LongTimeLurker

The symbolism of hiring a Catalan architect that Donald Dewar was so keen on hasn't aged very well.

Legally almost certainly nothing amiss, but morally is it reasonable to be taking a payment after all the clubs had joined the WoS and the sport was suspended from all activity due to the pandemic? Beyond that you can certainly see how the office holders had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo as those payments are quite generous for the west region sort of level.

Was that not John Pelosi?

^^^had to put this guy on ignore because of being stalked from thread to thread with bizarre posts like this. Need to remember to be signed in when I open threads. Was on the Yes Yes side in 1997 and would be so again and actually prefer the SNP to Labour and the Tories when it comes to actually governing in a Holyrood context, so he's basically just projecting a mirror image of his own narrow-minded extremism onto me.

I'd be asking questions about who got the 12.6k honorarium and why? Looks like the remaining assets got cleaned out by the office holders before it could be split 63 ways by the clubs but maybe there's a reasonable explanation.

Advantage Motherwell by the looks of things even if not quite game, set and match time.

An SNP government will always tend to do something different from Westminster just for the sake of having Scotland different from Ingerlund. They will be playing it very safe as much as possible over the next few weeks to try to have the coronavirus numbers a lot lower than in England to be able to push a look we would be better off independent agenda. Once one country is doing something in a way that's proving to be popular though the other government is likely to soon be doing the same because all politicians really care about is approval ratings and geting reelected. Enough emails and phonecalls to SNP MSPs to show them that the issue of getting part-time fitba up and running is a hot button one should do the trick. New virus clusters that get linked by the media to what's happening down in England that way could still slow things down a bit but probably not drastically.

...and a wide array of sockpuppets/sycophants ready to shout down anybody that dares deviate even slightly from the Sendero Luminoso of the EoS where the pyramid is concerned. Now the WoS is in place albeit mostly with SJFA memberships retained and there is zero chance of the east region ever getting in now that the PWG meetings have ended that's settled largely but not entirely in their favour, so maybe there's no agenda left for them to push on here. The Battle Royale of the blazers that raged over the last few years has run its course with the woodpile dude being put out to pasture in the west and Tom Johnston exiting stage right to start his retirement in November. Hopefully we'll start seeing lots of banter filled threads about the fitba that's happening once the season finally gets underway. Mon the BUs or Blantir Vics depending on which side of the Castlecary viaduct I happen to be standing on.

The dreaded "Mount Florida brick" in the mopping up operations launched after the initial salvo of empty claret bottles.

Fair enough point but my understanding is that this kind of stuff has been normal for a while now there.

The only enclosure there that looked anything like the one in the Crerand picture from what I remember was behind the centre of Stirling end goal (was there in the 70s and 80s rather than the 50s though), so don't think that fits. Was there not a small and very low stand/enclosure type structure on the far side from the main stand in the photograph above where Crerand and the officials would have been heading towards? Don't remember there being anything similar in scale to the Crerand photo on that side. Also don't think it could be Douglas Park as it was into the early 80s before the covered enclosure approached anywhere near the corners as seen in the picture posted above (as an aside Auchinleck Talbot's stand was originally an Accies one that went in to the left of the wee main stand in the photograph where the club shop had been when Accies managed to win promotion to the top tier). Personally, I'm 99% certain now it was East End Park and that the comment about the floodlights was mistaken because the original set that went in would not have been in the shot. Hedgecutter's photo made that obvious in that there were two huge older pylon type floodlights on the behind the goal terracing with a newer pole type one in the corner that would have been in the photo, but happy to still be persuaded otherwise.

If they can do that there six months or so after their first wave peak of infections after the way that the less than fully democratic Chinese state introduced extreme lockdown measures, it's a stretch to imagine we won't have people watching WoS football under social distancing conditions up to almost a year after our one unless Nicola S goes batschit (as opposed to bat soup) crazy.

I've been on an airport runway in Accra in Ghana but not through customs.

...assets typically get divided amongst remaining members at that point, so the 10 or 13 that left may be missing out on a minor financial windfall.

Meanwhile in Wuhan... If the season doesn't happen it will probably be because Nicola Sturgeon has well and truly lost the plot where the SNP's nanny state tendencies are concerned, but I seriously doubt that will happen. Pandemics usually run out of enough people to infect that don't have immunity built up from a prior infection to keep the R0 number above 1. Evidence is growing that with COVID-19 that can be from other coronaviruses where a large portion of the population is concerned, which is why the number of people needing a ventilator at peak was a lot less drastic than anticipated. Suspect it could easily be January rather than October though. The October 17th timeline looks on the optimistic side, because the strict lockdowns mean there could still be enough people that have not been exposed to the virus to generate a significant second wave when the politicians initially try to get back to full normality. Nicola S has a track record of playing it very safe.

Brora and Darvel are obviously being financially doped in a big way at the moment, but so are Queen's Park with their recent move to full-time status, so that's not only a factor outside the SPFL. Would Ross County be a Premiership team without Roy McGregor or would they be following more of an Elgin City or Peterhead type trajectory? Think it's important to bear in mind that there's ex-west region clubs like Auchinleck Talbot and Clydebank that are probably coming soon into the picture to join Bonnyrigg Rose and Bo'ness United that won't need a Kelty style sugar daddy to be a threat to the league status of clubs like Albion Rovers. They have the core support, infrastructure and organisation in place to be potential SPFL2 material without that. The LL is going to be much stronger a decade or so from now and relegation out of the SPFL will lose some of its fear factor.

Was that not assisted in part by financial windfalls from cup games against the Old Firm with a return to normal more recently when that dried up? For whatever reason Coatbridge doesn't get behind them to anything like the still relatively lukewarm extent people in Airdrie and Hamilton get behind their teams. No reason why they should have a league spot in perpetuity because of decisions made back in nineteen oatcake.

you may be right:

Watching how their supporters would react to being like Newcastle and Sunderland rather than Man United and Man City would be interesting to watch unfold, but there is zero chance of it ever happening unless the whole national league format caves in all across Europe.

Top of the terracing looks too low for Cathkin and were the trees there in the late 50s like there are now? Old photos suggest otherwise. Think we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss East End Park. Can't think of any other Scottish league ground from that era with scope for having trees like that, because usually there isn't higher ground behind the top of the terracing.

Oops, wasn't that old at the time, but do remember the tackle.

Would explain a rather spectacular own goal against Rangers that was on either Scotsport or Sportscene. Think the result was 4-3 for Rangers but it's been a while. Willie McVie also starred for Blantyre Vics in a junior cup final against Baillieston at Ibrox. Captain with the trophy is Tommy Coghill, who also played for Hamilton Accies at one point:

Yes, but procedues on clinical trials are likely to get sped up in a big way with COVID-19. Still too much naive optimism that a vaccine is a sure thing though and will be available before herd immunity is reached. Should be viewed as a bonus if it happens rather than a certainty to base public policy around but politicians don't like to tell the punters that they have no solution and that a lot of them are probably going to die in the process of reaching herd immunity. You can wind up being as popular as Alexander Lukashenko is in Belarus at the moment if you take a vodka and sauna approach.

You would need to get the SFA, LL, EoS, WoS and SoS to all sign off on that = good luck. Would be sensible if a lot of EoS clubs still don't want to do any travel midweek to the land of jam, jute and journalism and the HL prefers not to have them and stick to its traditional catchment, but it tends to be pragmatism and path of least resistance that wins the day on this stuff. Think they'll probably wind up in the EoS with a regionalised lower tier to keep them largely contained in Tayside but it's still by no means certain.

I heard something different at the time from somebody closely involved in terms of it being Ian Maxwell's brainchild, but have an open mind on this as there were clearly competing agendas and narratives being pushed, which is why I only go as far as "seem".