Nairney

Bloody hell, I hope not... that requires being in the right place, at the right time, in order to carry out the task you've been trained to do!

I'd managed to forget about that until now.... thanks Raithie

This just on Rovers FB account: This season, RaithTV Live are offering all RRFC season ticket holders a FREE audio season pass to thank them for supporting the club. That means if you're ever unable to get to Stark's Park for a game, you'll still be able to follow the action wherever you are with live commentary. Details on how to claim your free pass will available before the start of the new season. Terms and conditions apply.

I'm intrigued... I wonder what Sergio got up to next!

Not to be cheeky Beachbum, but just wondered what makes you say that? I don't know John Sim, nor do I have any particular feelings about him either way - I think there are pros and cons regarding a potential takeover and / future stadium developments. He has been a fairly regular attendee, at home games, over the past couple seasons - so he certainly seems to keep up appearances (at least) from the point of view of showing an interest.

I think I saw on the Rovers Facebook page, mention of a Raith Tv interview or piece at 5pm? It was at the bottom of a post about the latest victims of #Roaringback No idea what / who it was to be about.

Re: renting out fancy new hospitality facilities for business meetings / events (as someone mentioned) I used to work in the corporate events / business tourism sector. Someone upthread (sorry, I've read so many posts!) said it should be easy straightforward to rent out hospitality space to businesses during the week. A couple of thoughts on this (based on experience): - We're not a club who would attract neutrals based on a wow factor of our name or kudos if being seen to use / associate with our venue (see Old Firm, poss Edinburgh clubs, Hampden, Murrayfield etc). We'd be more likely to attract smaller local businesses (who may already have longstanding arrangements or preferences for local restaurants, hotels, community venues etc) or businesses owned by fans or other interested parties - very much the same crowd who currently support the club by putting their hands in their pockets for sponsorship and previous match day hospitality. - In times of austerity (I.e. Pretty much the past 10 years) many companies cut back on holding meetings and events outside of their own premises as much as possible. New facilities at the club would certainly get interest to start with, but after the novelty has worn off, there would be no guarantee of regular corporate venue bookings... especially with more economic uncertainty (in the wider world) ahead. High paying corporate customers don't grow on trees anymore, potentially leaving us back to square one, with facilities used once a fortnight... but much more expensive facilities that we've gone into the red to pay for. More reliable forms of income, which the club and community foundation could have greater control over would be: - (Depending in promotion to the championship) Restructure of hospitality packages. More space for match day hospitality would allow the club to offer differing pricing structures, thus opening it up to more fans e.g. Platinum, Gold, Silver offering a sliding scale of experiences. The more fans take up a package for a "good day out", the more word spreads and the more people want to give it a go for a special occasion. - Use of space during the week. Regular venue bookings for things like classes, courses or groups generate less income, than say a fancy corporate black tie dinner, however they are regular guaranteed income e.g. an after school club, fitness classes, slimming clubs, sunshine clubs etc. However, I don't live in Kirkcaldy so I don't know if these needs are well met elsewhere in the town. If venue hire is priced reasonably it could be a good source of regular income for the club and also help promote the football side and integrate Raith Rovers with the community more. The downside would be that it would take a hell of a lot of these type of bookings to offset the cost of the development, but positioning ourselves as a community facility may lead to funding / grant opportunities. There is, potentially, space to make this all work at Starks Park.... but it requires vision and money and there is no guarantee that it would pay off financially.

Can't say I'm keen on a stadium move either... having endured visits to several soulless breeze block places in the late nineties, early noughties, when it was all the rage to have one. However, IF it was done in a similar way to Falkirk's redevelopment (would a portion of external funding from Fife Council / Sports and Leisure Trust be realistic? I'm not sure) it would certainly be a sensible way of helping to restructure our business model to help generate potential addition revenue and placing ourselves at the heart of community events and facilities. Is this realistic or achieveable? I don't know. My concern would be that we may have missed the boat, financially, for funding this type of thing - both in terms of the property market and external funding. Falkirk probably got their timing spot on, for both - selling their ground at the right time pigging backing onto major funding / development in the area. I don't know what the answer is. However, I expect that at some point in the future we will have to move elsewhere to survive - repair and maintenance vs income.

I get where you're coming from but unfortunately there are more attractive options available (or potentially available!) for these type of candidates - bigger budgets, wages and clubs at Championship / Premier level. I cant say I was hugely excited with any of the names we were supposedly linked with, but Smith seems like a better option than some of the names we heard. At least we can move on from all the new manager speculation and start the new signing speculation.... what's Gary Glen up to these days?

Thanks Ding Dang Doo! I don't have a problem with Campbell being interviewed - surely, if nothing else, he'll be an interesting gauge to weigh other candidates up against. I don't think he would be the person to rebuild us and take us forward. I've no preference who gets it - I was delighted when we appointed Hughes and look how that turned out!

Re: the Dick Campbell rumours, can anyone who has heard this rumour (other than on here) give any indication of where they heard it? The first mention of him I saw, in terms of an interview, was from a poster on Fantalk and I assumed it was a windup. Did the story snowball from there or has anyone ITK heard anything about him from a more direct source? I think the job could feasibly go to any of the credible candidates that have been mentioned here. Our board have tried various "types" of manager in the past and their decision making style has varied from astute to bonkers.

Maybe they could do a job for us, but that scenario would be too similar (for my liking) to the Dalziel appointment following the Anelka debacle. This has been worse than Anelka, at least he was an unknown quantity (albeit the odds of him working out were slim to none) but the outcomes of the club's poor appointments, dealings and signing policies have been terrible, as predicted by everyone in Scottish football. I say everyone, but really I mean fans not old boys media cronies of Locke etc.

Clearly Drysdale is gearing up for "Deflecting Blame, Phase 2: Blame the Players". Obviously they've played a fairly important part in this seasons clusterf*ck, but I doubt they had much input on our abysmal managerial and transfer dealings.

Fair enough comment on Davo / the players trotting out the same lines but the comment re: Matthew Elder is uncalled for. Even the most eloquent journo in the world would have worn out a thesaurus, this season, trying to come up with new ways to make our dross football sound interesting. Given the crap fest he has to watch (like all of us) I think he does a pretty sterling job of reporting on it, plus keeping up with all the weird and woeful things that have happened this season.

The condratictory nature of our boards actions / decisions has been my biggest frustration. Good off-field initiatives have been brought in - securing use of Michael Woods Centre and establishing the Community Foundation, Roary Club and the Development Squad (there are probably others, but these are the ones that spring to mind). All of these positives though are easily overlooked on the back of some far reaching poor choices made this season. In some cases, the good work of some of these projects is effectively being undone by this season's catalogue of errors. Why is this? Would it be fair to suggest that certain board members take responsibility for different projects / areas of the running of the club? Or does everyone have a say in everything?

Re: Hughes. I thought (and still think) he was the best possible appointment we could have made. In fact, I was slightly amazed we seemed to have, at last, got a decision right. I was hopeful he'd manage to turn things around and drag us up to a mid-table spot and then commit to next season. That looks less likely with every game. Partially, it's not Hughes' fault - Locke's signings, low confidence / morale, poor and slow decision making by our board. On the other hand, he hasn't won me over either - I'd hoped we see more passion, confidence and ability being instilled in the players as weeks go by. I'd hoped we might start to grind results out (McGlynn style). At times Hughes looks and sounds like a man who just can't be bothered anymore and, here's the thing, he can wash his hands of this team. This won't hamper his future job prospects, as he can attribute it all (quite rightly) to Locke and our Board. Had we made a permanent appointment, there would certainly have been a lot more pressure to look for longer term solutions and fight to stay up. Hindsight is a great thing! Regardless of who is at the helm now, there are still no excuses for allowing Locke to linger for as long as he did.

If you asked during one of his injury spells, I'll say "no" without any hesitation. If you ask me when he is fit, and included in the team, I'll say "YES" without any hesitation. I realise this answers nothing!

Think they're too far gone for reverse psychology.

When he was appointed "till the end of the season" I was desperately hoping we'd manage to hang on to him, for next season, somehow. However, if he is indeed off to Motherwell, I'm feeling a bit "meh" about it. I think the giddy days of sacking Gary Locke and bringing in someone with a credible (in comparison to Locke!) managerial record left me on a misguided high. It's not Hughes fault, I just hoped for more under him. Did I mention "meh"?

In any other season, Stevenson would be the big talking point we'd refer to for years to come (dubious signing, ends up in goals, doesn't turn up to training and then announces his retirement, with very little said about it by club). In this bizarre season of twists and turns, he's been consigned to a footnote.

Remember the pitch side presentation when Daly retired? As someone else mentioned (somewhere) that was a bit of a joke when long serving players were released (though admittedly that's different from retiring) like Hill and Anderson, with barely a thank you! Stevenson? Thought he was a terrible signing at the time (given the Vaughan carry-on) but he actually did better than I expected him to... then there was keeper-gate. Given his role in that, I really felt that he deserved a bit more than a cursory couple of lines on .net. Could they not have tacked on "even though Stevenson wasn't with us for long, Rovers fans will never forget the night he played in goals for us and the club would like again once to thank him for his service, especially that evening"? But no, that would only remind us of their incompetence again. As I've said, bar John Daly, we've never really made much fuss about players moving on / retiring but the fact that the club statement was so pitifully short makes them look childish... again!

You're probably, and hopefully, right. I'm just on a downer about the Rovers at the moment - which isn't like me! I think, having lost confidence in the board's decision making, I'm not holding out much hope for our next managerial appointment.... which, as you say, will be crucial.

I've been staunchly in the "good team in there" camp up until recently. I certainly think there was a good team in there at the start of the season and, even though results were crap, probably up until the festive period. Everything has festered for too long now and the whole (first team) squad just looks devoid of football. Personally, I'd be glad to have Cuthbert, Benedictus, Davo and Bobby Barr going forward (plus the development squad - they've had so little impact on the first team, it wouldn't be fair to include them!). Maybe the rest of them can come good under a new manager coming in over the close season? Only time will tell. That's kind of where I feel we're heading (in terms of the first team squad)... back to the point we were at before John McGlynn came in, except we've got several players under contract. I think we've regressed massively this season - for all their faults we did have some (relative) successes and progress under McGlynn, Murray (Ramsdens Cup win only!) and McKinnon. Although I've almost given up hope, I'd like to think you're right with your second paragraph!

I think time will show that this season has put the club back years (training facilities, community programmes and development squad aside). I've always maintained that I think we've got the core of a good squad, but that have had all their ability and confidence sucked out of them... however, as each game passes, they seem no closer to regaining them. A complete rebuild of our first team will be required, in order to repeat and build on (relative) successes of past few seasons. With several players on longer term deals, how easy will this be? How attractive will the club be to prospective signings, after this season? I'm working on the, possibly misguided, assumption that we'll still (somehow) be in the championship next season... if we're not, then I don't know what a realistic timescale would be to rebuild, achieve promotion, re-establish ourselves in the championship and then look at mounting play-off challenges, cup runs etc. We can blame Locke for being Locke, we can blame the players for not doing as well as they should have, we can blame Hughes for not turning things round as expected.... but, in my opinion, the buck ought to stop with the board. They appointed Locke; they signed off on his signings and agreed to deals that were detrimental to the club (e.g. Vaughan and Bates, goalkeeping shenanigans) and they allowed the rot to set in, leaving it far too late to bring in a replacement with a fighting chance of turning things round. To be fair, I think Hughes was the best appointment they could possibly have made - but he's been handed a hopeless task. I'm at a loss to think of what carrots the board can dangle, for us, to entice season ticket sales for 2017-18.

Eric's excuses just get more desperate: Tuesday (club statement) - it's the fault of the SPFL and their regulations we couldn't sign a keeper and then they wouldn't cancel the game. Wednesday (SPFL statement in response to Rovers statement) - it's not our fault. We've already explained all your options, you declined to use any of them Wednesday (Eric's interview on STV) - it's not really the SPFL's fault we didn't sign a keeper, some deals fell through.... it's not my fault though, some information wasn't given to me. Thursday (FFP interview with Eric, presumably given on Tuesday or Wednesday) - it is all the SPFL's fault. A better course of action? Put out a statement before the game on Tuesday - "sorry fans, we've tried our best to bring someone in but a couple of potential deals fell through at the last minute. Plus we've realised, too late to do anything about it, that we could've found another way to bring someone in. We know this isn't good enough and no one is more upset about this than we are. We promise we will learn from this and won't let something like this happen again" Mistakes / oversights happen but making crap excuses and passing the buck (rather than just accepting blame, learning and moving forward) isn't the right way to deal with them. I'm just thoroughly sick of the whole embarrassing fiasco.