KingfaetheSooth

Disagree. Many great footballers have made poor managers. Has Dobbie taken any coaching badges?

Many footballers' contracts will have a release clause in them where a club can talk to the player if they agree to pay a certain fee. Not sure if that is the case with Dobbie, but realistically if Hibs or a bigger/richer club wanted him and he wanted to go, there is little to stop a move without conflict. I imagine that Dobbie has leeway at Queens that he is unlikely to be allowed at many other clubs, things such as the days he trains, overnight accommodation and the like. He can get this preferential treatment due to the service he's given and the fact that he is such a great player at SC level. What makes Dobbie a true legend IMHO is not just the way he talks fondly about the club and how he puts the team before himself as an individual but that you can totally believe that he genuinely wants to help take the club to the next level. That sort of attitude and respect is relatively rare in modern football. Dobbie and his family have obviously been extremely well looked after by Queens and that is to the credit of all who has been involved, from the Chairman and the Board, matchday staff and the fans. It might be good if Dobbie (when he retires) gets a testimonial from the club. I appreciate that this would set a precedent as he will not have completed anything like ten years service, but he has been such a wonderful player and ambassador for the club, that I don't think anyone would grudge him it, and it would be an opportunity for the fans to thank him. I'm not one for making individual players club ambassadors, but this would also be a fitting legacy and I'm sure he and his family would be welcome at any Queens home game post retirement.

Nah, that Jesus is good on crosses but is unlikely to save us. Boom, tish...

I sàw a post in the QoS facebook page showing the bird mess on somebody's seat in the main stand. This looked like it had been there for some time and is totally unacceptable IMO. Also mention on the thread of seats not being fixed properly and loose. Surely this is something that the SLO committee should be sorting out with the club pronto? It's not difficult to give the paying punter a clean seat surely? It's also very possibly dangerous and a breach of the club's licence. Pigeon muck is really nasty and can cause awful illnesses and loose seats could result in an injury. On a more positive note, I see the manager and Board are attending a talk on end of life / palliative care tomorrow night as invited guests. Would be great for the club, Board and fans to support care homes and palliative care provision locally as this is often a forgotten area for charitable donation.

I think this is a good theory. Even many of the so called hardcore fans will pick and choose the games they attend these days. Football in Scotland is on a slow gradual decline. People are also not stupid and see that the stadium at Palmerston is in a slow decline and looking more 'tired' every year and there doesn't appear to be the money or viable plan in place to redevelop it or improve it further. I'm not criticising the Chairman or the Board either, it's a really tough gig running a football club in the Scottish Championship with our income and potential.

What about the ghosts of the thousands of greyhounds that are killed every year as they are no longer able to race, some of which are thrown out of moving cars or into the North Sea? Greyhound racing is dying on its arse, tracks are closing all over the place, it is only kept going by the gambling industry and has already been banned in parts of Australia. http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/picture-appears-show-greyhound-being-13883431

That'll be the Kingstonian FC that Wimbledon allowed to play rent free at the ground for over 10 years and received in excess of £1M from the Chelsea deal to help fund their stadium ambitions for the future? The owners of Kingstonian FC agreed to the sale and the majority of their fans are clued up on this. And that'll be the Greyhound racing where thousands of dogs are brutally euthenased and some thrown out of cars on motorways when they are no longer able to race? Greyhound racing is dying on its arse and only kept going by the gambling industry. Do some proper research and come back when you know the facts, mush. And for Grimm, AFC Wimbledon is moving to a new stadium in the Borough of Merton, some couple of hundred yards where the original Wimbledon FC played. They will own the stadium freehold. Anyway, back to the main point, real grass pitches can be unbelievably good these days, but they are very expensive and possibly beyond the finances of many lower league football clubs.

There are some great grass pitches. At Wimbledon, as we have sold our ground to Chelsea and they now look after the pitch. It's amazing the difference. It's desso hybrid but it doesn't come cheap, something like £1.5M and that doesn't include the cost of the sprinkler system they put in at the same time. Chelsea are making more improvements this coming Summer when they will have more time too, as last Summer it was all a bit rushed. At half-time and full-time they have about a dozen staff who come on and make it pristine again. All this cost for a pitch on which their ladies play, I can only hazard a guess at how much and how well they look after the turf at Stamford Bridge.

Sad news that, sincere condolences to his friends and family. On the subject of the Dobbmeister, seems like a no brainier to sign him up for another season, assuming he is keen to play another year and doesn't want stupid money. He must have a realistic chance of being Queens' second top scorer of all time if he plays another year. Even in the still fairly unlikely event that Queens get promoted, he would be an ideal foil off the bench.

How is Tanner getting on this season? Interested as he was on loan at Wimbledon a couple of seasons back and looked out his depth but seemed to do OKish at Plymouth.

The Board have already shown that they have little interest in Youth Development when they got rid of big JT and shuffled the pack with Warwick and Armstrong. Who knows whether they were right or wrong, but to be fair they had lost the funding for JT's salary a year earlier when the Hollywood Trust stoppd their grant. The inference at the time was that wanted to use as much money as they could muster for the first team squad and were cutting back on things like admin, youth development and community. A very short-term approach but I suspect the current Chairman/Board are more interested in where the First Team finish than anything else. I get the impression that the current Chairman is not in it for the long haul. We'll see. In the longer term, you are absolutely right that in order to build a successful Youth Development and Community programme, the club will need to set up a charitable foundation as many other clubs already have done. This is something that the fans via the Supporter Liaison Commitee should be pushing for.

Cheers SD, that makes sense. Looking at the Club licensing section of the SFA website, Queens are rated as a Bronze 1 for Youth/Club Academy . I should have spotted that originally.

Is there any reason why Queens have not been acredited with the SFA quality mark for increasing youth and community participation? Looking at the list of those clubs, schools etc. on the SFA's website for the South West region, I can't see any mention of QOS. http://www.scottishfa.co.uk/scottish_football.cfm?page=3207 Interesting to see that Annan Athletic are pressing ahead with fan ownership via a Community Benefit Scociety with the aim of becoming the first fully fan-owned club in Scotland. Some lessons maybe for the various Supporters Groups and the Directors of Queens. There must be some scope for Queens and Annan working together on community engagement for the benefit of the wider public in D&G, particularly youth interaction and involvement. http://www.scottishfa.co.uk/scottish_fa_news.cfm?page=2986&newsID=17399&newsCategoryID=1

No mention of Queens or D&G in the SFA Project Brave report into Youth Academies. Where are Queens currently in regards to this? Skyline? http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41997062

Who decided that, the players or the manager? Coincidence that both are chasing goals to move themselves up the Queens all time scoring list? I agree with the philosophy that a player takes pens until he misses. The current Wimbledon manager lets whoever is "feeling confident" take pens which is complete baloney and also doesn't work given the number that AFCW have missed. Naysmith was bemoaning not getting a pen in his 46(?) games in charge of Queens. Maybe he tells the players to 'stay on their feet' and not dive. Cheating/diving players is still one of my bugbears regarding modern football.

The Lehman 'piece of paper' was a very clever psychological trick IMO, as it makes the penalty taker consider changing where he puts his last/usual penalty and puts doubts in his head. Seb Brown did the same trick when Wimbledon beat Luton to get promoted to L2 in 2011. He saved two pens in the shoot-out. I saw the piece of paper after the game - it was blank. In a similar vein, I'm not sure that players practicing penalties helps massively, except in their head as they may be more confident going into the shoot-out thinking "we have practiced this".

Fair point, but I still think that the majority would understand the concept of practicing in case the game (which was always going to be close IMO) went to pens. It's the doing nothing in advance of a potential game that goes to pens to try and improve the odds in our favour that I find difficult to swallow. I might be wrong of course, maybe he had them practicing, but his defeatist lottery comment makes me doubt that. All water under the bridge now, but if I was the manager, I'd have them taking pens after every training session and researching the oppositions potential penalty takers with the GKer.

My point is that you can practice penalties, both takers and GKer. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that those teams/nations who practice and study penalties are more successful. If he came out and said, we had three sessions in the week practicing penalties, but the players froze/failed, I'd have some sympathy with him. Instead, he came out with some rubbish about how he would still have the same players taking pens with Dobbie and Lyle up first. Imagine if we were involved in a penalty shoot-out in the division play-off final to get promotion, (stop laughing at the back), and he used the lottery excuse, the fans would rightly be livid. I've said this before, but the season that AFC Wimbledon won a penalty shootout in the Conference playoff to get promoted to the FL, the players and GKer had been practicing pens on a daily basis for weeks.

Yet again Naysmith comes out with the line that a penalty shoot-out is a lottery. Err no, it's something that can and should be praticed before Cup ties where they can often be the deciding factor. Change the record FFS.

As a general point, the majority of fans don't realise the good work that some managers do off the pitch, things like building the club infrastructure, youth development, training improvements, training ground improvments, player nutrition, sports science, community stuff etc. etc. The focus is only on their achievement with results on the pitch. Too many managers, as an example, don't trust young players as they are judged almost exclusively on results and therefore don't have the confidence in playing promising kids. Mini rant over, as you were.

Former Queens youth, Chris Doig, seems to be doing well as assistant manager at Shrewsbury under the tutelage of Paul Hurst. Future QoS manager maybe, assuming Queens could afford him and he was keen to return to Scotland?

This was mentioned in the recent Board update from Blount Jnr. on the OS.

Good to see an update from the BoD on the website. I've been vocal in my criticism of the club for their lack of communication, so only right that they are given credit when they update the fans. Good stuff from Mark Blount.

No, though it might break down the 'them' and 'us' attitude that seems to exist at Queens. Communications from the club's custodians needs to improve.

There is no football utopia at Wimbledon but the fans are at the centre of the club and the decision making. From the depths of park football to the Football League in 9 years and a further promotion/consolidation to League 1 and a new 20K seater stadium back in Plough Lane due to open in 2019/20. I think they must be doing something right.