Toby

Interested in this. I go to every second leg of the play-off final at least and have made a few first legs on an annual basis (the only second leg I missed was Brechin v Kelty due to COVID restrictions that I bought a stream for) and I can’t remember any obviously controversial decisions going in the Lowland League (or non-league) clubs’ favour. The only instances that I recall being terribly controversial were the Brora captain’s (Steven McKay?) headsgone against Montrose that saw him sent off, but was justified and the chaos between Cowdenbeath and Cove, that went on the SPFL clubs’ favour. I genuinely can’t remember at Highland or Lowland club benefitting from anything notable in these ties. Perhaps the Brechin player being sent off for a homophobic slur at a stricken Kelty player? No issues with that decision tbh.

The last five years have been a joy, but they’re back.

Yeah, I drive by there from work at 5pm every weekday and it can be a nightmare. But in the actual town there aren’t many alternatives. Suppose the biggest bit of available land would be the old Motorola site, but that wouldn’t be any better than K Park or Langlands, given the distance from any public transport links.

Aye, that’s true. There is however, a school across the road from it. I’m not sure what parking facilities it has, but given that football matches don’t tend to clash with school hours, perhaps that could double up?

On the subject of a stadium site- the best site I can think of in East Kilbride is actually a construction site just now for a ground being built by EK YM, on the Kirktonholme pitches, right beside the train station and within walking distance of the village for any decent pubs, and the town centre for, well, nothing really. I see plans are in place for the demolition of Centre West after only about 20 years, and building of houses on that site- now there’s a vanity project that would put the Keans to shame. In an ideal world for EK, that may have been a shout. It could have brought more footfall to yet another of Scotland‘s ailing shopping centres in its more modest guise, and landed the club right in the heart of the community, but even with their money, I’d imagine the costs would have been prohibitive. On a side note, I’ll be interested to see what happens with EK YM and their community stadium. Suspect they may well end up in the West of Scotland League at some point, with EK Thistle’s slow demise making way for them.

Where to start with this nonsense? Buckie Thistle? Why not? Had any other team other than EK or Cumbernauld Colts, you know, the teams who have bronze licences, won the Lowland League, they’d have suffered the same fate as Buckie. That the SPFL allow existing members more leeway than non-members doesn’t constitute an anti-Highland bias. That’s only rattling round in the tiny minds of some of you lot. Personally, I’m not happy that Buckie aren’t allowed to compete, but lifting the drawbridge from the SPFL isn’t exclusive to Highland clubs. The guy commenting isn’t, and never has been “my buddy”. He’s probably the biggest moon howler of a Morton fan on here, ridiculed by most of us. It didn’t stop an Inverness fan moaning in response when your club(s) chose within living memory to apply to join the national set-up, knowing that it would have involved travel. Cove and Peterhead. It wasn’t anyone from the central belt that invited them into the “Highland” League. If you don’t want Aberdeenshire clubs in your local league, don’t accept them. And if you do accept them, there’s a chance they might win it and, now the pyramid is open, get promoted, as was the case with Cove. With Peterhead, I’m sure you’ll be able to provide a viable Highland alternative that put forward a better case than them for election in 2000 and failed? All in all, a solid 1/10 for that absolute disaster of a retort, on the basis that you correctly stated that Elgin are the only real Highland team to come into the SFL since 1994. And what a success they’ve been.

None required for not accepting your misplaced, Celtic-esque cries of downtrodden victimhood, hotshot. You have a lovely evening.

Ah, right. Understandable shifting of the goalposts as soon as your “point” is ruthlessly devoured. I’m very much looking on the bright side. The prospect of Inverness’s relegation and implosion, if not this year, very soon, is a terrific thought.

Nope, complete bollocks. You’re the one who chose to allude to an anti-Highland bias in the present tense when in actual fact, it was a full thirty years ago that the first two Highland clubs were voted into the national set-up, we’ve had another two since, and the pyramid is now opened up to allow any club in (or back out as will hopefully be the case for Inverness with the money drying up). I’d congratulate you on replying too, but let’s be honest, it would probably have been better if you hadn’t bothered. I refer you to the above. If Sophia wants to refer to the current attitudes towards Highland clubs’ participation when in fact, they’ve had more than their fair share of opportunities for a full 30 years now, then he/she quite rightly deserved to be pulled for it.

Incredible that of the last seven clubs elected into the SFL, four of them came from the Highlands (or at least Highland League), two came from the borders and the last was newco Rangers. I do wonder how, with such inherent bias in the game to the central belt, and west coast in particular, Highland clubs managed to defy the odds and get into the national set up long before a pyramid was put in place to facilitate movement.

By “work”, do you mean “dreadful patter”?

Yeah, that’s exactly what’s happening, here. Silly me.

Think it’s just one oddball tbh. Of the three Championship teams going to the play-offs I find Airdrie the most palatable. Maybe a case of absence making the heart grow fonder after we had quite a bitter rivalry in 2003-04, or humiliating Falkirk last season, but I’ll certainly be wanting them to beat Partick and Raith. Not sure I want them up to give us a crap visit to St. Johnstone or a third and fourth trip to the Highlands though.

Of all the sticks the Airdrie fans have to beat us with at the moment, this is definitely the most pointless.

But it is tit-for-tat when you say that. I agree Morton have probably (I’d argue undoubtedly) the worst facilities for away fans in this division, and started a thread on our forum looking at every club’s away experience in our division after our trip to Arbroath at Christmas time. I didn’t go down the route of ranking every club, but going by my comments, Ayr were probably second behind Dunfermline, while I heavily criticised Morton. I note that Ayr have said we’ll be in the seated area, rather than including the terraced enclosure at the front of that, which isn’t great either. Given that the stand cuts off around the 18 yard line, are we looking at a lot of restricted view seats? Morton are in no position to complain about this, but as paying customers, the fans should have every right to have a grumble. This isn’t exclusive to Morton and Ayr- despite our limited facilities. In Arbroath we were told to sit in a small section of the stand (which I assume would have had sight lines obscured) or stand in the pissing rain before they relented. At Tannadice, they cramp fans into as little space as possible and ban the young teams from having their drums etc while encouraging home fans to improve the atmosphere. At Firhill the bigger away supports are fired into a horrible old stand despite plenty alternatives elsewhere. Mathie’s talk of trying to make Somerset the best awayday in the country is great, but he’s not practicing this. I don’t (and can’t as a Morton fan) expect every team in the division to provide equal facilities for visiting fans, but until such times as the clubs get round the table and agree on a strategy to make awaydays as enjoyable experience as possible, nothing will improve. At the moment, away fans are being treated as an inconvenience or afterthought at best and trouble at worst. And the result is that we get a bit of “ah your lot are worse than ours” and the clubs going out their ways to out-shite each other. While we suffer at Somerset you’ll suffer at Cappielow. Is that the solution?

Close, but no cigar.

Rather than something that I should be credited for, I don’t think it’s something others should be criticised for not doing. I’ve discussed it before on here- possibly around the time a Peterhead fan abused one of the Tapping brothers when he was a kid at East Stirling, but self-policing is easier said than done, and my incident was when Marvin Andrews was abused at a game against Raith in 2006. It was of course different times in 2006, but “grassing” back then was often seen as being as bad as racism, and I was hassled for being a grass for about 18 months I’d say. I don’t agree I “grassed”, incidentally. I confronted the guys and the stewards and police had to respond to the confrontation. Self-policing is a fantastic theory, but in practice it’s crap. I wouldn’t want that hassle again, and don’t blame anyone else for not wanting to get involved. As I said on our forum, I hope he’s had a wee look online and is shiting himself.

Yep, utterly shameful. I see my post has been screenshotted on here mind you. I was very critical last week of Raith’s handling of the bottle throwing incident- I’ll be very interested to see how Morton handle this. On a terrible day for Morton, that was by far the most mortifying part of the day.

It’s a bit of a shite prospect but we can’t exactly ask Morton to fight on our behalf to get us onto the terrace when Morton put Ayr fans in the corner of our stand. Hopefully we sell enough to be out on the terrace, but announcing that we’ll likely be stuck in the stand with the prospect of getting behind the goal if enough of us go is hardly a great sales strategy for Ayr. Similar to Arbroath telling us to sit in a tiny section of their stand or stand in the pissing rain at Christmas time, Scottish football clubs don’t really help themselves at times.

Yes, that’s absolutely what’s happening, here. No lawyer on the planet would draw a correlation between their client being banned from following Raith Rovers for an incident that they’re in court for, and Raith Rovers pre-judging the case, whether they named them or not. Give your head a wobble. Sometimes, even though they’re your favourite football team, it’s possible that Raith can do wrong from time to time. I’d have thought you lot, above all others in this division would understand that.

I’m not sure they will be at all. Raith might prove me wrong, and fair play to them if they do, but going by their statement, it looks to me like they’ve taken the decision to ban the fan and leave it at that, rather than hand their details onto Police Scotland. If they were to seek criminal charges, as they absolutely should, the correct course of action would be to suspend the fan pending a police investigation, so as not to prejudice any potential court case, before banning them for life on the conclusion of the case. Instead they look to have taken the easy way out, banning the fan and moving swiftly on. If the fan faces criminal charges, any lawyer worth their salt would surely point to Raith’s decision to impose a ban on them as prejudicing the case- basically deciding on their guilt before the court process has taken place. I suspect Raith have done this clown a favour by merely banning them instead of handing their details over to the authorities. I’d like to be proven wrong.

Just out of interest, what does “recent history” constitute with this fixture, given that it’s now 62 years since Queen’s Park last beat Morton in a league match?

Jesus wept. You’re really throwing everything at this now in the hope that something, anything, will stick. Let’s take this season’s Championship as an example- with seven match days remaining, and even in spite of Dunfermline’s problems with their pitch this season, we have two matches outstanding. Those being Arbroath v Airdrie, rearranged from 3rd of February because of Airdrie’s Challenge Cup commitments, and Ayr v Morton, rearranged from 9th March due to Morton’s Scottish Cup commitments. Excluding this midweek, in which there are no fixtures scheduled, we have six midweeks in order to fit in those two games, neither of which were postponed because of the weather anyway. For a country with a lot of rain, we have very little difficulty completing fixtures, regardless of how you try to paint things to suit your agenda. When you’re in a hole, stop digging.

That’s not your argument though. You said that grass pitches won’t work in this country if we operate a winter season, despite overwhelming evidence to contradict you. Whether you prefer the Stark’s Park pitch to the Cappielow one is neither here nor there- it doesn’t support your desperately flawed argument in any way, shape or form.

And I’m entitled to call it out as complete nonsense, based on the evidence that we get seasons completed on time, year on year, having played through the winter, mostly on grass parks- with 10/12 in the Premiership and 8/10 in our division. Your opinion, whether you’re entitled to it or not, doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny, and should be ridiculed. There’s a massive difference between them “not working” and “not suiting the preferences of Raith Rovers or their fans”.