EdTheDuck

Westhill isn't dodgy to be honest* and the drinks & eats problem will apparently be solved by as yet unidentified benefactors who are going to build bars and restaurants that will only be used 25 times a year. *not dodgy but does anyone really think the NIMBY's from NKS will meekly allow hundreds of cars to park on "their" streets? Maybe not watch you car for a fiver mister but the appearance of unofficial no parking cones, muppets lining the streets with placards and the like is highly likely.

/thread

You’re wasting your time. There is clearly some sort of comprehension problem going on here. They insist on talking about the parking problems pre-game and traffic jams post-game but It has been explained many, many times. The advantage of where Pittodrie is has everything to do with the number of restaurants, bars, pubs, coffee shops and assorted other eateries and drinkeries and nothing at all to do with ease of access. The parking and traffic jam problems will still be there when AFC moves to the outer rim of civilisation, but the myriad choices of places to eat and drink will not. Building a Burger King or Bella Italia will not transform it into the city centre. The suggestion there are already adequate hostelries in and around Westhill/Kingswells would make Nigel Farage blush. Frankly, the people who drive to the football at ten to three expecting a parking space near the ground deserve what they get. Likewise them that scarper at quarter to five, jump in their cars to go home deserve to sit in traffic for 45 minutes.

Cove did concede 4 goals once this season, 2-4 against Formartine in the Aberdeenshire Shield back in November. So...y'know... What was my point again?

It should take an average healthy male about 2 hours 35 minutes to walk from the station to Pittodrie (or vice versa) because so many pubs get in the way /discussion

No but there'll be no rain at Kingsford. Rainbows yes but no rain. Possibly unicorns too.

Took the words out of my mouth...or off my keypad...whatever.

I'm no even a Berwick fan and this question is tedious now. They'll be in the Lowland League. They'll be in the EOSL if they finish bottom again in the LL This is the result of the attitude of the SMSM. Anything that happens below the top rung is completely ignore to the point that, to all intents and purposes, it didn't happen at all! To be sure almost anything that happens outwith you-know-who is paid lip service and invariably invokes speculation about a move to you-know-who if it is a positive/succesfull event. BBC Friday Night Football coverage of the Championship is a step in the right direction but there is no context. 5 minutes of prelude by Steven Thomson and A N Other really doesn't do it. Neither does a couple of throwaway remarks on Sportscene a couple of times a season. Why can't they do a piece about the clubs involved, their current situation, their chances this season, what they're aiming for, the potential ramifications of defeat etc etc and so on. The story of Berwick Rangers is worth telling. So is the story of Cove Rangers. And Peterhead and Arbroath and Albion Rovers - fox ache it took Sky fucking Sports to pick up on the revival of Albion Rovers and that should register on the Richter Scale. I haven't even seen any clips of Cove-Berwick yet. The idea there is no interest in the lower leagues is utter rubbish. There is. And the SMSM could drive that forward by giving it decent coverage. If the coverage was there people would take an interest andbullyweehutch and others wouldn't have to continually explain what is going out there beyond "winning the premiership league".

He could corner the world market in 4 leaf clovers. horseshoes and have a mountain of rabbits feet. It won't be enough luck for Berwick

I saw the team lines and the No 5 for Cove was very smudged. I couldn't read his name...

Christ knows, min. Club's been a bit o a sotter for a while now. No idea what next season will bring

could be a cracking league next year

A slightly different perspective I reckon Cove have won about 25 trophies in the 21st century. no more of that nonsense I reckon... congratulations all the same, well deserved

5 huge games looming, maybe six if AFC finish 4th (imagine having to hope for a Celtic win in the final…gads and sorry Hearts). This will be further grist to the “nae bottle” mill if they louse up the run-in, regardless of the make-up of the games. If they finish outside the top 4 pitchforks and flaming torches will be getting looked out...

That pic of Christie being plastered all over social media is exactly the same as when AFC fans posted the photo of GMS’ broken face all Twitter etc.…what’s that, they didn’t? Because GMS didn’t post his picture like a self-pitying fanny? Makes you wonder if maybe AFC players being called thugs is because all the greeners are sissies…

Congratulations to Cove Will they do it this time? Or yet another big, fat splat?

If by "Prior to the oil boom" you mean about 1880 then, yes, Dundee was substantially bigger. But that was the only time since 1800 it was the case. Furthermore, for Aberdeen to reduce to be smaller than Dundee from their current populations would require about 80,000 residents to be 'removed' from the city. If you know something about an impending disaster along the lines of an asteroid impact or a super-volcano under Seaton Park please let me know and I will also flee.

Well, that was kinda my point in an earlier post. In the 10 years after the RDS was opened AFC ran up operating losses of over £15,000,000 and were absolute garbage. How much worse would it have been if AFC hadn't signed all that crap at premium rates and just stuck to their guns, working away at break even? How much worse COULD it have been? At the time the RDS had cost £5Million. Suppose the South Stand cost £10M. Spread it over 5 years, the stand itself with its bars and lounges should have made a contribution to its own cost. Ditto a 5 year plan for the Mainer and something similar for the Merkland. That would take us to 2008, whole place rebuilt. Even if the debt wasn't paid off it couldn't have been any worse than the desperate mess the club was in in 2008. The debt was around £12M and the club had a stadium that was contributing to that debt rather than help pay off debt or contribute to club funds. If you see what I mean...

AFAIK the capacities of the 3 non RDS 'stands' are, very roughly, South 8,000 Main 4,000 and Merkland 3,000 and the RDS is about 6,000 Therefore, while the RDS was being built the capacity must have been about 15,000 (8k + 4k + 3K) Once the RDS was up, they should have rebuilt the South Stand - the capacity while that was going on would have been about 13,000 (6K + 3K + 4K). If we got by on 15,000 while the RDS was going up we could have survived for a season on 13,000. FYI the season the RDS opened, other than the OF games, AFC had 2 games out of 18 Home games over 13,000 (44 game 12 team league) - side note AFC finished 2nd this season but the average attendance was 12,500, 10 games att. was under 10,000. Hearts averaged 11,000 and Hibs 9,700 - I really didn't remember attendances were so poor back then ) Thereafter, with the 8,000 South Stand and 6,000 RDS in place the capacity would never have below 17,000, plenty big enough en route to a 20,000 seat Pittodrie.

My opinion is based on colleagues, neighbours and pubbers, regular Pittodrie attenders. They are predominantly very much not keen on the move. There is certainly a bit of wait-and-see but...y'know. Laziness is a fucker. There's also definitely a bit of 'change is bad because it's change'. We'll see, but if we hit the skids again I have the fear... All those buses...hunners o' buses, all stopping to let folk hae a pish at Hazlehead and Dobbies...carnage!

Should I take his word as Gospel? Buses out to Kingsford on match days will be horrendous. A minimum of 30 minutes - I drive from Westhill to the City Centre and back fairly regularly and it is a shite drive in a car in the middle of the day, mid-week. In a bus, with Saturday traffic, full of beer, it's going to be, literally, a piss awful. Pub goers better bring a bucket. I didn't say stone cold middle class folk, I said stone cold sober middle class. And tongue in cheek is just something that happens to other people I guess...having said that I confidently predict quite a number of pub crawlers will pick and choose their games more than they do at the moment because going out there will be such a pain in the arse. I do, however, think quite a few of the surrounding 'suburbanites' may well be tempted (at least for a while) because the new stadium will be a talking point and a point of interest, at least initially. Boast? What boast?

Pittodrie. Same as they did while the RDS was being built. One stand at a time.

A substantial percentage of fans who attend Pittodrie from both the City and ‘shire do not: drive to the game, watch the game, drive home from the game. Shaving 10 minutes off the commute is neither here nor there. They go for food. They go for beer. Before and after the game. Sometimes they will go for food and beer to avoid the “gridlock”; they wait it out over a few beers. Whatever is being said about the sprinkling of pubs (and I use the word in its broadest sense) in Westhill & Kingswells they will not be anywhere near adequate. In fact I imagine quite a few of them will positively deter ‘football types’ from crossing their threshold. Furthermore, if you think the atmosphere at Pittodrie is shite at the moment just wait until the drunks are replaced by the stone cold sober middle class ‘shire set and hillbillies (who’ll come along to see what the “shiny bright lights” are all about). I find the suggestion that a move to Pittodrie would bring in more complaints than this redeployment to the boondocks almost Twilight Zoney. If it was a move to Pittodrie it would be from Torry or Cattofield, wouldn’t it? Would that really be a bad thing (other than for the residents of Linksfield I suppose)? It wouldn’t be a move from Kingsford to Pittodrie, that is too ridiculous to even contemplate (until roughly 2030AD). The almost criminal neglect of Pittodrie has made this necessary. If in 1993, after the monstrosity that is the RDS was completed, the board-room incumbents had turned their attention to the rest of the ground (instead of pissing money away “because everyone else was doing it” and running up astounding losses and debt), by now the Dung Heap would be fit for purpose and this discussion wouldn’t be happening. Incidentally, if AFC had resisted the Loadsamoney shite in the 90s & 2000s and spent money on the stadium instead of fake footballers how much worse could it have been on the field: flirting with relegation, horrendous regular humiliations and the longest trophy barren spell in the post-war period? The board have an affy lot to answer for.