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Scotty

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Everything posted by Scotty

  1. :rotflmao: The names are a bit strange in some cases, but got me looking up the history ...... I learned a few things ! Toronto FC was named as such because the owners wanted a real football name. enough said. :021: :021: :021: Chicago Fire were named as such because they were formed on the 126th anniversary of the Great Fire of Chicago in 1871 so you could probably let them off too. :022: Columbus Crew were named by fans in a contest !!! (supposedly 'crew' refers to the working class background of the area and has nothing to do with Christopher's shipmates) :020: D.C. United was another that wanted a traditional football name so :021: :021: Kansas City are called the wizards because the main character in Wizard of Oz is from Kansas !!! :020: :020: :020: New England Revolution are so called because of the New England region's involvement in the American Revolution :020: New York have - in my opinion - one of the worst names as the 'Red Bulls' purely and simply because of commercial reasons (Red Bull purchased the club in 2006). Before that they were the New York / New Jersey Metrostars which was also a commercial name ... The club actually started as the 'Empire Soccer Club' but changed to MetroStars because the owner had a company called Metro Media. It might have been MetroFlash had main sponsor Nike got its way but a compromise of MetroStars was reached which is still better than Red Bull !!! :020: :020: :020: :020: Chivas USA (or more precisely Deportivo Chivas USA) is called this because the co-owners own clubs in Mexico (Deportivo Gudalajara) and Costa Rica (Deportivo Saprissa). The mexican side has the nickname Chivas so probably not a bad name in the end considering that most of its fans and players are latino. :022: Colorado Rapids - No confirmation of the origin of the name but most believe it is because of the Colorado River which is a very important resource in the state. The team signed a partnership deal with Arsenal in early 2007 and briefly considered changing name to Arsenal Colorado. fortunately this was shelved. :020: Dallas became respectable in 2004 when it changed its name to FC Dallas. Before that they were called Dallas Burn (not sure why). :022: Houston Dynamos are actually the San Jose Earthquakes in a new town (a bit like Clydebank/Airdrie although it is rumoured that San Jose will be back in the MLS next season which should be quite a rivalry). The name was originally floated as Houston 1836 (referring to the year Houston was founded) but this was controversial as the history had a lot to do with war between Mexicans and Americans and with a high latino population in the area, the name was dropped. Like Columbus, the owners then had a fan contest to decide the name but MLS stepped in and decided that fan contests would no longer be allowed to decide names for new teams and imposed the name Houston Dynamo. The Dynamo part is a reflection of the city's industrial economy and because a couple of defunct teams also had the name before. :020: LA Galaxy - not named after a chocolate bar but might as well be. The name is supposed to represent the fact that LA is home to a galaxy of stars ! :020: :020: :020: Real Salt Lake - The owner chose the name as he wanted to associate his team with Real Madrid ! Although fans initially hated the name, the club has now forged links with the Spanish giants. :020:
  2. At this point, Beckham's football playing career is winding down but to the Americans he is a huge draw, with superstar friends (Tom Cruise and Katy Holmes, along with Will and Jada Pinkett Smith threw him a welcome party !!!). This move is a superb one for him as he will be able to establish a business that will keep huge wads of cash rolling in long after his career is finished. Lets face it, he is never going to be a silver tongued commentator or professional pundit and as his career fades he will be less and less in demand .... the academies that are being setup in his name will be his legacy.
  3. NO - I would say Houston, Dallas, and New England are currently the 3 top teams and Chicago, Salt Lake and LA Galaxy are the 3 worst.
  4. rumoured to be signing for DC United in your favourite league (MLS) this week. JJ Okocha is also rumoured to be signing for Real Salt Lake and Denilson for Dallas.
  5. Clint Dempsey, Shalrie Joseph and Taylor Twellman are all players who were reported to be interesting European teams at the back end of 2006 ... see http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story...97&root=mls Brian McBride (Fulham) went to England from MLS DaMarcus Beasley (Rangers) went to PSV from MLS Eddie Johnson (Kansas) a target for Derby this week. Freddy Adu - constant rumours
  6. Apart from the blatant geographically based football snobbery displayed in that post, the simple truth is that in Beckham's case no-one will want him after the LA Galaxy and he wont want to play for anyone else anyway as he will be 37 and the (figure)head of a chain of succesfull "soccer" academies across North America with a wife who is haplessly (or maybe hopelessly) wandering from one Hollywood mishap to the next. While MLS is currently not up to the standard of EPL, Serie A, Bundesliga etc and may even be below SPL, it is improving all the time. But the MLS is just a means to an end in Beckham's case, or in the case of his backers/sponsors. forget Basketball, Baseball, Hockey, and all those other American sports .. the NUMBER ONE participation sport in North America for youngsters up to about the age of 11 or 12 is "SOCCER". The equipment is cheap, the maintenance of facilities is reasonably cheap, and the schools can make it 'co-ed' (in other words both boys and girls). This is the market where Beckham hopes to make far more than the millions he is actually making for playing for the team ..... As the kids get older, they get into things like NFL, NHL, NBA etc as that is definitely where the salaries are to be made (MLS only pays youth players about $12000 a year !!) but the younger kids dont take part in basketball or even baseball in the same numbers as football .... and thats his market.
  7. We hope to add Trevor Martin to the stable of photographers who supply us with pics and I'll bet his zoom is bigger than all of yours put together :blah01: :blah01: You could use the tech support forum for this - and if we absolutely had to we could add a sub-forum for photography.
  8. as one of the 'selling points' of this top was 'take to the field with the team for every game' then those who paid their money will be very unhappy if it doesnt !!!
  9. on the new version of the site we hope to make it easier for you guys and others to upload pictures directly to the galleries. the new version of the site (hopefully) is going to be more user friendly and allow for more direct interaction in terms of adding articles, stories, match reports and photos ....... hopefully we will manage to switch over this week - we have been doing a lot of testing, including test migrations of things like the forums and galleries and all has gone well so far.
  10. TCF, I like your youthful enthusiasm, but in the real world, its not likely to happen :004:
  11. That is my understanding too. This is just a guess but I think the away top the players wear will have the names, the away top received by those who paid to have their names on it will also have the names, but the 'replica' top sold in the shop to everyone else probably wont ...... this will distinguish the limited edition tops from normal tops. perhaps Angela or someone else from the stadium might confirm ?
  12. Going into the summer it didnt look good. doom, gloom and despondency. Charlie Christie was going to be found out ... blah, blah, blah ..... fast forward a few weeks and he has signed Don Cowie (ok, we knew about that) and also signed a player I think will be excellent ... Dean McDonald. Then he pulls off the Niculae signing (albeit with a large assist from the chairman) and also has players on trial from England, Austria and elsewhere for spots in either the first team or U19s. Exciting prospects have been promoted from the youth squads - McDonald, Vigurs, Duff, Kerr & Wood - who have all shown up well in pre-season along with Zander who was promoted to the squad last year and may prove to be the most exciting of the lot in the coming season. The job is not done yet. An experienced central defender is still required and if one is available and Charlie can sign him then it will have been a great rather than good summer.
  13. Scotty

    Phil Marsh

    Have split this topic and moved all the off-topic comments to Anything goes.
  14. probably because we have worn training tops for each game .... numbers have been on shorts. I might be way off the mark here but maybe our first team shirts havent arrived from Errea yet and we only have a few for photo-ops ?
  15. at least we have the finances and demand for it. and as for Duncans goal being the best in any of our games how the **** are you supposed to know that? Considering that clubs already have the rights to their own SPL footage and that any fool can knock up a half decent DVD on their home PC, then finances dont really come into it. Demand - ok, maybe you got me there ... there are far more DUFC fans than ICT fans that are so starved for success that they want to part with a tenner for a roxioed rendition of the highlights of last season although maybe DUFC should consider releasing it on floppy too.
  16. Although this thread is supposed to be for ICT related links, I am going to leave it here as it is so **** funny !!!! do we still have a nessie mascot (as well as I-CaT) .... that track would be perfect for it to dance to on the park ..... there, made it ICT related :015: :015:
  17. not unless you specifically buy tickets for it .... tickets for the uncovered sections at either end of the main stand are routinely sold for big games, whereas for games like Dunfermline, they are not.
  18. you could also email tickets@ictfc.co.uk which is the email for the ticket office, but as LG says, a phonecall to the ticket office would be better. If you try to get tickets when you arrive, you are likely to be disappointed.
  19. Aye, the first division ....... "Made in Scotland, from Gurners"
  20. for half of these, I have no idea of the tune the writer is suggesting it is sung to ..... can those adding a song maybe suggest the tune too ?
  21. Its the UK - nothing to do with NA BBC can broadcast every game on analogue/digital radio and also on the internet within the UK. When it comes to streaming outside UK it gets complicated ..... Quite a few clubs have PTV sites and with the exception of Hearts (who only block their own home games), they force the BBC to restrict coverage of all of their games to the UK only as BBC have exclusive rights in UK but not worldwide. As ICT dont yet have their PTV interactive stuff set up it means non UK ICT fans are at a severe disadvantage. Watching Celtic / Rangers obviously has additional problems as they not only have audio to deal with but also worldwide TV rights held by Setanta who dont actually broadcast in North America except on channels available only in pubs ! Other clubs like Hibs have their own internal offerings and dont actually block anything as their own offering is quite different. There was one Hibs game last season where the BBC showed the game as blocked but I managed to get them to unblock it after talking to Stuart Crowther at Hibs.net and verifying the arrangement with the BBC ! in short - the whole thing is a mess and calls for a single solution where fans can subscribe to a service to get either/both an audio or video feed from games and pay for it accordingly .... but it needs to be an SPL solution not just and ICT one.
  22. As a matter of interest, I pulled up our Google Stats for the last FIVE days (4.5 really as it includes today) .... and the number of countries this site has been visited by is staggering even to me ..... Just over 1500 "unique users" made a little under 5000 visits to the site viewing nearly 44000 pages in the process. This is about normal for us during the close season but what surprised me a little was that although most of these 1500+ users came from the UK, the rest came from 42 different countries in every continent of the world. SPL/Setanta - If a site like this can pull in visitors from as many countries as this in just a 4 day period during the off-season, just think how many people you could get some cash from if you provided a service to service all of the teams in the SPL !!!!! note: a small definition of the terms used above. [li]unique user = person (or to be more specific - host/ip) who visits the site on any given day. If i visit again tomorrow, I am not counted again.[/li] [li]visits = number of visits by our unique users. If i view pages today it is a visit. if i view them tomorrow it is another visit, so in the three or 4 days of these stats, most of our 1500 unique visitors came to the site every day (which is good)[/li] [li]page views = actual pages being viewed.[/li]
  23. Highlights of Saturday games cant be shown until after 6pm Sunday, Sunday games cant be shown until after midnight.
  24. As far as I understand it, the deal is similar to whats already in place for the audio ... exclusive rights to analogue/digital broadcasting within the UK and non-exclusive rights for internet streaming and downloads. I anxiously await details of how it affects overseas listeners as nearly 50% of all internet streaming of ICT games was blocked outside the UK last season because our opponents had deals in place to broadcast their own audio and you couldnt purchase commentary on a game by game basis ........ many of the PTV sites (who provide the ICT site) have a service called "<insert club name> WORLD" which allows you to pay a fee to buy season long audio coverage of every game and live in-game stats but no sign of it appearing on the ICT site yet. As for the TV rights - on the face of it, I think that is complete crap although I will be happy to be proved wrong. According to their own website, SportFive cover parts of Europe (UK, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Poland, Monaco, Italy Switzerland) plus Singapore, Malaysia, and Argentina. NOTHING in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Africa or most of Asia. I understand the Setanta deal is also still in place but they too make it nigh on impossible to watch any SPL games in USA/Canada unless you are going to a bar that has paid for the channel (which is not available domestically) and your team is playing one of the OF. As I get older, I dont entirely enjoy the idea of going to a bar 20 miles away at 7:30am on a Saturday or Sunday morning and being surrounded by reminiscing neanderthals or second generation pseudo bigots who love "the Celtic" or "the Rangers" despite never having set foot in Scotland. The SPL recently held a "football tourism" workshop which had the stated desire of making it more appealing to visiting tourists to be supporters, be they ex-pats wanting to come see their team or new visitors for whom coming to a game would be part of a holiday in Scotland ...... with these deals they have done NOTHING to foster that aim ..... its a fcuking JOKE. Football is getting huge coverage in North America right now - with the U20 World Cup, Beckham to the MLS, and in Canada, the emergence of Toronto FC and its fans as a phenomenon never seen before in MLS (passionate, European/British style support) and yet, on the very same day that CELTIC will play in the MLS All-Star game in the US, the SPL announce a deal that does nothing to enhance or expand their existing audio/visual coverage by rubber stamping a continuance of the existing audio deal and giving worldwide TV rights to a company who dont even have a presence in 90% of the globe. SPL - You say you want to make the SPL attractive to overseas viewers and listeners ? You are failing miserably because the whole rights thing is confusing in the extreme and blocked left right and centre giving people no options. I WANT to listen to or watch ICT games, I enjoy it when I can get the audio for free on the BBC but by the same token I am also prepared to PAY my fair share for the privilege of being able to guarantee my listening/viewing ability. Instead of having a hodgepodge of different deals with different rules, you need to have one policy and slot these sponsors in. Here's a few easy ideas ....... Audio: - Let the BBC provide audio on the Internet for every game to listeners in the UK. If you must block certain games to users outside the UK, let them pay a nominal sum per game to unblock it using rights technology or something similar. Split fees for this with the clubs concerned if necessary. - Ensure that those clubs who are offering an audio service, offer it for both single games and for a complete season. If I cannot listen to a Kilmarnock V ICT game because Kilmarnock are exercising their broadcast rights and ICT dont have a service in place then I am quite happy to pay Kilmarnock a nominal sum for a single game commentary. However, right now I dont have that option, the only option I have is to buy their complete season package and thats not gonna happen !!! - for clubs with no audio service in place, tell them that a link to either the BBC or the Opposition Club site must be posted on their official site so that users who want to listen to a game can go straight to an official site and see their options. Alternatively, post this on the main SPL website. Video - Put pressure on Setanta / SportFive to offer a comprehensive package for supporters of every club. As an ICT suppporter I would like to watch all ICT games live on TV with multiple camera angles and a full commentary team ... but as a realist, I know thats not economically viable. However, for those games that cannot be broadcast live on TV, maybe the incoming footage can be streamed on the internet ? InternetFootball seem to be able to do it (most of the time) so why not Setanta ? If you actually give supporters a legitimate way of obtaining coverage, you might even spend less time trying to hunt down those who try to provide P2P services ! - Setanta make it nearly impossible to receive their TV channels domestically in North America and even the IPTV service via iTVN is difficult to organise in Canada - pressure them to look at this for all countries. :crazy07: I apologise if this has turned into a rant, but its a subject I have very strong views about and have written a number of articles about, some of which have even been published. I have no axe to grind with the BBC who give me what they can, when they can and seem to have the IT knowledge to succesfully make sure I cant access what I am not supposed to when games are only available inside the UK (believe me I have tried !!!), but the SPL and its other media partners are not doing anything to promote the league outside the country ... something they constantly say they are trying to do and even go to the extent of holding workshops to figure out the best way to do it . :029: :017:
  25. :rotflmao: - I am trying so hard to not make a comment about Dundee and the "less hygenic pupils" ...... trying .... :crazy07: ...... :crazy07: ......... :crazy07:
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