O'Kelly Isley III
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Posts posted by O'Kelly Isley III
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So, the Strachan Option. I’m finding it a bit difficult to get my head round how a pretty dispirited and, it has to be said, small group of players of mixed abilities can be lifted by fighting rhetoric alone. Alan Adamson wasn’t a bad man with bad players but Ian Murray galvanised the squad when he arrived; we need a repeat of that right now, and sometimes managements have to take tough , honest decisions – this looks like a fudge which may yet become untenable, and quickly.
And there looms an unanswered question; now that he soldiers on, is SA being allocated money to strengthen the team or will it be case of trying to eke a point here and there with kids on the bench and folk carrying injuries into games ?
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It's a moot point whether this is the worst result in our history; I felt a whole lot worse exiting Boghead in 1975 after watching a decent Dumbarton side take an 8-0 caning from a Dalglish-inspired Celtic than I did last night. I get the feeling that last night will be remembered far, far more around Bonnyrigg than Dumbarton.
And the week is yet young, another white-knuckle ride awaits at Easter Road this weekend. And then onto who knows what further miseries.
Nothing really though that us older guys have not yet seen at various intervals, with one vital difference in my case. Never mind away games, I'm having to drag myself to home fixtures right now such is the utter negativity of the tactics and the general feeling that a team is disintegrating before your eyes. In the midst of it all Stevie Aitken has in managerial terms become a dead man walking.
The embarrassment of last night might yet be nothing to the not too far-fetched prospect of Dumbarton FC being unable to put eleven players on the park for a senior football fixture in the very near future. Is it really only two weeks since we entered a parallel universe in The Rock Bowling Club ?
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1 minute ago, Scottylintonstowel said:
Just when i thought the nadir had been reached by the likes of Gary dickie pat cairney and the legendary chizzi along comes Craig pettigrew to prove me wrong. When he came on as a replacement for Thompson the inevitable goal for Bonnyrigg duly came.
It has now reached the stage where the fans would gladly watch the team lose if they were attacking and playing positive football. The woman at the fish counter in Morrisons has advised me that wee Stevie will be gone by the weekend and that Nishie is standing by the phone.
Jesus, that would be like going to bed with Ruth Davidson and waking up beside Theresa May.
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There is one crucial difference in writing a letter to a newspaper and posting comment on here or similar social media; only on the latter are you guaranteed to be published !
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1 hour ago, Boghead ranter said:
'Cos it's not the 70s? Hardly anyone buys papers any more.
Well many folk still buy local papers out of habit and to see who's deid, etc., and in that regard both The Reporter and The Lennox have recently done a sterling job in airing a wide range of issues and opinions on the proposed new stadium.
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1 hour ago, Howlin' Wilf said:
I have no doubt that much shite was spoken by Mr Wilson last week. However, to be fair, the answer from the WDC 'spokesman' is predictable and not necessarily true. Always proceed with caution when a quote is from a 'source' or a 'spokesman'.
Spokeswomen are OK though.
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12 hours ago, Howlin' Wilf said:
On the proposed stadium move, there are many questions which answer themselves and others which simply follow on to other questions. Leaving aside for a moment that there is a substantial trust deficit for Brabco and justifiably so, it's maybe worth considering a few points. If Brabco were to honour their offer of the club having the stadium in perpetuity for a peppercorn or no rent bound by a legally binding lease, then Brabco would be the owners of the stadium for apparently no reason. That's what been suggested here. However and again presuming their offer is genuine, might they insist on retaining ownership of the land so that no future owner might realise the asset? I.e. sell the ground. Let's for a moment the club do own the proposed new stadium. This would mean that instead of Brabco owning the stadium and land it would be owned by........drum roll........Brabco. In that case with no lease to bind the agreement, the club's security then once again becomes dependant on the whim of the owner, whoever he or they may be.
Now in the time that I have supported Dumbarton, there have been four owners. The first was Robert Robertson, chairman of Hutchison Engineering. At one stage he tried to buy Clyde's majority shareholding and merge the two clubs. He also threatened to sell Boghead and move the club to Cumbernauld. Sir Hugh Fraser was next. SIr Hugh made the club a £40k loan which became repayable to his estate when he died. His daughter's solicitors were not patient and we're ready to take the club to court for the money. Not actually having the money the club actually faced a winding up order. Fortunately they avoided this by selling Steve McCahill to Celtic rather than having to sell the ground.
I'm Next owner was Neil Rankine who appeared after paying only £40k for the majority shareholding. He proxied his shares to Jim Innes when he (Rankine) went bankrupt, only to reappear and take control again but only after Innes was on the point of accepting an offer from Boghead from a house builder. Only intervention by Gilbert Lawrie prevented that. Rankine bought the land at the Rock for £200k and built the stadium at the Rock with the proceeds of the sale of Boghead and £300k of money raised via sportscotland, Allied Distillers and Diageo. GIlbert, back at that time as a director, was convinced that Rankine was going to sell the club to the highest bidder - and there was considerable interest because of the potential land value. It was Gilbert who brokered the Brabco deal. Rankine supposedly got £800,000. A tidy profit less than twenty years after paying £40,000 for the shareholding.
We can speculate that this might have been the thing to secure the club's future or indeed to deliver it to yet another owner who has designs on the potential value of the land occupied by the stadium - or something else....
And so in summary, on the various occasions where the future of DFC looked to have been in jeopardy during the last 45 years or so, on each occasion it was precisely because they owned a heritable asset.
Comparisons with Airdrie, Stirling, Clyde etc are with clubs who I understand are paying market value rental which isn't what has been proposed. Ok, I'm playing devil's advocate and everyone is rightly suspicious of a deal which leaves the club apparently with no assets
but you can't take the breeks aff a heilanman.Good post Wilf, and a timely reminder of why myself and some others saw the need for a Supporters Trust at Dumbarton; we may not have changed the world in the interim but the days of wide boys and tinpot dictators strutting their stuff at DFC without scrutiny are hopefully no more. My personal ideal for Dumbarton FC would be a mix of supporter commitment, enthusiasm, graft and PR outreach to the community and the business acumen, experience and commercial ballast of private shareholder capital. And whilst I believe that model could be achieved, we are still a long way off several of those elements.
On the point of Neil Rankine, BTW, whilst he was a one-off to put it mildly, I have it on good authority that there was in fact a rival offer in excess of Brabco's which he resisted as he felt it wasn't in DFC's interests, so fair play to him for that.
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Apparently Stuart Millar recently met Imre Varadi on holiday in Puerto de la Cruz - done deal if you ask me.
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We currently have a perfect storm at DFC; a threadbare but unbalanced squad, some of whom are on exorbitant deals compared to team mates - never a harmony-inducing situation in any workplace; a Manager whose public utterances smack of complete denial and who is struggling tactically and seemingly lacks the ability to motivate his squad, with many of them looking distinctly unhappy at their work; a Board of Directors who it would appear allowed said Manager to overspend on several fronts, and who now preside over a precarious balance sheet; crowds plummeting by the week as only the diehards can stomach the grim negativity on display, and last but not least, club owners who seem blissfully ignorant of all of the above as they chase moonbeams along the Renton Road.
On the Bonnyrigg Cup-tie thread I've already suggested an immediate course of action to try and salvage this season. But hey, when did folk in football clubs ever listen to supporters
?
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13 minutes ago, Nowhereman said:
Brabco's liquidation is one of the many risks. Brabco buying the stadium and retaining ownership with us getting a long lease in perpetuity doesn't make sense. There must be a reason that Brabco wish to retain ownership of the stadium and it can only be to protect an asset. If Dumbarton Football Club have a watertight lease for a ridiculous number of years then that makes the stadium and land pretty much worthless to the landlord. Now why would Brabco wish to hold on to an asset that they couldn't sell or realise?
Because they are businessmen and not philanthropists, and they wish to cover all their options. Added to which, Wednesday evening was probably the first time that anyone has even attempted to play Devil's Advocate about this proposal; other than the Trust Director I expect that it has bumbled along without much demur at the club, with this stadium ownership issue never having come to light. When everyone is in the same mindset all things are possible, at face value anyway; for example the unsubstantiated claim about 'bad neighbours' has been elevated into a mantra in DFC official circles.
When I challenged them to provide any documentary evidence of this, answer there came none, other than Calum Hosie doing a fine impression of Father Jack in the corner. If the meeting told Brabco anything, it is that people are rightly sceptical about many elements of this plan; to quote another mantra, if it seems to good to be true it probably is.
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20 minutes ago, Howlin' Wilf said:
For the sake of clarity, even if 'the club' owns the stadium, Brabco are the de facto owners. If that were not so, then we wouldn't be facing the situation that we do with the current stadium. There would actually be more security of tenure were there to be a 99 year lease at a peppercorn rent. As long as there is heritable property as an asset of the club then there is a risk the majority shareholder can sell it.So how does the Golden Share fit in all of this ? I thought that was intended to provide security of tenure for the club, something that would be lost on existing the present ground, no ? And is it the case that the Golden Share would require to be 'set aside' to allow Brabco to proceed with their present plan ?
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33 minutes ago, Howlin' Wilf said:
It was me who asked the question about the exit strategy. I get the feeling that the answer came in the heat of the moment.
Sorry Wilf, I missed out a crucial phrase which I've now added to my original post.
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3 hours ago, TheFarPost said:
A big thank-you to everyone who came along last night, and especially those who pressed necessarily tough questions. There were 76 people present throughout the evening, more than two years ago and more than turned up to the pre-planning application consultation one 11th November. Almost half filled in the feedback forms, more people have emailed me, and we have further detailed comments and questions from the Trust Board and from our stadium working group, and of course from this forum.
I'm putting all of that together and will make a fuller report as soon as possible. (There's a brief note up on the Trust website right now). I'm also doing a short article for the Lennox Herald this coming week, and commenting further to the Reporter. We're going to continue to make sure that fans' voices are heard loud and clear.
Following requests from the Trust, I gather that the new stadium plan boards will now be put up on the club website as PDFs. We'll do a link on the Trust website where people can leave further comments. We'll also work on an updatable Q&A. And of course I'll be feeding back everything that's being said to Brabco and the Club board. Ian Wilson said he's now willing to meet with the Trust board/working group, and we'll certainly take that up.
One thing that's absolutely clear, buy the way, is the deep disquiet at the idea that the club will not own the stadium. That's one of a number of crucial concerns that will be pressed very hard.
As I reported at the AGM, the Trust is looking to a number of further actions which will ensure that we are a robust and representative fans body capable not only of engaging fully with future developments on this stadium proposal, but also increasing our stakeholding in the club. Securing the club's future, the interests of fans and benefit for the community is our absolute priority.
There's much more to be said and (more importantly) done, but I hope that gives an initial idea of how we're moving forward from last night's meeting.
As I've said before, do private message me here if you want to.
Best, Simon
Simon, a wee but very important point. To your knowledge, is every member of the Dumbarton Football Club Board of Directors aware of Ian Wilson's revelation that should the new stadium development come to fruition then the Brabco Partnership would retain ownership of the new facility?
And if so, are they all in accord with this ?
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10 minutes ago, The Moonster said:
As Silverton End has said, there is a bit of an issue with the land at the far end near the water, I believe there is some contamination there too. All round it's just being left to rot away at the moment as it feeds the agenda of moving us.
It's certainly looking that way and the post-truth mantra about 'bad neighbours' is part of the same agenda; other than verbal claims by the Brabco people, I know of no firm evidence of this, and they were careful not to be drawn on it last night.
Although the CIS stadium is likely to be doomed under a quid-pro-quo arrangement between WDC and Brabco, another point that wasn't aired last night was that the walkway from the quay to the Rock CAN in fact be realised without encroaching on the football ground; indeed we must assume that unless said walkway isn't going to feature its own dip that this issue would need addressed anyway, so why not seek the win-win for both parties ?
I'll tell you why, because nether party has a shred of interest in seeing the CIS survive. We must therefore prepare to gird our loins for the Renton Road battle.
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We are correct to be sceptical but at this stage that should not stray into open hostility, as Brabco are now likely to gallop full tilt in pursuit of their aims and may still be amenable to having supporter/community involvement at a closer level as things proceed.
It was an evening that threw up a lot to digest, not least that the whole shebang would appear to rely very heavily on Sons retaining their Championship status; future bar takings from Forfar fans would be much less than Hibs, for example, so it will be fascinating to see if Stevie Aitken is given funding in January to strengthen a squad which is competing but has a very real chance of dropping a Division.
Brabco has no real track record of investment in the football side so that will be an early indicator of whether they do intend to 'walk the walk'. I suspect that in their hearts they know that the trying to 'sell' this development will be much, much harder down the leagues and the next six months will be absolutely critical for us all.
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Straight off, I don't doubt Brabco's motives or intentions as much as I doubt their ability to convert their vision as described into hard reality.
At times this evening I had to remind myself that I hadn't strayed into a timeshare presentation, such was the unfurling of both the slides and the assuring rhetoric. As I've always feared however, Brabco has been taking the pulse (steady...) across various parties and locations, but they have forgotten to face that very same hard reality by considering the local factors which will simply not match their projections. Weddings is only the start of it, and the constant lapses into boilerplate business-speak by Ian Wilson was dispiriting.
The DFC crowds; 'build it and they will come' someone once said. Not in any significantly increased numbers they won't as long as the admission tariff is what it is in an economically depressed area, and the DFC Board continues to expect the public to roll up as opposed to going out and attracting them. It's hardly rocket science.
Much was made of bar takings, catering and conferences as well as weddings - who was the bright spark who decided to franchise out all of this at the current stadium, generating virtually hee-haw money in the process ?
I was also annoyed by the gushing references to the prudent stewardship of the club by the current Board. I don't have any issues with the Directors and I'm on the record here as having congratulated them on the last five seasons but it all smacked of Brabco trying to make a virtue out of the fact that they have invested next to nothing in the football club over their tenure. Their eye is on one prize and one prize only, hence my reference to the grand vision being presented and DFC Directors dipping into their own pockets - bizarre, until you think about it.
One of the game-changers here is the growing feeling that WDC and others want us out of Castle Road. I very much expect Brabco's plans to be approved and then we are really entering walk-the-walk territory. So be it, but I would like to think that, perhaps for the first time, tonight provided Brabco with a much more critical and passionate dissemination of their plans.
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1 hour ago, Nowhereman said:
That is undoubtedly the biggest concern. It's all very well being against a move but no move may be even worse.
Maybe in terms of Brabco looking to cut and run, but with the present site's value having plummeted due to the need to spend a fortune remediating the site for house building that avenue may now be closed to them. That doesn't mean however that the best course of action is to embark on an over-ambitious (IMO) plan which will leave DFC mortgaged to the hilt in future.
I repeat; Brabco needs this project more than DFC, but dare I suggest that rather than pursue the big Cala mansion they consider doing up their own place instead ? Put it another way, let them build the number of 'Denny Homes' they require to recoup their investment adjacent to the present ground then invite them to actively market the majority shareholding to people with the football interests at heart. Let's call it the GTF Option.
You may hear more of that this evening.
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4 hours ago, BallochSonsFan said:
Its an unavoidable part of modern football that fans can no longer blindly trust the board of directors at their football club. That's absolutely not to say that the board members of Dumbarton FC are crooks - clearly they're not - but it's no longer the case that the board is made up of a collection of long term club servants rewarded with a tie and blazer and a dram in the board room on matchday and local philanthropists looking to give something back to their community club. Modern football boards are a complex mix of people with their own agendas and sadly these don't always match the overarching demands of the football club. Particularly when there's serious money involved.
Brabco, and by extension Dumbarton FC, are asking fans to put a lot of faith in a proposal that will radically reshape the future of the club. For better or for worse. Stories like the ones in today's Reporter certainly cast doubt on the judgement of the people involved. Thats not to say that we should be out with the pitchforks and burning torches, but there's a clear need for transparency in an effort to earn trust. If Ian Wilson wants to earn the trust of the Dumbarton support then there's a need for him to provide candid answers to the many questions that fans have.
Alan Jardine stood up at the last open meeting at the Abbotsford Hotel and said that there was a line in the sand that he would not cross. He was adamant that he would resign from the club board rather than allow a move that was detrimental to the club's future. Whilst such grandstanding gestures grab attention, I'd be asking further questions of the Dumbarton board. Like how we've managed to get ourselves into a position where our owners are telling us that the new stadium development is the only way to secure a viable future for the club? Or why we're unable to tap into at least some of the 300,000 riches that will supposedly be on offer if we move to the site at Youngs Farm? Ian Wilson and Brabco are, by and large, seen as he bogeymen hiding under the bed. We don't know them. They haven't previously engaged with us. We've seen stories in the press that put us on edge. And now they want us to uproot to another new ground that will undoubtedly mean a major change for the club. Our local football club directors have been conspicuous with their relative silence over recent years.
The sad part of modern football is that fans have to be constantly vigilant. It's only by asking questions, demanding answers and holding directors to account that we can play an active part in securing the future of our football club.
It's why tomorrow's AGM is such an important event and why I hope to see fans take the chance to ask those questions and demand those answers.
Ina strange way I'd be much happier if Brabco had declared from the off something along the lines of 'Look, we are hard-headed businessmen who have a tangential interest in this football club but we are determined to take it to a new chapter for which we will be lifting a decent financial skim'. Perhaps tomorrow evening we could hear just that, instead of the rather patronising guff about heritage, history and the club we all love.
That would be a start.
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9 minutes ago, Sonsteam of 08 said:
Tactics, stats and dross like that - me. Stadium stuff is pretty complex businessy stuff in places, I'd say Wilf or OKI are your best bets. They are certainly the most knowledgeable about it on here I think.
And that, together with a lack of engagement and scrutiny from an acquiescent public, is exactly what Brabco will be banking on.
#getyourarsedownonwednesday
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Brabco's pitch is not aimed at the club's supporters, it's aimed at the planning authority and local politicians who are promoting a walkway and improved amenity on the site of the current ground. If they can gain favour for what looks like an ambitious, go-ahead plan with a wider public who know nothing and care less about Brabco's abilities and motives then so much the better from their point of view.
The challenge for Sons fans is to apply some rigour to this proposal and to scrutinise the implications, whilst not appearing as a bunch of knee-jerk refuseniks. At the moment the gauntlet has been publicly taken up by Bill Heaney in last week's Lennox, but were I a Brabco investor I would be quite relaxed, such was the florid and inaccurate diatribe he produced. With friends like that, etc.,
The first step will be to see a healthy turnout at the Trust AGM on the 23rd, where it is hope that the keyboard warriors and others will find their vocal chords - we are now at the stage where the bumping of gums in private is no longer an option. Courtesy of recent history Brabco has DFC utterly by the balls, but executing their plan will still be very difficult; we need to ensure that our club does not become any more of a bargaining chip than it currently is.
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Over the last year or so the club’s outgoings have been outstripping the income by some way and Directors are having to provide loan amounts to allow it to meet its day-to-day commitments. By ‘Directors’ I understand that to mean the local guys as opposed to the Brabco nominee, and I doubt very much if Brabco have injected any sizeable working capital during their period of ownership.
I also doubt whether match-day hospitality, functions and catering contribute any significant funding to DFC. Ditto gate money, save perhaps for visiting supporters offsetting the increasingly grim home attendance figures. As for Nowhereman’s contention about crowds (as distinct from home support), these may have fluctuated down the years but players and their agents demands have seen wages rocket to an increasingly unsustainable level. If you continue that trajectory there can be only one outcome.
Brabco’s answer to all of this, rather than conduct a measured, planned, budgeted review and subsequent action plan based on the current location, is to embark on a wildly ambitious and I believe wholly undeliverable scheme in an awful location. How in the name of God, given what I’ve written above, are we to proceed from the present poor state of affairs to generating the turnover required to service both the team and this new stadium; it is fantasy stuff, utter fantasy. And their primary intent is not football-related.
There’s a whole lot of things that could be addressed right where we are, Frank’s changing of the guard would assist in that process.
Benito Robles and his team have been thro this sort of stuff, we’d do well to heed his caution.
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22 minutes ago, BallochSonsFan said:
I know the thread is called "Sons Sorrow" but are we not getting a bit ahead of ourselves here?
The football is garbage to watch. The post match interviews with the manager are predictable. We're definitely at risk of going down this season, much the same as every other season for the past 5. All of that is true...
But if the league ended tomorrow we'd be safe. Admittedly we've only played about a third of the season but we're sitting in 8th position. There seems to be an assumption that St Mirren and Dunfermline will get better, that we'll get worse and that we'll be relegated by default. It's not pretty and it's not enjoyable but with St Mirren so poor we have every chance of avoiding automatic relegation and if Dunfermline don't pick up then 8th, and division safety, is a genuine possibility. It's not a nice thought that we may well be safe but only because St Mirren are even more pish than we are, but its the reality of where we are as a club. The financial consequences of going down would be serious and whilst we may have more freedom to play attacking football in League One, there would absolutely be a financial hit that we'd need to address. If money is tight now with a threadbare squad then relegation doesnt offer us the option of slashing wages further whilst avoiding another drop in quality.
It's a long shot for us this year but I won't accept relegation until we're actually down.
If it's a continuation of what we're watching week on week, then I'd probably take it right now TBH.
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There's a fair bit of denial going on here, and clinging to the fact he we are currently ahead of Dunfermline and St Mirren ignores the fact that there is a long, long way for them to make up the gap and then disappear into the distance, never all current footballing evidence suggesting that we are heading pretty soon for making up the numbers.
Now if that's defeatist then it's also realistic, and short of an infusion of players in January I don't really give us much of a chance of avoiding the drop. So be it, but let's give the 'this is a must win', 'we need to be beating Team A, B or C' stuff a rest, as facts will intrude soon enough. Sad to say, there is not much of a positive case to be made for us right now.
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9 hours ago, Sonsteam of 08 said:
Come home, Christian.
In all seriousness I wonder if we might be able to tempt him back (albeit on reduced terms from last season) given that he's always said he wants to enjoy playing football - something I know he did with us.
Aitken to QOS - Nade as player manager. Make it happen DFC.
Surely there must be reasons he couldn't establish himself at Stranraer; I would hazard they possibly concern fitness and his susceptibility to injury.
Anyway, returning players seldom reproduce the magic, Kano being an exception.
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Come home, Christian.
Sons' sorrow
in Scottish League 1 General Chatter
Posted
Only a couple of idiots are disrespecting Stevie Aitken, but that should not deflect from what I feel is a desperately disappointing decision. The aspect of strengthening the squad in January has been canvassed on here but I wonder just what is the likelihood of players being attracted to come here in the light of recent events ?
A fresh start would at least have provided some potential uplift for a squad short of just about everything, and the wording on the OS has to be viewed as a triumph of hope over experience - I'd be fascinated to know the truth.
One thing's for sure, even fewer of the dwindling support will be willing to further grin and bear it.