The Queen of the South thread

[Skyline Drifter]

49 minutes ago, sidofthesouth said:

Hallelujah. Lets hope its markedly better than the last one

Ultimately, whatever folk like to claim, the last one did fine. Its got 10 years lifespan which is more than most for a 3G pitch. New one shpuld hopefully be better.

[qos_75]

4 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Ultimately, whatever folk like to claim, the last one did fine. It’s got 10 years lifespan which is more than most for a 3G pitch. New one shpuld hopefully be better.

I would fully expect a new one to be better than a 10 year old one.

I could be wrong here, but I am sure there was there an intention to replace it four or five years ago.

I am sure it was in one of Mark Blount’s comms, at the time. 

[Diamonds are Forever]

It will make a huge difference to the type of football that can be played, great timing for Bartley as I presume he's looking to play quick passing football.

I genuinely don't think we'd have been able to hand out some of the hammerings we did this season on last season's pitch, which was basically like Palmerston this season. Last season it was so sticky, bobbly and when dry it was so slow. It is so much better this year.

[Otis Blue]

1 hour ago, Diamonds are Forever said:

It will make a huge difference to the type of football that can be played, great timing for Bartley as I presume he's looking to play quick passing football ...

All part of our cunning plan, dontcha know ...

[Skyline Drifter]

3 hours ago, qos_75 said:

I would fully expect a new one to be better than a 10 year old one.

I could be wrong here, but I am sure there was there an intention to replace it four or five years ago.

I am sure it was in one of Mark Blount’s comms, at the time. 

Never been any serious intent to replace it before now as far as I know. 

[parsforlife]

9 hours ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Ultimately, whatever folk like to claim, the last one did fine. Its got 10 years lifespan which is more than most for a 3G pitch. New one shpuld hopefully be better.

Maybe fine from a financial point of view and really eeking out every penny you could from it.   As a pitch it’s been awful for years

[the_palmy_pie]

13 hours ago, Fae_the_'briggs said:

Just what I was told at the Kelty game, not by someone greatly itk to be fair. Is the car prize still a thing, it's usually on display on the Terregles Terrace at the last home game. 

Edit to add: Just checked OS and the end of season car prize is still there although I don't know if that is an up to date notice. 

The deluxe draw has always been very poorly advertised and needs promoted properly. 
Really poor show from Queens 

[the_palmy_pie]

39 minutes ago, parsforlife said:

Maybe fine from a financial point of view and really eeking out every penny you could from it.   As a pitch it’s been awful for years

Bring back a grass pitch. 

[19QOS19]

1 hour ago, parsforlife said:

Maybe fine from a financial point of view and really eeking out every penny you could from it.   As a pitch it’s been awful for years

Indeed. It's been a shite surface for years. When a ball gets stuck under Stephen Dobbie's feet frequently, you know something isn't quite right

A new pitch is the best signing we'll make this summer. 

 

54 minutes ago, the_palmy_pie said:

Bring back a grass pitch. 

Would love to see grass at Palmerston again but given how much it would cost I doubt it'll happen any time soon. I'm not against plastic pitches tbh. There are plenty of very good ones in Scotland. Hopefully ours is on that list now. 

[Skyline Drifter]

2 hours ago, parsforlife said:

Maybe fine from a financial point of view and really eeking out every penny you could from it.   As a pitch it’s been awful for years

Whatever. It's passed every test and been comfortably within licensed parameters. It's showing its age and needs replaced.

15 hours ago, the_palmy_pie said:

Any idea who won the car at the end of the season deluxe prize draw ? 

There hasn't been a car for an end of season draw since Covid. I don't think a single winner ever kept it. It's been a £5k lump sum instead for the last couple of years. I assume that will be given away at the end of May.

[Swarley]

Out of interest, does anyone know what happens to the old pitch? Can it be recycled? Or used somewhere else? 

[Greenacres]

1 hour ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Whatever. It's passed every test and been comfortably within licensed parameters. It's showing its age and needs replaced.

There hasn't been a car for an end of season draw since Covid. I don't think a single winner ever kept it. It's been a £5k lump sum instead for the last couple of years. I assume that will be given away at the end of May.

No expert on plastic pitches or anything really but I hope we put more of foundation down before we lay the pitch .The bother of our old pitch was it was like playing in the carpark rock solid 

 

[Fae_the_'briggs]

1 hour ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Whatever. It's passed every test and been comfortably within licensed parameters. It's showing its age and needs replaced.

There hasn't been a car for an end of season draw since Covid. I don't think a single winner ever kept it. It's been a £5k lump sum instead for the last couple of years. I assume that will be given away at the end of May.

Maybe someone could update the OS then to clarify this. 

 

3 hours ago, parsforlife said:

Maybe fine from a financial point of view and really eeking out every penny you could from it.   As a pitch it’s been awful for years

When the plastic was first laid it was kind of sold to fans it would be a moneymaker, that seems  not to be the case according to SD in a previous discussion on the pitch  (the income from rent/hire of the Arena  is our best source probably). Maybe when Heston Rovers were hiring it for South of Scotland League games but they packed up  so don't think there's much outside hire now. 

[Greenacres]

2 hours ago, Artemis said:

Some pitches have shock pad underlay. I think Raith have one but not sure. 

https://pstsport.com/our-products/shock-pads/

 

That is what we need Raith pitch is  excellent.

I suppose it will all come down to the cost of shock pads etc

[Fae_the_'briggs]

I am expecting the Club will be doing the minimum to replace the pitch. A better quality carpet but minimum work to the base. I'm not in the camp that the pitch is the main reason for some of our poor displays and League positions over the past few seasons, a lot of opposition teams don't seem to have the same problems on it that we do. The present surface just doesn't look right. 

[19QOS19]

54 minutes ago, Fae_the_'briggs said:

I am expecting the Club will be doing the minimum to replace the pitch. A better quality carpet but minimum work to the base. I'm not in the camp that the pitch is the main reason for some of our poor displays and League positions over the past few seasons, a lot of opposition teams don't seem to have the same problems on it that we do. The present surface just doesn't look right. 

It's absolutely not the main reason we've been so poor. If our results away from home were far better then the argument could be made. 

It's just a shite surface to watch a game of football on and hampers both sides. It clearly gave us no advantage though. Be glad to see the back of it and hopefully MB can bring a good style of football to play on it as well. 

[Monkey Tennis]

2 hours ago, Fae_the_'briggs said:

I'm not in the camp that the pitch is the main reason for some of our poor displays and League positions over the past few seasons

I don't think there is such a camp to be honest.

It's just a poor surface for the spectacle of a football match.  I really hope the next one is significantly better.

When our first one went down, it was the only one in town.  Now there are several.  I'd rather see grass, but that's not on any sort of horizon.

 

[DG.Roma]

23 hours ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Ultimately, whatever folk like to claim, the last one did fine. Its got 10 years lifespan which is more than most for a 3G pitch. 

You might not know the answer, but it's always worth asking you these things!

I remember the 10 year lifespan being stated when the pitch was laid, but was that 10 years of comparative use to the grass pitch, or 10 years of use with increased activity factored in?

Obviously artificial pitches get much more use than grass pitches, and there's no way of knowing how much use a pitch that is hired out and used for training, reserves, women, youths etc will get 4 or 5 years into the future, so I wonder if other clubs who have replaced their pitches in a shorter time frame have done so based on heavy usage and deterioration, rather than a pre determined/estimated length of time.

[Skyline Drifter]

11 hours ago, DG.Roma said:

You might not know the answer, but it's always worth asking you these things!

I remember the 10 year lifespan being stated when the pitch was laid, but was that 10 years of comparative use to the grass pitch, or 10 years of use with increased activity factored in?

Obviously artificial pitches get much more use than grass pitches, and there's no way of knowing how much use a pitch that is hired out and used for training, reserves, women, youths etc will get 4 or 5 years into the future, so I wonder if other clubs who have replaced their pitches in a shorter time frame have done so based on heavy usage and deterioration, rather than a pre determined/estimated length of time.

I don't think the predicted lifespan was relative to anything particularly. That's roughly how long they thought they'd last at the time with an average level of use. They quickly downgraded it though to predict about 8 years not long after ours went down, I think due to experiences of others clubs. Inevitably these things depend how much use there actually is. Ours isn't used all that much and that's presumably how it's eked out to 10 years. I'm not actually sure ours is used any more than the grass one was, at least now. Maybe slightly. There's almost no community use and we rarely hire it commercially, the Arena is used for almost all the Community stuff. The women don't train on it either, they train at the NWCC I think. Reserves train on it, youths do twice a week (but they did on the grass too unless it was in bad nick and they had to find an alternative). Youth matches on it on Sundays. I think the Ladies play some of their games there but not all of them, depends what availability there is if youths are home or away. It had more usage when Heston had an adult team groundsharing obviously but they haven't had one for about four years now.

Certainly some lower division pitches will have a lot more use. I know Stenhousemuir for instance have community training on theirs every night of the week.

[Skyline Drifter]

http://www.qosfc.com/news-6081