Was reading this article this morning and wondered what people make of this idea - the role of the sports director and adoption of a club philosophy. I’ve been watching Highland rugby clubs success over the years and their structure and philosophy ie developing young players, totally amateur (no pay), respect for everyone at the club, and most importantly having fun, seems to be working well. 

https://trainingground.guru/articles/stuart-webber-climb-of-the-canaries

We were in profit for 2 or 3 years around the time of the cup win.

Most small provincial clubs survive on handouts in one form or other. The initial costs we incurred at the Longman have hampered us in the past , mismanagement of finances has cost us since. The risk to us is if we are continually wasting these donations the flow of funding will dry up.

Internal personality conflicts  don't help either.

Blaming yogi for the budget situations I don’t think is fair. He was starting to build a culture at the club that was allowing us to push on and we saw our best period of play under his leadership. Regardless of the signings he brought in, we would have NEVER been relegated under Yogi and therefore would have managed fine with our finances as we would have continued to build. Not to mention he would have given these young u18s more opportunities that could have helped the club continue to build from our local community.

 

Talk to any player who played for us under Yogi and you won’t find a player who has a bad word to say about him! All of them say he was the best they had. He was creating a culture, one I think we need to go back to. 

9 hours ago, Satan said:

We were in profit for 2 or 3 years around the time of the cup win.

Most small provincial clubs survive on handouts in one form or other. The initial costs we incurred at the Longman have hampered us in the past , mismanagement of finances has cost us since. The risk to us is if we are continually wasting these donations the flow of funding will dry up.

Internal personality conflicts  don't help either.

It's not mismanagement of finances that have cost us it's mismanagement of the team, that's what people pay to watch.

On 4/13/2019 at 10:05 AM, Stirling Observer said:

This all day long.

Yogi, great coach, good at improving players.

Yogi awful recruiter of talent. 

Don't be naive, Yogi played his part in relegation, he wanted to push the club forward for his own ego, raising budgets and then wasting it on players. He has a very high opinion of himself. Financially we are still recovering from this. The warning signs for our relegation season with Foran were starting to appear under Hughes.

Just how do you justify this statement? we lost our best players to other clubs, had a horrendous injury list where we had to make emergency signings but we never looked like relegation material under Hughes yet you blame him and give the incompetent Foran and the incompetent board that appointed him a free pass, unbelievable.

2 minutes ago, wynthank15 said:

 but we never looked like relegation material under Hughes yet you blame him and give the incompetent Foran and the incompetent board that appointed him a free pass, unbelievable.

When we were 1-0 down to Kilmarnock at half-time in the first game after the split, we were in real danger of being sucked into the dog fight for the play off spot. Fortunately for us, Jamie Macdonald gave away a penalty and got himself sent off, and we didn’t really look back. However, winning 4 out of 5 after the split probably put more of a gloss on things than the season deserved. 

There was certainly a decline that season, and while it is true that we lost some of the best players we have ever had going into the season, it is part of the job of the manager to replace those players. 

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that things started to slip during Hughes final season, but the decision to appoint Foran, and more importantly persist with him when it was obvious what was going to happen sealed our fate. 

So why did Hughes need replaced? He was angling for an out. I'm not suggesting Foran was the correct appointment but he was the cheap option after Yogi's bloated budget being frittered away.

35 minutes ago, Stirling Observer said:

So why did Hughes need replaced? He was angling for an out. I'm not suggesting Foran was the correct appointment but he was the cheap option after Yogi's bloated budget being frittered away.

He didn't need replaced. What he needed was people above him who knew what they were doing.

On 4/15/2019 at 8:09 PM, HawkeyeTheGnu said:

When we were 1-0 down to Kilmarnock at half-time in the first game after the split, we were in real danger of being sucked into the dog fight for the play off spot. Fortunately for us, Jamie Macdonald gave away a penalty and got himself sent off, and we didn’t really look back. However, winning 4 out of 5 after the split probably put more of a gloss on things than the season deserved. 

There was certainly a decline that season, and while it is true that we lost some of the best players we have ever had going into the season, it is part of the job of the manager to replace those players. 

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that things started to slip during Hughes final season, but the decision to appoint Foran, and more importantly persist with him when it was obvious what was going to happen sealed our fate. 

Winning 4 out of 5 after the split put a gloss on things? faint praise indeed. Do you recall the injury list we had that year? and as I said in an earlier post how do you replace Watkins, Shinnie and Christie within our budget restraints? you can't, no wonder things slipped, players are hardly falling over themselves to join ICT so we sign injury prone players like Dargo or last chancers, players with a bad attitude to training, referees, lifestyle, authority or an old head like Scott McDonald going to Thistle who still thinks he has something to offer and probably has at our level. We are a million miles away from the level of Pele's teams but then the level of Scottish football since those days has also dropped dramatically we are the backwater of Europe in footballing terms.