RiG

TBF to Toddy it looked like he got leathered by one of the Dunfermline players. Maybe it's just a dead leg or something jarred and he's back soon. f course Collum never thought it was even a free kick...

Agree with that there maybe wasn't much in it in terms of possession but when the few chances in front of goal did arrive they tended to fall the way of Dunfermline. Good save from Ridgers to deny O'Hara (I think) at the near post in the second half. Criminal defending for all three of the Pars goals from our PoV with Mckay looking very limp for the both the first and third with the entire defence looking suspect for the second. The third, whilst being a cracking strike by McManus, should never have been offered up as an opportunity had Mckay just dealt with the ball instead of dallying on it. So many problems the result of our own slack play. Very little to get excited about in an attacking sense as well. As mentioned above MacGregor was ineffective on the left continually wanting to check back inside to get the ball onto his right foot and McHattie seldom got beyond him to offer a wide option. Duffy was a bit more aggressive down the right flank and but certainly not in a similar manner to what we have been used to with Rooney in the last. I think only Harper put in a decent cross after he came on with a lot of our attacking play focused through the middle of the pitch where I thought Wilson protected the defence well snuffing out any attacks that were building in the centre. Trying to be positive, we did have a lot of attacking players out that would hopefully have made a difference today but we would still have had that defence out there so... Pars TV worked fine for me although it did drop a couple of times but a quick refresh sorted that out. Commentary wasn't too bad either.

We basically played the Hearts reserve side. Last night was the Hearts first team. They'll cigar the league.

Info on streaming from the club: https://ictfc.com/icttv-live-streaming-from-caledonian-stadium

Yeah I tried to register as well but haven't had anything through. Nothing in my spam folder either. Did clock that they have told someone to email if nothing had come through so maybe ping them an email as well.

HWFG! Info on how to watch the Dunfermline v ICT match this weekend: https://www.dafc.co.uk/story.php?t=Watching_the_Pars_behind_closed_doors&ID=12600 £12 to watch the stream.

Almost, if not more than, half of the Killie side were reserve / youth players. Still an impressive result however and Dunfermline have recruited well over the summer backed from Germany so they'll be fancied to finish higher up than us in the league. If they had a competent manager they might even win the whole thing.

If we are to take the club statement at face value it's because of rules the SPFL have set for the competition (See Section 10 of the competition rules). For the group stages a minimum charge for the group games applies (See 21.4). That said, there are options to charge less than the "Board Minimum Recommended Price of Ground Admission" but it needs the agreement of the away team as well. So we could have charged whatever we wanted with the agreement of Cowdenbeath. In fact, given the definition of "match ground" in the rules it might even be argued that these rules don't apply seeing as no one would be getting admission to the ground itself.

https://ictfc.com/club-statement-live-streaming The club say they wanted to offer the stream for free but were forbidden to do so because of competition rules.

Disappointing the club haven't even addressed the issue surrounding the lack of a stream for the game. A simple "not ready, working on it, hope to be ready for the first home league match" type of message would have sufficed. Meanwhile Cowdenbeath have confirmed it will be a closed door match so no stream from them either.

I'm happy to help out with the results @Scotty.

Exactly. this. If you have one person sitting in a seat then essentially 3 seats around them in every direction need to be vacant to ensure social distancing.

Why would Cowdenbeath as the away side have first option to stream? Certainly wouldn't complain if they do as they seem to have something set up and I'd happily chuck them a few quid to be able to see the match.

It's not as simple as taking the capacity and calculating 30% of that figure. They need to ensure that there is sufficient space around every potentially occupied seat, in the aisles of the stands etc. which further reduces the maximum number of people that could attend. Doesn't look like it. As has been said before on here they might have looked at the Cowdenbeath game as a test event for the streaming service but it might come too soon for whatever reason.

This was in the P & J over the weekend: https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/sport/football/inverness-caledonian-thistle/2534515/scot-gardiner-reveals-extent-of-work-caley-thistle-undertook-to-get-caledonian-stadium-ready-for-new-season/

Better than liking porn videos I guess.

As things stand a bunch of kids having a kickabout down the park are probably better than Brechin.

I don't think you can make that conclusion after just one game though I do agree that having Brora and / or Kelty into the SPFL would be of greater benefit than some of the central belt sponge teams going nowhere.

I thought Welsh was a welcome calming presence in the middle of the pitch offering himself to take the ball off Deas and Mckay from defence but at times he didn't look sharp and had the ball nipped off him by Hearts. Good point about Keatings. Whilst I though Allardice did well his set pieces weren't that good with Keatings offering a marked improvement with his corners and free kicks.

Disappointing to lose in that manner but given I feared a bit of a doing I'm pretty content with the display. The injury to Sutherland is frustrating particularly as he had looked pretty handy on the right side before he went off. His cross for Mackay was wonderful and it's a shame Gordon pulled off an incredible save to keep the scores level. Whilst Mackay looked pretty good going forward he didn't offer much protection for Harper who was run ragged for large parts of the game. A steep learning curve for Harper but I think once he gets up to speed he'll be fine. Our defence seemed to be Hearts most creative attacking threat for the first half with a number of errors almost gifting goals for the Jambos. Duffy looked okay considering he'd just joined up with the team and Deas looked pretty useful as well. Mckay was poor however. Some really poor passes out of defence led to us being put under pressure and I can't imagine he's going to be battling for a starting CB slot. Second half was mostly Hearts until late on. We didn't seem to be as settled as we had been for parts of the first half and the defence looked increasingly creaky particularly when Allardice went to RB where, whilst he did okay, I felt he was more effecient in the middle alongside Welsh (who seemed very sluggish). Poor decision to come for the ball by Ridgers prior to the penalty award. Don't think he really had a chance to get the ball over a couple of ICT and Hearts players. Feel the award against Harper is very harsh. He's not got his hand / arm above his shoulder and he's not making his body unnaturally bigger with the position of his hands / arms. Criminal miss by Toddy late on after a fine run and cross from Storey who played well in flashes but the second half was disappointing overall. Still though, just losing by a single goal against the team that is expected to romp the league isn't horrendous. Robbo has said that these games are being used for fitness so provided we don't disgrace ourselves in any of these matches I'm not bothered if we go out.

ICT wrote to fans months ago regarding new season tickets and in that letter stated that they hoped to offer streaming of matches when the league campaign kicked off. Pending a test of the camera system they have said they may be able to offer fans the chance to view the Cowdenbeath game (and you would then imagine the East Fife game) but the position the club were taking has been set out for a long time and that was it would be ready for the start of the league campaign. A number of other clubs haven't gotten their PPV streaming setups ready to go yet whilst others, including Montrose, only launched their ones recently. Yes that does mean that ICT, potentially, will be one of the last teams to offer such a service to supporters but at the end of the day, when the world has seemingly been turned upside down because of COVID-19, I'm willing to cut the club some slack on any delay in sorting out the streaming. Providing all goes well, you will miss out on two games. That's it. No idea I'm afraid. Gardiner, in the latest pod, simply says that "we now have the camera system in the stadium, we have new BT fibre connecting all of that up it's operational and we're looking at doing a test in the coming days." If we are to take that at face value it sounds like whatever equipment and infrastructure was at the ground wasn't deemed to be good enough

May as well flag up this Tweet which appears to be an offer for Sky customers to grab Premier Sports for £1 for the first month with a code. You can cancel it after a months up before you start paying £11.99. The code doesn't seem to work if you try to subscribe to Premier Sports online player.

How many of those clubs are losing £800,000 a year, have had to beg from hand outs from parents to keep their kids in football training at the club and have been cutting everything they possibly can left right and centre in an effort to save cash? It would be great if ICT did have a video streaming service ready to go for the League Cup games but at a time when things are changing almost on a daily basis I'll be content if we get it right for the league. If we don't have it ready for the first league match then I'll be more inclined to grumble.

Getting something set up to stream league games is progressing and the club is hoping to have everything in place for that. The League Cup games may come too soon however. Of course the original plan was to have fans in grounds by now so I can understand why the club, given how short of cash they are, probably weren't willing to start shelling out for the necessary equipment and infrastructure upgrades until it was more certain that fans were not going to be present.