The Falkirk FC Thread

[Blame Me]

7 minutes ago, Arab_R_us said:

I dont know what Falkirk fans are moaning about, This ruling will actually help your club in the long run

How do you come to that conclusion?

[Arab_R_us]

5 minutes ago, Blame Me said:

How do you come to that conclusion?

Well your a biggish club and should be able to afford Grass at some stage, this ruling might stop teams like Hamilton, Livingston, Airdrie, Raith,  from getting  promoted or at least make them shell out for Grass.

I think its helps the bigger teams in Scottish football and im all for that tbh.

Edited May 31 by Arab_R_us

[Bairnardo]

Love the disingenuous condescending shite about how plastic pitches are great for lower league diddies cos of money and community etc... As if teams don't go up and down regularly through the leagues. 

There hasn't been, and there won't be, one single credible argument for this. And despite the fact that the deed is done, the most disappointing thing on here continues to be fans of small clubs lining up to make an arse of themselves 

[Blame Me]

2 minutes ago, Arab_R_us said:

Well your a biggish club and should be able to afford Grass at some stage, this ruling might stop teams like Hamilton, Livingston, Airdrie, Raith,  from getting  promoted or at least make them shell out for Grass.

I think its helpdesk the bigger teams in Scottish football and im all for that tbh.

I should've realised that, as a Dundee United fan, your grasp of economics wasn't to be relied upon 

It must be pleasing to know that when Ogren flees you'll be consoled in the fact that the administrators have to find funding to maintain a "good" pitch as well as the players wages.

[effeffsee_the2nd]

3 minutes ago, Arab_R_us said:

Well your a biggish club and should be able to afford Grass at some stage, this ruling might stop teams like Hamilton, Livingston, Airdrie, Raith,  from getting  promoted or at least make them shell out for Grass.

I think its helps the bigger teams in Scottish football and im all for that tbh.

You're right

After almost a centaury of running like competitive businesses, football clubs in Scotland we're beginning to return to their origins of being , you kno, football clubs, run by members and that benefited the whole community all whilst maintaining a professional first team on top of all that.  that had to be stopped so the big boys could go back to having the top division to themselves and not have to do anything innovative so long as their revenue stayed the same. 

[Arab_R_us]

Just now, Bairnardo said:

Love the disingenuous condescending shite about how plastic pitches are great for lower league diddies cos of money and community etc... As if teams don't go up and down regularly through the leagues. 

There hasn't been, and there won't be, one single credible argument for this. And despite the fact that the deed is done, the most disappointing thing on here continues to be fans of small clubs lining up to make an arse of themselves 

Despite what you think, the most important people in football are the players. ask them what they would prefer. Its their bodies and they have to live with the pain when they retire.

[Arab_R_us]

2 minutes ago, effeffsee_the2nd said:

You're right

After almost a centaury of running like competitive businesses, football clubs in Scotland we're beginning to return to their origins of being , you kno, football clubs, run by members and that benefited the whole community all whilst maintaining a professional first team on top of all that.  that had to be stopped so the big boys could go back to having the top division to themselves and not have to do anything innovative so long as their revenue stayed the same. 

but you should be a big boy should you not ?  must be inside the 12 biggest clubs in Scotland surely ? 

[SouthStander1876]

5 minutes ago, Arab_R_us said:

Despite what you think, the most important people in football are the players. ask them what they would prefer. Its their bodies and they have to live with the pain when they retire.

The players were happy to sign knowing we had a plastic pitch, some dropped a league, whats your point?

[GunnerBairn]

26 minutes ago, Arab_R_us said:

I dont know what Falkirk fans are moaning about, This ruling will actually help your club in the long run

It won’t help us at all. You simply don’t know by the looks of it. Our artificial pitch is multi-purpose and can (and is) widely used by the team and community at large. With it being artificial it is far more durable than grass and it’s this constant use which earns for the club, and other clubs outwith the Premiership. The artificial pitch’s wide community use was one of many reasons why the UK Govt greenlighted the funds for its installation last summer, as it ticked their assessment boxes. Simply taring it up on a whim of 12 teams, with zero debate, zero concessions given, or understanding of the wider impacts and implications for the communities concerned , is farcical. Yet another dark day in the SPFL circus.

Edited May 31 by GunnerBairn

[Bairnardo]

9 minutes ago, Arab_R_us said:

Despite what you think, the most important people in football are the players. ask them what they would prefer. Its their bodies and they have to live with the pain when they retire.

Oh, do they cause increased injuries then? You'll have a study to show that presumably? Please be so good as to point me in the right direction

[MulsonFFC]

19 minutes ago, Arab_R_us said:

thats not what i said you obviously weren't listening, i said a lot of teams with Astro pitches train on them to save costs. It obviously dosnt work the other way round.

They don't just do it to save costs, some of the teams need the income the surface can generate to survive.

Some teams in the championship don't generate enough income, mainly due to the frankly ridiculous financial breakdown of tv money and prize money in the scottish game, to be able to account for this loss in income, let alone plan/save enough to think about ripping up a perfectly good surface should they be lucky enough to get promoted.

It costs a fortune to replace artificial for turf, its not as simple as just lifting the synthetic surface and chucking some seed down.

So now clubs, like ours, will have to plan to spend about £1m to remove and dispose of what is quite frankly, an outstanding synthetic surface, with turf and the associated groundworks required AND deal with the cost of maintaining it AND deal with the loss of income AND deal with having to fork out for somewhere else to train.

All with no fincancial support to do so when we don't have the income to plan for it.

SPFL will be pushing these clubs to try and borrow money, putting their financial security at risk, particularly in the short term, in the hope they can survive a couple of seasons in the SPFL to pay it back.  If they can't stay up and they get relegated they then have that financial burden to carry into the lower leagues on the fraction of the income they need to keep up with the repayments.

At least in Holland they committed to supporting these clubs financially.

The SPFL are an absolute embarrassment of a governing body.

[Arab_R_us]

1 minute ago, GunnerBairn said:

It won’t help us at all. You simply don’t know by the looks of it. Our artificial pitch is multi-purpose and can (and is) widely used by the team and community at large. With it being artificial it is far more durable than grass and it’s this constant use which earns for the club, and other clubs outwith the Premiership. The artificial pitch’s wide community use was one of many reasons why the UK Govt greenlighted the funds for its installation last summer, as it ticked their assessment boxes. Simply taring it up on a whim of 12 teams, with zero debate or understanding of the wider impacts and implications for the communities concerned , is farcical. Yet another dark day in the SPFL circus.

some would say its giving you an unfair advantage over a similar size team like Dunfermline, who have to shell out for a training ground and dont get the income from renting out their stadium.  not sure about the pitch maintenance costs but i would have thought grass more expensive ?

So you in turn have extra money to go towards the playing staff ?    

[roman_bairn]

3 hours ago, Div said:

Yes, they got relegated after a six year stay, operating with the lowest budget in the division by miles every season (apart from when Hamilton were in the division, also punching well above their weight and also with an artificial pitch).

They won 19 points at home and 6 away last season.

Home advantage is obviously a thing in football, be it grass or astro, but those numbers are very pronounced.

They did recruit well and played some good stuff at times during their six year stay, but you cannot look at the numbers and say hand on heart that their pitch definitely didn't give them any sort of advantage?

I don’t really get this “having an advantage “ playing on plastic argument. We got roundly bumped out of the Scottish Cup last season due to the “advantage” the mighty Bonnyrigg got from their pitch. Which was grass incidentally…..

Actually, I’ll take that further. There’s absolutely nothing wrong, imo, in having an advantage playing on your own home surface as long as it’s fit for purpose. I’m pretty sure our pitch will meet the UEFA required standard. Or are we just trying to make thing even easier for the two arse cheeks again?…

Edited May 31 by roman_bairn

[MulsonFFC]

3 minutes ago, Arab_R_us said:

As ive said, we all know whos is pushing this the most ? The old firm. Well ask them to put money in a pot then, i'm pretty sure they have said they would contribute in the past ?

Ask them to put money in a pot and share it out?  

Skag still strong in Dundee these days.

[Blame Me]

1 minute ago, Arab_R_us said:

As ive said, we all know whos is pushing this the most ? The old firm. Well ask them to put money in a pot then, i'm pretty sure they have said they would contribute in the past ?

Please go back a few pages to Div's original post on this and understand what is and isn't proposed.

Premiership teams voted on a simple binary choice and have comforted themselves, like you and Div, with imagined "it'll be alright-in-the-end" detail.

The SPFL would rather spend any money on pitch quacks than other SPFL members in the Championship.

[MulsonFFC]

1 minute ago, Blame Me said:

The SPFL would rather spend any money on pitch quacks than other SPFL members in the Championship.

These 'Contractors' will be dishing out some pretty handy kick-backs as well I am sure.

[SouthStander1876]

People thinking the top flight clubs would give up money to help teams change their pitch is laughable

[Shodwall cat]

3 hours ago, Div said:

I think you can easily argue that there is an advantage to a team playing on an artificial pitch.

If you look at St.Mirren last season we played 38 league games. 34 of those were on grass, 4 were on artificial pitches.

Livingston played 21 games on an artificial pitch.

You can easily argue, given that Livingston's pitch in particular is horrible and nothing at all like grass, that they gained an advantage.

I don't think that's unreasonable.

I've already mentioned the prospect of a club with an artificial pitch being promoted. I'd be looking for a central fund to be set aside to provide that club with the financial help required to transition to a grass pitch. There's no reason that transition couldn't happen between winning the Championship and starting a new season in the Premiership. A lot of the clubs relay their pitch every Summer.

Would this include money to set up a brand new training complex.  And do you really think this is feasible between joining the spfl top flight and the season starting. It seems to me that huge aspects of this just have not been thought out. Where do full time teams who currently are able to train on their artificial train when they move to grass. You want minimum standards for grass pitches but you certainly aren't going to get that if teams are training 5 days a week on it and playing on every other Saturday. I presume though that this must've been raised at your smisa meeting so will be interesting to here how this would be resolved .

[Blame Me]

4 minutes ago, MulsonFFC said:

These 'Contractors' will be dishing out some pretty handy kick-backs as well I am sure.

I can already foresee certain teams watering down the recommendations of this consultancy based on costs,  manpower and variance - ours isn't like yours so... -  

Those with grass haven't seen fit to employ a standard at any point up until now so can see the bare minimum being done and the consultancy only being a recommendation rather than enforced.

[Shodwall cat]

18 minutes ago, Arab_R_us said:

I think its pretty safe to say if your training on Astro every day Vs Grass ?  

Ask your own playing staff if they would prefer to play and train on Grass im certain 100% of them would say grass

Our players had the option to train on grass at the start of last season at little kerse and quickly changed back to training at the stadium as they preferred it so unfortunately you are talking out your hoop.