What's the most "Tin Pot" thing you've seen in the SPFL

[Dee Man]

3 hours ago, strichener said:

Why can football fans from opposing teams not sit in the same stand?  It's perfectly acceptable at lower league games.  Did these people cause any trouble, removal is all rather OTT

Let's just do away with segregation altogether. 

At the very least these tourists should have been scudded with a pie. 

[eez-eh]

1 hour ago, craigkillie said:

Clubs like Killie and St Mirren have reduced their allocation and have seen increased home attendances for these games, and indeed increased season ticket sales as a whole. Surely Livingston are chasing away a generation of fans doing this, who in their right mind would be taking their kids to watch Livingston in that sort of atmosphere?

Nail on the head.

It’s all well and good the Livi fans pointing to the money it brings them in the short term, but it neglects the negative impact of letting your ground be taken over by the Livingston Loyal/CSC. It doesn’t entice new fans and it feeds into the never-ending Old Firm dominance of everything.

Scottish football would be a better place long term if we stopped pandering to the Old Firm for some short term cash. Thankfully some clubs seem to be realising this now.

[eez-eh]

There’s also the very obvious point that a normal fucking football club wouldn’t be basing their continued existence on the away tickets sold to fans of 2 teams in a 12 team league.

[Ludo*1]

2 hours ago, RawB93 said:

^^^

This clip will never not be amusing.

[RandomGuy.]

2 hours ago, craigkillie said:

Clubs like Killie and St Mirren have reduced their allocation and have seen increased home attendances for these games, and indeed increased season ticket sales as a whole. Surely Livingston are chasing away a generation of fans doing this, who in their right mind would be taking their kids to watch Livingston in that sort of atmosphere?

Is it fair to be comparing Livingstons "dormant" support to that of Kilmarnock?

Far as I can see Livingsons move in 1995 virtually forced them to rebuild their fanbase from scratch so it's not as if there's thousands of generational fans just waiting for an upturn to crawl out the woodwork when things are going well.

[Billy Jean King]

28 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Is it fair to be comparing Livingstons "dormant" support to that of Kilmarnock?

Far as I can see Livingsons move in 1995 virtually forced them to rebuild their fanbase from scratch so it's not as if there's thousands of generational fans just waiting for an upturn to crawl out the woodwork when things are going well.

You are massively missing the point here. The decision by Saints and Killie was nothing to do with "fans crawling out the woodwork when things are going well". In Saints case following the fan ownership handover there was a groundswell of opinion within SMISA members that enough was enough when it came to having the bigot brothers in both ends. The club took that on board but pointed out the implications. The support decided that the mitigations to the implications were doable and so it came to pass that they receive the same away allocation as every other club (about 1600). Saints fans have bought into it and crowds are better than they have been in years with bigger crowds leading to more cash and a better squad plus a much better match day experience. It's a win / win.

[RandomGuy.]

55 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

You are massively missing the point here. The decision by Saints and Killie was nothing to do with "fans crawling out the woodwork when things are going well". In Saints case following the fan ownership handover there was a groundswell of opinion within SMISA members that enough was enough when it came to having the bigot brothers in both ends. The club took that on board but pointed out the implications. The support decided that the mitigations to the implications were doable and so it came to pass that they receive the same away allocation as every other club (about 1600). Saints fans have bought into it and crowds are better than they have been in years with bigger crowds leading to more cash and a better squad plus a much better match day experience. It's a win / win.

Both doing it has coincided with upturns in form, so I'm not 100% convinced its not a rise in crowds as much due to that as it is lowering the OF support. Its incorrect to be claiming a struggling Livingston side would see more home fans if they restricted OF crowds by using Kilmarnock and St Mirren as proof.

I'm not convinced Livingston have many more fans to gain tbh. Every club maxes out somewhere, Kilmarnock/St Mirren are clubs with traditionally larger crowds who should've been getting bigger crowds than they were, and are now reaching those levels regularly.

[LIVIFOREVER]

4 hours ago, craigkillie said:

Clubs like Killie and St Mirren have reduced their allocation and have seen increased home attendances for these games, and indeed increased season ticket sales as a whole. Surely Livingston are chasing away a generation of fans doing this, who in their right mind would be taking their kids to watch Livingston in that sort of atmosphere?

I mentioned St Mirren in a prev post, good that Killie can do it too, but i don't see the comparison to Livi, we haven't the support you two have to make up the thousands of tickets we'd need to drop their allocation, which is why we give out the 3 stands in the first place. Also who in their right mind would want to bring their kids to erse cheek games no matter how many are let in, it's hardly the games you'll grow a support from. We've given out free tickets to schools and youth clubs and tried to encourage younger fans along to other games, i don't see the 3 games against Celtic and Sevco as being likely to chase young fans away.

Anyone with kids would be best avoiding those games tbh, which is what i and another Livi fans mentioned in an earlier post, was the reason some dads that supported Sevco, took their sons to Livingston games, and they became Livi fans instead of Sevco ones.

Edited April 3 by LIVIFOREVER

[LIVIFOREVER]

3 hours ago, eez-eh said:

There’s also the very obvious point that a normal fucking football club wouldn’t be basing their continued existence on the away tickets sold to fans of 2 teams in a 12 team league.

With a 10,000 (think there's a few hundred seats been taken out and used for repairs now) seater stadium that was forced on us back in the days that you needed it for promotion, and us only having about 1,500-1,700 home fans in the one stand, just how stupid would you need to be not taking advantage of making 200K+ from a game against the erse cheeks, times 3, or 4 if you make the top 6. That money helped massively in keeping us competitive in the top flight for 5 of our 6 seasons, getting us back to back top 6 spots and a cup final.

I salute any team that can reduce their allocation, and have the fanbase to make up the numbers, i really do, i'd love if Livi could do it too, but as i previously said, it isn't a one size fits all scenario, those that can do it absolutely should, those that can't, unfortunately need to let more in. Basically the cheeks and Hearts are the 3 teams our stadium gives us the chance of filling it, and making a lot of money to help compete with clubs a lot bigger supported than us, and punch well above our financial weight. 

Edited April 3 by LIVIFOREVER

[kingjoey]

3 hours ago, Ludo*1 said:

This clip will never not be amusing.

Did we ever find out if it is in fact @Ric?

[Ric]

2 minutes ago, kingjoey said:

Did we ever find out if it is in fact @Ric?

Now come on Joey, you can clearly see that person is considerably younger than both of us..

[kingjoey]

Just now, Ric said:

Now come on Joey, you can clearly see that person is considerably younger than both of us..

He could be my grandson. Although if he was I’d disown him.

[LIVIFOREVER]

50 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Both doing it has coincided with upturns in form, so I'm not 100% convinced its not a rise in crowds as much due to that as it is lowering the OF support. Its incorrect to be claiming a struggling Livingston side would see more home fans if they restricted OF crowds by using Kilmarnock and St Mirren as proof.

I'm not convinced Livingston have many more fans to gain tbh. Every club maxes out somewhere, Kilmarnock/St Mirren are clubs with traditionally larger crowds who should've been getting bigger crowds than they were, and are now reaching those levels regularly.

Yep, there'll be fans of all teams that stayed away when they played Celtic and Sevco, St Mirren and Killie have managed to encourage them back by reducing the away allocation for those games, but i doubt if we're talking of more than a couple of hundred that Livi would be able to do this with, and we'd be needing to cut the allocation by at least 6,000 to try and even have the same amount of fans as them. Times 3, that's a huge loss of finances for us, would St Mirren and Killie have done this if they took a loss of something like 480K against them?

[craigkillie]

2 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

Is it fair to be comparing Livingstons "dormant" support to that of Kilmarnock?

Far as I can see Livingsons move in 1995 virtually forced them to rebuild their fanbase from scratch so it's not as if there's thousands of generational fans just waiting for an upturn to crawl out the woodwork when things are going well.

They didn't actually have to move to Livingston, so nothing was forced.

However, the club did have an average attendance of over 7000 in their first ever top flight season, so there is definitely some sort of dormant support there to build on. It's a massive town, and if they played their cards right they could definitely build at least some sort of half decent support. Obviously it will take a long time, but their current strategy isn't going to help that at all.

[RandomGuy.]

7 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

They didn't actually have to move to Livingston, so nothing was forced.

However, the club did have an average attendance of over 7000 in their first ever top flight season, so there is definitely some sort of dormant support there to build on. It's a massive town, and if they played their cards right they could definitely build at least some sort of half decent support. Obviously it will take a long time, but their current strategy isn't going to help that at all.

Well yeah, but it happened so they live with it.

What was their OF allocation that season?

[LIVIFOREVER]

Just now, craigkillie said:

They didn't actually have to move to Livingston, so nothing was forced.

However, the club did have an average attendance of over 7000 in their first ever top flight season, so there is definitely some sort of dormant support there to build on. It's a massive town, and if they played their cards right they could definitely build at least some sort of half decent support. Obviously it will take a long time, but their current strategy isn't going to help that at all.

We had about 4 thousand home fans in our first stint, and could fill the West and South stands. A lot of shit has run under the bridge since then though, with 2 admins, a near miss on one under Flynn, Flynn kicking fans out of their seats for Celtic fans and vowed never to come back till he was away. Well he's been away a long time now and they didn't come back. Massone fucked every business that dealt with Livi, not paying them, and tried his best to put the club into liquidation. Papped into the bottom tier for not being able to put up a bond, because we were in admin. 

That's the abbreviated version of events, and at one stage our fanbase was down to about 600, we've built it steadily up under our good run from League One to the Premiership, to about 1,700, but we're never getting the fans back from those early days, and most of the ones we have now are built on from families that stuck by us and younger fans we've managed to encourage along. It would take years still to have a chance getting near 3,000.

[kingjoey]

13 minutes ago, LIVIFOREVER said:

We had about 4 thousand home fans in our first stint, and could fill the West and South stands. A lot of shit has run under the bridge since then though, with 2 admins, a near miss on one under Flynn, Flynn kicking fans out of their seats for Celtic fans and vowed never to come back till he was away. Well he's been away a long time now and they didn't come back. Massone fucked every business that dealt with Livi, not paying them, and tried his best to put the club into liquidation. Papped into the bottom tier for not being able to put up a bond, because we were in admin. 

That's the abbreviated version of events, and at one stage our fanbase was down to about 600, we've built it steadily up under our good run from League One to the Premiership, to about 1,700, but we're never getting the fans back from those early days, and most of the ones we have now are built on from families that stuck by us and younger fans we've managed to encourage along. It would take years still to have a chance getting near 3,000.

I was going to put “excellent well researched post”, but I would imagine you’ve got the bulk of the info in your head. 

[LIVIFOREVER]

10 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Well yeah, but it happened so they live with it.

What was their OF allocation that season?

About half and half, but when Flynn was the owner he mover ST holders out of their seats in the South stand to give Celtic 6,000 tickets. Every owner we've had was under the same illusion as CraigKillie, that West Lothian would give us a decent support, at the start the novelty brought a lot, but when hard times happened with relegation, and then admins, they melted away like snaw off a dyke. Most of West Lothian have fans with deep roots to oldco Rangers, Celtic, Hibs and Hearts, we may have had a chance growing and keeping a decent sized support, but for all the off field troubles, and relegations/demotions etc. But we are where we are now, and it's a continuous slog building the support up. 

[LIVIFOREVER]

3 minutes ago, kingjoey said:

I was going to put “excellent well researched post”, but I would imagine you’ve got the bulk of the info in your head. 

Aye, like PTSD with all the shite we've been through. Had a lot of good times too right enough, its not all been bad.

[eez-eh]

2 hours ago, LIVIFOREVER said:

With a 10,000 (think there's a few hundred seats been taken out and used for repairs now) seater stadium that was forced on us back in the days that you needed it for promotion, and us only having about 1,500-1,700 home fans in the one stand, just how stupid would you need to be not taking advantage of making 200K+ from a game against the erse cheeks, times 3, or 4 if you make the top 6. That money helped massively in keeping us competitive in the top flight for 5 of our 6 seasons, getting us back to back top 6 spots and a cup final.

I salute any team that can reduce their allocation, and have the fanbase to make up the numbers, i really do, i'd love if Livi could do it too, but as i previously said, it isn't a one size fits all scenario, those that can do it absolutely should, those that can't, unfortunately need to let more in. Basically the cheeks and Hearts are the 3 teams our stadium gives us the chance of filling it, and making a lot of money to help compete with clubs a lot bigger supported than us, and punch well above our financial weight. 

I’m not denying the short/medium term cash boost it affords Livingston. That was part of my post.

I don’t think it’s worth the longer term impact that this sort of pandering to the Old Firm does to Scottish football.