GordonS

Bonar Bridge were a little bit screwed by Loch Ness failing to field a team against Thurso, with Thurso being awarded the win. Loch Ness would surely have won that game and Thurso would have finished behind Bonar Bridge on goal difference.

I love watching Leinster and they're putting on a show here in front of a packed Aviva. Assuming Leinster finish the job their semi-final will be against Northampton or Bulls at Croke Park, which could have a massive crowd.

Dalbeattie face a fixture scramble to get their league campaign completed in time for the Lowland League play-off. They're already scheduled to play Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and now they have another fixture to play. But three of their scheduled fixtures are cup ties, so presumably they'll shunt one or more.

Who did they sign?

Yup, Airdrie are the form team any way you slice the past 10 matches. Airdrie getting back-to-back promotions would be one of Scottish football's wilder stories, especially after finishing 21 points off the top last season and winning the play-off final on penalties.

The defences of Gartcairn and similar sides here read like someone with a trust fund from the bank of mum and dad complaining that those pointing out their unfair advantages are just jealous. Football is a zero-sum game and every winner needs a loser. If a club is getting boosted by cash going into their playing squad from anything other than matchday income, market-rate sponsorship and so on then they're not having success on merit, and other clubs that can only spend what they've earned through their own efforts are bumped down the league system below them and miss out on cup wins or runs too. A secondary impact that's apparent in England and will be repeated here if it continues is clubs in an arms race, being forced to whore themselves to rich guys looking for a hobby, leading to increasingly sketchy chancers taking control of clubs. The risks to their existence is obvious. If locals with money want to put invest in things like youth development or facilities that's great. If they put it into the first team squad they're just skewing the competition. Asking people to "applaud the ambition" is pretty insulting. There's nothing ambitious about having money fall into your lap. It's sheer blind luck. Other new clubs are working with what they earn, like (afaik) BSC Glasgow and Inverkeithing Hillfield Swifts. If you care about fairness and meritocracy in sport, that's who you should be be applauding.

Because the article specifically says it won't be funded with public money. Glasgow makes a lot of money from hosting events and conferences, they support a lot of jobs. If the CGF and commercial income cover the cost then there's only upside.

The SFA should have learned from what the WSL clubs have been doing - playing at smaller home stadiums and taking occasional bigger matches to the club's main ground, with the number of those matches increasing as the support base sustains it. That's how Arsenal have got their average attendance up to 35,000 despite a lack of success on the pitch. They also do clever stuff like Emirates-only season tickets and early purchase discounts. IMO we should be based between Firhill and one of the Edinburgh grounds - you always get the best crowds where the most people can walk or make a short bus or train journey - and take the bigger games to Hampden, creating more of a buzz around them. The aim would be over time to have more and more games at Hampden. The SFA should also have learned from the SRU that making tickets free for season pass holders/ members for men's games is a mistake. It devalues them and leads to hundreds of tickets being taken and then not used. Obviously the big crowds England gets are because of their successes, but also because of their branding, all the 'Lionesses' stuff. I think the huge mistake the SFA makes is trying to attract existing football-watching men to the women's games. The sad reality is that the vast majority of people in the UK who attend women's football games at all levels are female. At the England v Scotland game in Sunderland it was really noticeable in the crowds before and after the game that there was far more women than men, and excluding men on their own, I only saw two guys who weren't going to the game with women. I didn't see any other male-only groups, and after I first noticed it I was looking for them. The FA's marketing around the women's team is more aimed at women. One weird thing is that the atmosphere at women's football internationals is much, much worse than women's rugby internationals, even allowing for ground sizes. I think the main difference is that female players go en masse to the rugby games, you see whole squads at a time in their club hats and training gear. They drink a lot of beer and make a lot of noise. The SFA works to get girls' clubs to Hampden, but not women's. And your last point - I see a lot guys saying they don't watch women's football like it's a different form of football. They'll travel across the country for a tenth-tier men's game or follow an eye-bleedingly terrible Scottish club and then complain about the standard of women's internationals. I used to try to persuade them but my opinion now is that they're a lost cause and they'll never get past the sex of the players. The target audience is younger people and women.

In England there's no parole for sentences under 4 years. He's doing the 18 months.

So no public money and all funding coming from the private sector and the Commonwealth Games Foundation? The commercial income of the Glasgow games themselves was £118 million so if the CGF are willing to chuck £100 million or so on top, the games should be self-financing. We should require a UK government guarantee as a back-up. Over the 7 years up to and including the 2014 Glasgow games they contributed £740 million to Scotland's GVA, of which £390 million was in Glasgow. Obviously hosting again wouldn't generate anything like that because all the construction has been done, but Glasgow has had nothing but benefit from hosting sporting events like the indoor athletics and cycling championships recently, because they don't carry big costs and they bring good business to the hospitality sectors. There's no doubt that, if you could host the games without any public funding, it would be an absolute no-brainer.

Saturday, April 13 Brechin City – Forres Mechanics Buckie Thistle – Deveronvale Strathspey Thistle – Fraserburgh Monday, April 15 Buckie Thistle – Strathspey Thistle Wednesday, April 17 Fraserburgh – Brora Rangers Strathspey Thistle – Buckie Thistle [Probably Keith v Brechin City] Saturday, April 20 Brora Rangers – Brechin City Buckie Thistle – Keith Fraserburgh – Strathspey Thistle

Covid gave us a pretty perfect experiment for this. Home advantage is obvious just from looking at any full league table. The causes of it are debatable. McCarrick et al at Leeds and Newcastle universities published a paper on the 2019-20 season in 15 leagues across 11 European countries which compared 3515 matches played pre-lockdowns with crowds, and 1329 with no crowd. They found that the difference in points-per-game won by home teams and away teams was halved, other metrics like shots, shots on target and corners showed an even bigger closing of the gap, while on fouls, yellow and red cards the gap vanished and home sides actually did worse. So the effect is real and, on the outcome of games, fans are about half of it. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S146902922100131X#sec3

Buckie beat Brora 2-0. How good is this:

I'm 49 years old. One of the big learning points of my life so far has been that those with imposter syndrome almost always shouldn't have it, and those without it usually should.

To add to what's been said above, Fraserburgh are by far the form team in the league and with Brora at home and Strathspey twice you'd have to expect them to take 9 points and substantially improve their goal difference. Brechin have done poorly against the better sides and have to go away to Keith - who despite their defeat on Monday are still the second-best team in the league any way you want to look at the last 6 to 10 games - away to Brora and home against Forres. Taking 7 points from that, or 6 and better Fraserburgh's goal difference, won't be easy. Going to Brora for the last game is very squeaky bum. I'm not sure which of the two are favourites, you can make a case for either. Buckie are still well in it, they have to play 5 games in 10 days but two are against Strathspey and the other 3 are at home. Four wins and a draw would be enough to guarantee finishing above Fraserburgh. It wouldn't be a surprise if all three finished on 78 points. ETA: It's Keith v Brechin tonight. The pitch just passed an inspection at 11.30am, there's another inspection at 4pm. Fingers crossed it goes ahead. If they broadcast it I'd watch instead of the Champions League.

Do LL teams not nominate which league they would be relegated into, and that's where they go? I don't think the pyramid rules would allow WoSFL to reject a club coming down from the LL, they certainly couldn't reject someone like Caledonian Braves. We're maybe getting a tad ahead of ourselves, relegating Stranraer into tier 6, but at some point it's probably going to happen to a former SPFL club.

That or nearer the pitch, it's set quite far back, meaning unless they're down in the corners, anyone standing against the rail is blocking the view for those at the front. Not ideal for those with limited mobility in particular. It's not a bad stand or a bad ground, I just think there are better options.

At Hearts B v Linlithgow Rose earlier this season you couldn't see substantial slices in the nearside corners because of people standing. I haven't been at a Spartans game since Linlithgow Rose won there in a cup tie a few years ago, and it was the same then.

Ainslie Park has no terracing at all and no covered space for standing. They allow people to stand at the rail and block the view from the front rows of the main stand. There are floodlight pillars in front of the other stand. The pitch is fine but it's not great. It's nowhere near a train station and it's a schlep on the bus from the centre of Edinburgh. There are no good pubs anywhere near it. Each to their own, but for me it's a long way down my list of preferred grounds. In Edinburgh I'd put it well behind Meggetland, which has hosted a South Challenge Cup final.

Junior Cup finals can still draw a big crowd. St Mirren or Ayr would be my first choices for those but I understand why they pick Broadwood, at least they're going to need 2 or 3 stands. A Lowland League Cup final is never getting more than about 1,000 unless it's something like Linlithgow Rose v Bo'ness. Rose played Tranent in the EoS League Cup final at Newtongrange the season before last and I doubt that hit 4 figures.

EK were only formed 14 years ago, they don't really have a loyal fan base yet. From what I've seen a lot of them are Celtic fans first and EK fans second, which is fair enough IMO.

627 in a ground with 8,000 seats is rubbish. 627 in a ground like Prestonfield or Cliftonhill is perfectly fine. It was always a terrible choice of ground.

Liverpool are proof that the people who complain about teams trying to walk it in are clueless. They constantly shoot too early instead of trying to improve the position. So many blocked shots that were obviously going to be blocked. Every time I watch them I can't understand how they're top of the league. Presumably it's because they create a huge number of opportunities and play the averages.