Aim Here

The relief that Hearts and Thistle are asking for is not that the judge voids the vote, so much as overrule it so that promotion and relegation shouldn't happen (or alternatively that Thistle and Hearts get compensated with £squillions).

In the absence of a leaked/published SPFL reply to the Hearts Court of Session petition, I'm looking for clues as to what their defence is going to be. The Daily Record has this. While Ann Budge isn't even willing to sully her phone by having it take part in a call to a League 2 chairman even in the context of an actual SPFL vote on reconstruction, the Record is reporting that United and Raith are drumming up support for their court case among club chairmen. Thing is, while it's obvious what a a chairman's support can do for you in a straight-up vote, it's less obvious what they can do in a civil court case where they're not even named. Looking at the case, I suspect what's going on is that even if Hearts overturn the Dundee vote, they still have the (huge) hurdle to show that the clubs would have voted for something else had they been informed differently. There's a whole bunch of verbiage of the form "no reasonable member, properly informed, could have considered that the Written Resolution was in the interests of the Company" trying to give that impression. If this gets as far as evidence being presented, my guess is that it's going to be flatly contradicted by actual, factual, club chairmen, stating that they were, or at least are now, properly informed, that they are, indeed, a bunch of very reasonable folks, and that they'd still vote exactly the same way for reasons of sporting integrity and fairness and that Hearts are at it. The fact that the petition isn't demanding a retake of the vote, but just overrule by the judge is highly suggestive that Hearts know they'd only lose again.

In that case, we should probably noise up @HibsFan to remind him to add in the dossier debacle on the original post.

If the SPFL are due money to Sky, it's surely a smarter move to pay them off in kind (through, say, throwing them the advertising) than actually digging out cash and paying them directly, which would cost more. Because no cash might transfer from Sky to the SPFL in a bank account, it might look like 'free sponsorship' to the usual zoomers perpetually on the lookout for fuel for self righteous outrage, but it's actually a good thing.

He did, but he's back under another name now, which I forget.

And despite that, there's still 400 Sevco fans in attendance...

Click his name - he's banned. How does clicking his name clarify whether or not he's been banned? I just get the profile page with no indications of banneditude, or otherwise (though the last two posts with the red dot pileon is a minor hint).

Kenny Miller will come out of retirement and play at least one game of competitive football.

I put that down to Struth's hiring process. Killing the incumbent and getting away with it shows just the right mix of determination, tactical skulduggery and psychopathy required to get ahead in football management.

Thing is, though. Under a normal played-out season, Falkirk's chance of promotion would be still less than 50-50 and Stranraer's chance of avoiding relegation were pretty much zero. If you pro-rate the "damage" done by relegation with the probability of things having been different had the season been played out, you still end up with negligible compensation due to most actors here. Had the season been played out, 80% of the time, Hearts would have been relegated anyways (I did the maths!). So even if Hearts are due anything, it would still be 1/5 of the supposed damage caused by relegation. As for tetchiness, people get tetchy when they have to keep repeating to toddlers the same answers to the same questions again and again....

It's about £5k per game per team, so £10k for a playoff. Meaning Brora and Kelty are gambling £10k or £20k on getting to the league, with no guarantee on getting there, which is surely prohibitive. £200k might be the total cost for all teams combined. As for demanding that teams who can't afford to play football without income due to the coronavirus, paying out money to teams that claim they can afford to play games - are you even bothering to listen to the insane and impossible fantasyland guff you're spouting? How do you think forcing teams with no money to pay money to teams that have money will go?

Seems to be up on both FollowFollow and Kickback behind login-protected links.

Indeed. It's a giant leap to go from 'Dundee should be ruled to have voted "no"' to 'The SPFL would have ensured Hearts don't get relegated'. If they're really banking on that being the crux of their case, they've still got a massive amount of persuasion to do to justify overturning relegation and/or scoring those £beeeellions from the SPFL.

Indeed. And oif course, every Hibs fan should know the names of the Hibs Famous Five lineup by heart: Albert Kidd, Jon Obika, James Connolly, Irvine Welsh, and Craig Levein.

Let me get this straight. You're trying to posit the notion that Neil Doncaster is straight-up lying about what happened at a meeting with at least 12 other parties, at least some of whom are already disgruntled and have a motive to oust him - and were already demonstrably able and willing to call him out on a bunch of trumped up infractions - yet all 12 chose to remain silent about him doing this thing that would undermine his integrity, cost him his job, and land at least some of them a straightforward political victory? The odds of that are frankly infinitessimal - and anyone entertaining that thought as a realistic proposition is, frankly, completely delusional.

Consensus and unanimous are not mutually exclusive - far from it. There wasn't a formal vote, it was a consultation prior to a board decision, so the idea would have been to achieve consensus, and when you get that, you tend to also get unanimity. Neil Doncaster used the words 'clear and unanimous view' and he was in a position to know.

Ash to ashes...

I know, I know. I am curious to find out when his delusions will smack head-first into the actual observed facts, and he has to face reality. It does have to happen sometime, right?

I've not read the actual document so I can't say with absolute 100% certainty, but there is Hearts/Thistle's join statement - "For clarity, our petition does not seek to set aside or unravel the fee payments made to clubs, nor indeed the declaration of Champions, or the nomination of clubs who will participate in European competition." and "As matters stand, we have not asked the Court to grant an interim interdict which would prevent next Season commencing on 1 August. However, we have to reserve our right to do so in the event that becomes necessary." If they're okay with the set out prize money and champions declarations that the SPFL has already decided, why demand that something like 40-odd dead-rubbers get played purely to decide promotion and relegation? And can they really play those out AND start the season on the first of August? It's incredibly hard to reconcile how the relief they're publicly asking for is consistent with forcing the SPFL to play out the extra 8 or so games, and as I say, it fails at the first legal hurdle (assuming Hearts don't perjure themselves to create a conflict of evidence). I'd consider it an established fact, yes.

OF (acronym); 'Old Firm'. Rangers or Celtic. diddy (adj,. pejorative); small, wee, insignficant. . Which teams qualify as 'diddy' varies wildly from speaker to speaker.

No they won't. The matter for the court case is whether relegation takes place and/or whether relegated teams get compensation. The courts have absolutely zero remit to look into continuing to play out the season - and if they did, it would absolutely fail at the first motion to dismiss, when it's accompanied by documentary evidence that Heart of Midlothian clearly assented to it.

What persuaded English authorities was English health board data and English medical advisers. And Welsh ones too. Scotland has different civil servants, different health boards, different doctors, different hospitals, different patients and different disease infection rates. Also the economics of professional football are vastly different between Scotland and England.

I know you're trolling us, but I do have to ask. What section of which contract states that SPFL clubs have to vote to prevent Heart of Midlothian from relegation?

I'm not sure about this one. He seems too ridiculous and self-parodic even to be someone on day release from Kickback. I'm guessing it's a non-Jambo poster play-acting on a second account to have a wee giggle at everyone's expense.

Pet Jeden fighting for the lost cause of a season completion, long after even Hearts voted against it and in the middle of a court case where it's not even on the table. Like a lone Japanese soldier on a jungle island still fighting World War 2 in the 1960s.