping of titles is the consequence of application of sporting rules without fear and favour. The ban/fine is the punishment for those actions. That is before any criminal or civil legal procedings come into play.
The failure to correctly register players’ contracts by the former Rangers FC was allegedly dealt with by Nimmo Smith, but that has been discredited and we’re really back to square one. We need to see the five way agreement and to have a conclusion to Resolution 12 to see just how complicit or incompetent the authorities were and continue to be.
Anywhere else, and the press would be all over the story, rather than being part of the story.
Re, my last mail, I have just discovered, the 3rd of April is the start of Spring break for Glasgow schools, anyone working in the education system. or in my case, looking after grandchildren, my find it difficult to attend. I hope this information helps.
Call me a cynic, but a couple of weeks back, a fans group threw Sevco a big rubber ear when they were on the tap for £500K. Now it seems that RFFF are going to pony up £450K to build a stand holding just over 200 bums. I think Sevco should be applauded for the speed in which they received the architect and engineers drawings, sailed through the planning process, and gathered preliminary costings.
Just a couple of questions.
(1) How much will Sevco charge said fans, to use the stands they paid for?
(2) Does it have a casino?
Call me a cynic, but a couple of weeks back, a fans group threw Sevco a big rubber ear when they were on the tap for £500K. Now it seems that RFFF are going to pony up £450K to build a stand holding just over 200 bums. I think Sevco should be applauded for the speed in which they received the architect and engineers drawings, sailed through the planning process, and gathered preliminary costings. Just a couple of questions.(1) How much will Sevco charge said fans, to use the stands they paid for?(2) Does it have a casino?
, so welcome to Cynicism City.
===================
I thought I was the only cynic on here
My query was about the pitch.
Now that artificial pitches have been added to the haters list, will they go ahead with the hover pitch or has that been dropped from the plans?
All is not lost
We were all appalled at the Sandy Bryson Rule. It said punishment cannot be backdated because an offence hasn`t been committed until it has been discovered.This statement helped LNS conclude that cheating on player registrations did not provide a sporting advantage.This was because no retrospective offences could be said to have been committed In addition, since EBTs were “legal” any club could have used them. So the offence boiled down to an administrative error that could have been committed by any club if it chose to pay player wages partly or substantially via EBTs
However
Getting their favourite club off the hook may not have been the SFA`s main motivation for inventing the Bryson rule.
Heres why
The SB statement fitted the narrative that the SFA knew nothing about EBT cheating until it was uncovered by HMRC and became public knowledge around the time of Administration
Or put another way
The SB statement was contrived to fit a big spin picture
Which was
The SFA were as much in the dark as the average football fan about financial matters at Ibrox. They just take their registration forms as a matter of trust and file them away. If a problem emerges later they treat it as discovering an offence that has to stop immediately but is not to be punished retrospectively
And if this little spin was true then the big spin was also true
Which was
The SFA could hardly be expected to know a club was trading insolvently never mind intimate details like the club owner was withholding PAYE from HMRC.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
We now know that Regan met with the club owner before administration.
We will know later in the year if this meeting was taped
If so there may be proof that the SFA were told that one of their clubs was trading while insolvent and they deliberately concealed this from Shareholders, Creditors, HMRC and law enforcement bodies.
IMO
If this is true
Heads will roll at the SFA
And maybe, just maybe
Some new faces with clean hands will take over the reins
The Cat NR1 19th February 2016 at 10:06 pm #
Now that artificial pitches have been added to the haters list, will they go ahead with the hover pitch or has that been dropped from the plans?
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Re the artificial pitches
WORK is well underway on the installation of a new artificial pitch at Murray Park similar to some of those Rangers have been playing league games on both this season and last.
The original astroturf which was laid when the Auchenhowie facility opened in 2001 has been lifted over the last fortnight.
And today the first sections of its replacement are being put in place, with the project expected to be finished before the end of the month.
Gers received funding from the Scottish Football Partnership and they are supporting the costs along with Rangers Lotto and the club itself.
Having the new park will allow the first team to prepare on it ahead of competitive fixtures as more and more synthetic surfaces replace grass equivalents at grounds around the country.
Academy Operations Manager Craig Mulholland believes the pitch will be of great benefit, particularly to the club’s youth, ladies and girls sides.
He said: “Our artificial pitch gets used almost every day of the year and after being there for 12 years, it wasn’t in the best condition any more.
“As part of our SFA audit, we are required to meet FIFA’s two-star standard for a synthetic pitch and our old one might not have done that.
“The surface had become quite compact and the harder a pitch is, the more likely it is players will get injuries.
“Having a new one reduces the chances of that happening and also gives the first team the opportunity to prepare on a pitch akin to the ones they might be playing on if they wish.
“People talk about 3G and 4G pitches but there’s no such thing. The spec is determined by the length of the grass, the amount of infill and other similar factors.
“We’re getting a state-of-the-art pitch which will be at top end of the FIFA two-star ratings and we’re delighted with that.”
and we’re delighted with that.
——————
THE Scottish Football Partnership’s Stuart McCaffrey was at Auchenhowie this afternoon after they provided Rangers with a grant to relay the club’s synthetic indoor surface.
The group contributed £45,000 to the total cost for the new state of the art pitch, having also helped the club to relay their outdoor synthetic surface last year.
The Partnership are involved in various initiatives across the country, and McCaffrey explained some of the work that they do.
He said: “For the past 15 years, we’ve been supporting the game at all levels in Scotland, helping clubs to improve facilities, and we are glad to have helped with the new surface at Murray Park.“I think if you want to develop elite football players, which is what we want to do in Scotland and particularly at Rangers, then you need to give them a platform, then you need to have elite training surfaces.
“The old surface had been down for a number of years and was needing to be replaced, and we hope the financial support we have given the club will help develop new young players and help prepare the senior players for games they will play on synthetic surfaces this season.”
The new surface will benefit the club’s Academy set-up the most, and Head of Academy Craig Mulholland added: “It’s made a big difference to us already, , and it’s exactly the same surface as we have in the outdoor astro, meaning there is much less chance of the players getting injured with the change of surface.
it’s excellent Craig Mulholland Head of Academy
delighted and excellent until your top penalty taker gets injured on one.
sorry for the long post
Hope ok to post latest crowd-funding link
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/655420861/rangers-court-cases-round-2
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Who would have thought it?
We kinda met up as you took a break from the Ahem R. Brooks done nothing trial to streak across to Rolls court for the prelims on the Collyer Bristow thing.
And where are we?
Around 6 to 8 court cases later.
Anyway the SFA think its just a wee storm in a teacup.
Cluster One 19th February 2016 at 10:30 pm #The Cat NR1 19th February 2016 at 10:06 pm # Now that artificial pitches have been added to the haters list, will they go ahead with the hover pitch or has that been dropped from the plans? ————————- Re the artificial pitches
<SNIPPED>
===============
Wow!
Chapeau for that response Cluster One.
So, all the bluster about Killie’s pitch is yet more hypocritical hot air from the RIFC group.
.
Surely the amount of hot air being generated would be sufficient to keep a hover pitch in its rightful place?
Ex Norwich City coach Lee Clark didn’t take long to get up to speed on the way of the world north of the border.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/35613319
I hope none of the external funding for the new surface at the former Murray Park constitutes state aid, although I’m sure that the People that are obsesed with such things are already on the case.
The Cat NR1 19th February 2016 at 11:28 pm Wow! Chapeau for that response Cluster One. So, all the bluster about Killie’s pitch is yet more hypocritical hot air from the RIFC group. . Surely the amount of hot air being generated would be sufficient to keep a hover pitch in its rightful place? Ex Norwich City coach Lee Clark didn’t take long to get up to speed on the way of the world north of the border. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/35613319 I hope none of the external funding for the new surface at the former Murray Park constitutes state aid, although I’m sure that the People that are obsesed with such things are already on the case.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
As youse know I sometimes listen to Clyde SSB. Tonight Big DJ said “to a large extent we’re all talking about things we don’t understand” when giving his full on view of the Killie pitch. I think he is limiting himself there.
Later on a Gerry called in to say he thought that as Rangers, as the Establishment Club, always got a very favourable press. Big DJ cut him off as usual before he had finished and ranted over him and stopped him speaking. The panellists then went on to ridicule him. Gerry had an excellent point it just wasn’t ever going to be allowed to be heard.
Clearly DJ is paid to cut this sort of stuff off at the pass but probably paid by RIFC not Clyde. McCulloch remained silent much in the same way that he does when Guidi explodes and bullys callers. Usually those refuting the same club myth.
Keevins tried to disect it all in his usual brainless but forensic way. There is no hope but I have complained about the DJ and Guidi bullying.
There is an antidote to radya clyde.
Just never listen to it.
Doctors everywhere recommend it
Bogs Dollox,
i disagree. I heard the same show, and Gerry did not remain silent, he stood up for the caller to a reasonable extent. Also, the caller wasn’t making excellent points in my view, he was claiming that Rangers as the “establishment club” had told Mark Warburton he could say whatever he liked without any punishment. I don’t believe that to be true in the slightest, and thought the panellists were right to cut him off.
RyanGosling 20th February 2016 at 12:44 am #Bogs Dollox,
i disagree. I heard the same show, and Gerry did not remain silent, he stood up for the caller to a reasonable extent. Also, the caller wasn’t making excellent points in my view, he was claiming that Rangers as the “establishment club” had told Mark Warburton he could say whatever he liked without any punishment. I don’t believe that to be true in the slightest, and thought the panellists were right to cut him off.
________________________________
Its all about opinions eh?
Ryan the guy had hardly finished when DJ started his TRFC bluster and shouted him down. He does that all the time when he hears stuff he would rather not about Rangers. As does Guidi.
McCulloch isn’t excactly a strong chair who ensures fair play. It is a concern of mine that there is a pre determined narrative to the show and paid for TRFC “panellists”.
I also subscribed as a non-attending unfortunately I used paypal so it has gone through using my paypal email addy lol ended up with another account but this is the one I use lol.
Would love to come to the SFM meeting but 12,000 miles is a long way to travel. Hopefully one day SFM meetings will be available on Skype or You-Tube. There is a far bigger number of people who would want to know what was said than are physically able to attend. The Scottish diaspora is immense.
Call me an old cynic – again !
Is it not a significant gamble for the co-investors in the new synthetic surface currently being laid at Murray Park ?
These pitches typically cost north of £500K – on ground where ownership will be contested in court, some time soon.
Any complaints from Munster or the Warriors over injuries caused last night by the Rugby Park pitch? Thought not.
Ryan it is as BD says all about opinions. My opinion is McCoist should have had the book thrown at him for the “who are these people” rant. My opinion is if McInnes, Deila, Neilsen, Stubbs or any other manager had been as vocal about Alloa narrowing the pitch and Rugby Parks’s synthetic pitch then they would have been explaining it to the compliance officer. A further opinion is that any other club making more appearances in court than on the pitch would be facing disrepute charges. It is my opinion that clearly for the last 4 years one club has been favoured, over 41 others, in being allowed to get away with murder.
Warburton is obviously struggling with the pressure of collective responsibility because he quite clearly is staying schtum on a number of issues including the “warchest lies” he was spun but his recent pronouncements are in danger of making Mad Vlad seem quite sane by comparison. I wonder what is next target will be Stokes loan deal at Hibs (conveniently forgetting the Billy King deal is much more beneficial to TRFC)?
Apologies to the Mods if I have strayed over the lines of whataboutery.
Fisiani 20th February 2016 at 1:56 am #Would love to come to the SFM meeting but 12,000 miles is a long way to travel. Hopefully one day SFM meetings will be available on Skype or You-Tube. There is a far bigger number of people who would want to know what was said than are physically able to attend. The Scottish diaspora is immense.
—————————–
Periscope, i hear it is the in thing just now.
T’Rangers have a small tight squad. Fans have been saying for some time an additional striker was top on their wish list next to a holding midfielder. Warburton managed to sign a goalie and some wingers. The latter part of the season is when injuries come to the fore. Waggy was off the boil, possibly carrying an injury?? Miller is past it but offered a new contract. Fans say Clark, despite kindly scoring them well struck winner at Rugby Park, can go anytime. His contract is unlikely to be renewed.
Suddenly, despite shouting to the heavens about their own fantastic world class training facility, the plastic comes to the fore. Smoke and mirrors I’d say.
“Spoof news site ‘becomes official’ after Facebook and Twitter success”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-35612405
“A spoof news website has been recognised as an “official media outlet” by a council after it gained thousands of followers on social media…..”
Could this be the answer for the Daily Radar, Keith Jackson et al? A means to arrest or at least offset the terminal decline of the print media?
I mean, stories about a restaurant introducing a £5 breastfeeding charge and the Dartford Crossing being closed because of “thousands of Kent residents trying to enter Essex illegally” are of nothing compared to some of the whoppers we have seen in their pages.
Then again, their stories are probably too far off the radar to be believable.
Scottish Football needs a strong Arbroath.
Bogs Dollox 20th February 2016 at 12:50 am #RyanGosling 20th February 2016 at 12:44 am #Bogs Dollox,i disagree. I heard the same show, and Gerry did not remain silent, he stood up for the caller to a reasonable extent. Also, the caller wasn’t making excellent points in my view, he was claiming that Rangers as the “establishment club” had told Mark Warburton he could say whatever he liked without any punishment. I don’t believe that to be true in the slightest, and thought the panellists were right to cut him off.
==========================
The caller made the point he believed Rangers have been guilty of cheating. Personally I believe that is an excellent point as do many others who invested their hard earned during the EBT years. Until an adult debate is had on that issue the festering resentment among many Rangers fans will not subside. An adult debate means the view of those who think they cheated will have to be heard. It is simply unacceptable in a democracy that the media refuse to discuss whether a football club who deliberately withheld tens of millions in tax were cheating. Sadly, even if BDO lose their appeal the media will still try and defend what went on. I saw a well informed Twitter person say last night that QC’s are lined up to get this issue on the table should BDO lose the appeal. Let’s hope so, because I for one am sick to the back teeth of the Scottish media and football authorities defending the indefensible. We can never move on until there is proper acknowledgement of what happened.
tykebhoy 20th February 2016 at 8:56 am
) at soggy Scotstoun.
Any complaints from Munster or the Warriors over injuries caused last night by the Rugby Park pitch? Thought not.
————————–
Fusaro left the field after he struck his head on the surface. Impossible to say whether the impact was greater or would have been lesser (
Incidentally, I’m not a great fan of Barnes & co. (the rugby commentators on Sky), but they certainly made a very good game excellent as they talked up everything from players’ personal skills to the Rugby Park surface. Other commentators, please take note.
I have found myself ruminating on artificial turf over the past couple of days, and the dangers of grazing, sorry, lacerating on plastic grass blades and still find it hard to swallow Warburton’s beef about plastic pitches, given that they use one for training. Having said that, I have sympathy for their injured player and hope the extent of his injuries are greatly exaggerated.
John Clark
Do you remember the Fawlty Towers episode where Basil did his best not to mention the war in the hearing of the German party staying at Fawlty Towers?
This latest JJ Blog https://johnjamessite.wordpress.com/2016/02/20/the-farrago-of-deception/ reminds me of that except it’s the wee tax case that is not to be mentioned.
I see you have gone back to the SFA on their defence of Ogilvie.
Are you Basil Fawlty sir??
wottpi 20th February 2016 at 9:04 am #
Nail on the head, I think, wrt Waghorn carrying an injury .
From BBC Sport
However, Rangers boss Mark Warburton wants artificial surfaces banned and insists he has medical proof that Martyn Waghorn’s knee injury was exacerbated by Kilmarnock’s surface. (Various)
Poor management of an injured player ?
Good spot Paddy. It begs the questions.
Given that a knee injury is likely to be exacerbated by a grass pitch that in horse racing parlance is “bottomless” are they just whingeing because of their own poor judgement?
I suspect Martyn Waghorn’s injury was exacerbated more by taking a penalty immediately after having suffered it.
It’s the player the manager should be chastising, for being idiotic.
Speaking on the day when the new league season was launched at Hampden, Vivienne MacLaren, who is director of media and communications at SWF, said: “We have had approaches from companies in both sectors.
“They asked if we wanted to speak to them about sponsorship. We said no because we want women’s football to be a clean sport, and one which helps to educate young girls.
“There are huge problems, in the west of Scotland especially, with gambling and alcoholism. I think it would be absolutely crazy to allow little girls and women to be running around in strips endorsing these sectors.”…
http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/14290531.No_booze_or_betting__Women_s_football_rejects_sponsorship_offers/
=======
Mibbees the blazers could learn something?
Bravo the ladies !
Auldheid 20th February 2016 at 1:43 pm
‘..John ClarkDo you remember the Fawlty Towers…………
…Are you Basil Fawlty sir??’
________
Ha, ha! Four summers ago, my immediate neighbour went abroad to work, and let out his house to a man who simply,in all the nearly four years he rented the place ignored any and all neighbours. Not last year but the year before, he went away. Back, we thought, to the European country whence he came.Workmen were working on the house.
Late on a Wednesday night , I took the rubbish out to the bin , and got the fright of my life when I heard this heavily accented voice addressing me. It was this guy, who asked imperiously about what the workmen had been doing. I did the neighbourly thing, introduced myself and he likewise introduced himself. I heard the surname, and immediately heard Basil’s voice screaming in my head ‘” Don’t mention th war, don’t mention the war” as I exclaimed ” Ah ( repeating his name), that was the name of the officer commanding the mortar platoon that blew my dad’s leg off at Cassino!”
My ‘neighbour’s’ eyes birled in his heid, and I don’t think he heard a word of my explanation that I had been researching my dad’s war, and had indeed established the name of the officer in command of kompany 14 of the 1st Regiment of Fallschirmjaeger in May 1944 in the Monastery, and then a week later , on Monte Piccolo, a few miles up the road to Rome, where my dad was wounded -by a mortar shell.
I laughed at my ‘Fawltyism’.
—-
And yes, I have written to the SFA.I’ll wait till the end of the coming week before sending a reminder, and if that doesn’t elicit a response I will follow up, until I get a reply!
Great story JC, in a kind of sad and funny way.
JC 7.42 pm
Individuals writing to either of these bogus organisations will be ignored unless they are accompanied by 5-10K other letters,
Difficult to co-ordinate but one letter with 5-10K signatures is near impossible to ignore especially if the recipients know that their “overlords” and sponsors are made aware at the same time.
Do what I, and the near 2000 other signatories, need you to do. Use your standing within this community and push/promote the petition. Currently it is going nowhere and needs a kick start (not crowd funding) and any other approach has’nt even got out of the starting blocks.
We NEED to do this.
PROMOTE the PETITION.
https://www.change.org/p/scottish-football-association-return-integrity-to-football-administration-in-scotland-94421b40-2d6b-4d4b-9cff-912c9849478f
Homunculus 20th February 2016 at 2:27 pm #I suspect Martyn Waghorn’s injury was exacerbated more by taking a penalty immediately after having suffered it.
It’s the player the manager should be chastising, for being idiotic.
————————————————————————————
Or indeed his team mates after they jumped all over him when he scored!
Reiver,
I don’t know where else you post the petition on. The only other two I know are Celtic Quick News and Etims. Both have a lot of posters but they mainly talk about football and not so much the things we talk about on here and at johnjames. But register with them, it’s easy and both will be OK about you posting the petition link. Good luck.
Just re-read that and realised how silly it sounded – ‘they mainly talk about football’ – as if we don’t!
But you know what I mean, the governance, the reporting of, the corruption within football. And the analysis of all this.
In response to Finloch’s blog piece I am minded to contribute the following.
An apocrophyl genesis of football may be traced to post execution revelry in the middle ages. Public executions were a real crowd puller back then and in the event of a beheading, the severed head would sometimes be thrown into the crowd of spectators who would take out their ire on the now deceased miscreant by kicking his cranium up and down the streets.
Whilst this was brutal and inhuman, it was also probably great fun and soon became a mainstay of any good application of ultimate justice.
In some settings, perhaps in more rural environments, rules began to evolve to ensure the revelry was not needlessly curtailed. Kicking the head into the village pond might have been ruled illegal since its retrieval might have proved problematic. Rules evolved to iron out such problems and hundreds of years later we ended up with association football and a pig’s bladder acting as surrogate head.
The rules did not evolve to restrict the game but to enhance it. Their adherence provided added enjoyment and a structure within which the relative skill levels of opposing teams could be matched and measured.
Similarly in the field of finance rules have evolved through the centuries and millenia that have taken economies from being militaristic and aquisitional to a position where there is more focus on productivity and output.
What happens when you decide not to follow the rules? You may gain an unfair advantage that in the short term at least will give you access to what is considered success. However in the long run you merely undermine the system you have subscribed to. The Rangers saga has provided a beautiful parallel threaded tale to illustrate what happens when you try to take too great an advantage in manipulating the rules. Things end up in an irrevocable mess.
I’d like to view SFM as a witness to events, shaming those who have acted with devious culpability and ensuring that their errors are not allowed to cause terminal damage to the game of football in Scotland. It may also have acted as something of a brake on the rapid commercial forces that came into play following old Rangers demise in 2012.
People will always try and bend the rules in their favour but when they do so to breaking point then they end up damaging rather than advantaging themselves. The inability to own up to failings and rectify faults means that no lessons are learned and no liability is accepted. The financial crisis of 2008 seen very little governance retribution for those who may have been most responsible for the failings that brought the world economy to its knees. As a result the likelihood of a re-occurence of such events is far from insignificant. Mistakes without consequence aren’t really mistakes are they?
So perhaps we can make a stand here and now to save the world economy. We will teach them that the application of rules is a positive initiative and that to do so will accrue significant benefit in the long run. It may not boost the Christmas bonus but it will swell the pension pot.
Its all short term instant gratification these days. No-one seems to be prepared to wait and strive and hope any longer. We want it and we want it now.
Well perhaps we can play a longer game than that and as Finloch suggests, build a reservoir of information that can be used to police the game. The word ‘police’ comes from the Greek and it means ‘people’. SFM has reignited the awareness that ordinary people have power and that when they gather into focussed and interested groups their influence can be far more effective than the best public relations output.
Jimbo
Thanks but I prefer as much as possible to keep the petition club independent. Although the evidence of mismanagement is mostly displayed with regards to one club it is not solely the issue. Take the handling of the Scotland team’s experiences after the plane returning them from Georgia was delayed for instance.
I have tried BBC, Channel 4, a number of major reporters, a couple of sports integrity groups, the Guardian and the Independent (RIP) but to no avail. The only place I am able to have my pleas in print are in the forums like here and JohnJames. Direct Twitter approaches to the like of Alex Thomson, Tom English, Chris McLaughlin, Sportsound, Off the Ball, James Doleman and quite a few others. A couple of fans groups have also been approached. The outcome is always the same. Not a Dicky bird from them. Zilch. Nada. Nothing.
It is down to us and us alone. It can still be done though. If everyone who signs gets a couple of like minded friends, who haven’t already signed, to put down their moniker(no not the one out of Friends) I would have already been writing the more detailed epistles to the important parties, but 5000 is beginning to look like an impossible target.
https://www.change.org/p/scottish-football-association-return-integrity-to-football-administration-in-scotland-94421b40-2d6b-4d4b-9cff-912c9849478f
Re The £450k stand proposal at Murray Park.
Genuine question here, has this to put to EDC council for planning permission and has it been granted ? The next question is where is car parking space which will cater for this number of people, has that been considered ? Parking your car on Auchenhowie Rd is not an option and the council should be questioned on this if this proposal is genuine. EDC when I added a bedroom to house many moons ago insisted that I cater for car parking for 4 cars at the front of my house !
briggsbhoy
I would imagine there would be ample parking space once they remove the plastic pitches that are now deemed to be too dangerous for their players to walk onto.
The above is a summary of an article in today’s Herald.
, but he seems to be coming out with some real nonsense recently. Most recently his “medical proof” that Waghorn’s injury was caused by the artificial pitch. Is he losing the plot, I wonder, and why? Maybe some false promises at the time of his recruitment regarding huge warchests?
Now is it just me, or is Warburton making a virtue of necessity here? Because the policy described is completely counterintuitive. Surely every club, large or small, gets its best players on long term contracts, either to stop them just walking away, or to cash in if a bigger club comes along. If Warburton won’t give decent young players security, he’ll soon see them walking away to some other club who will.
Keeping everyone on short term contracts surely only makes sense if insolvency is on the cards? Or am I missing some masterstroke here?
I thought quite highly of Warburton at first, he is clearly a far better manager than McCoist
Indeed Kilgore. If I was a resident of the housing estate across the road from Murray park I would be mighty concerned about the flood of traffic. In my opinion from what I can see the present facilities could not cope with the number of cars this stand would attract.
briggsbhoy.
Seems we both know the area well enough to know that this ‘plan’ has quite a few obstacles to overcome.
I see this whole thing sinking without trace soon.
Which is exactly what would happen to any stand build on that land anyway.
justshatered 19th February 2016 at 9:00 pm
Shocking figures for a scottish national paper, however, not a surprise, the record and sunday mail have been in decline for a long time. I would suspect that the age demographic for those 2 “newspapers” is very high as well, nothing to attract the young to buy them.
What was interesting in the last 2 weeks was the indy’s decision to go online only and to sell their i daily mini newspaper to johnston press(owners of the scotsman). I see the end for the scotsman with this purchase, it’s content(such as it is) will be incorporated into the i (as a scottish i?) and the scotsman goes online only.
Newspapers in general are in decline and the indy is just the first to throw in the towel. In scotland, the scotsman and herald are in terminal decline along with the record, although the record still has a 6 figure readership, the scotsman and herald would struggle to reach 50k between the two of them.
Did I not hear something on sportsound a couple of weeks ago about a new scottish sports newspaper launching? Maybe I misheard.
Anyway, I predict that within 5 years at least another 1 or 2 national dailies will have gone online only. Lets face it, a lot of newspapers get their stories from news bureaus, facebook, twitter etc, very few actually do any journalism at all.
I posted roughly the same yesterday and I suspect frustration over the warchest is part of it. However he also knows what he knows and knows what he can say and some of the contradictions in there are probably difficult to balance.
RIFC’s own accounts stated that on top of a modest surplus from the January transfer window a further £2m+ would be needed to see TRFC to the next season. I think players were released but none sold and although that probably freed up more in wages than the additional cost of O’Halloran has added it won’t cover his transfer fee for some time.
We don’t know the exact terms of that transfer but it is rumoured to have a stage payment based on promotion. The wording of when exactly that payment becomes due may be interesting. Promotion guranteed i.e. this season? Start of the new season? First appearance in the Premiership? Was it Ball that sat out a lot of games because his next appearance triggered a stage payment to Everton?
So no transfer surplus. We are told though that £6.5m was raised to pay off the SD loan. Again the devil is in the detail and not being on a stock market means none of that detail has to be revealed publically. Rumour has it a proportion of next season’s season book money has been promised as the repayment. Whether that is true or not the loan is almost certainly on commercial terms and will have to be repaid with interest. Is that just delaying by effectively “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.
So they may or may not have the additional £1.5 from the loan depending on whether SD required more than the £5m because of defaults. They are still at least £0.5m short of the target set in the accounts. Now did that target take into account that RIFC would have represenative barristers spending as much time in court as TRFC have representative players on the pitch?
As neepheid says Warburton is a better manager than McCoist and is probably much more intelligent. Even if he was concentrating solely on the football he’d have to be otherwise acting like an ostrich with its head in the sand to not be aware of all this and more going on. But on top of that he’s now under pressure on the football side. It was expected to again be a stroll towards promotion but at the moment a resurgent Hibs buoyed by the cup progression against Hearts look like they may take it to the wire (ignoring the Livi match from which there was no bleating about a snow/slush covered PLASTIC pitch). Now TRFC must keep their noses in front without the leading goal scorer so we may see Warburton unravel some more.
There was a tweet sometime back from an account that asked the question:
Would you buy a Scottish sports daily newspaper?
I replied that their chance of success might hinge on whether they report the facts in the Rangers story or the sugar coated PR drivel every other paper came out with
They never replied.
Just on the plans for the new stand etc at Murray Park.
The Rangers Fans Fighting Fund was actually set up because the support realised that liquidation caused the death of the club, they contributed the money in order to help the club through administration and hopefully out of it.
The attachment is lifted directly from the home page.
tykebhoy 21st February 2016 at 10:21 am #
Now TRFC must keep their noses in front without the leading goal scorer so we may see Warburton unravel some more.
==================================
That’s a bit off. They must have at least one other person who can take penalties.
On the contract scenario. Mark Warburton is just talking drivel on the basis he knows the club have no other option than to offer the sorts of contracts he is talking about.
He has been discussing bringing in 5 or 6 players ready to compete at the top level of Scottish football and on into Europe and he expects people to believe he will do this by offering them one year contracts to keep them “hungry”.
No Mark, you are softening the support up for reality. Telling them you will be doing this because you think it is the best way, rather than admitting it is the only option.
You can take the man out of the City but you can’t take the City out of the man. The latest opinions from Mark Warburton betray his financial sector thinking. Move his players towards short term contracts to keep them hungry. Keep them in fear more like. This is the same mindset which prefers agency workers to full time permanent employees. To zero hour contracts. The destruction of the pensions industry. Whatever happened to security of employment? I know footballers are in a unique position where a 4 year deal is good, but come on 1 year deals as the norm? I’d hate to be a ‘squad’ player.
Then he holds up the bankers as a good example, defending huge bonuses as just reward. All these 7 figure bonuses creates is recklessness and a culture of gambling. Britain had a very strong banking industry for generations without the need for these absurd payments. Did he learn nothing from the crash?
The contradictions in his statement are many. Just one example. He gave Barrie McKay a one year extension yet a few weeks ago signed Andy Halliday and Jason Holt up to 2020. What happened in the intervening weeks to bring forward this new way of thinking?
I think he is beginning to lose the plot or perhaps understand Dave Kings way of operating better.