Scotty

Canada thought they would be the team who had the longest wait to get back in ... 1986 was their one and only appearance. 2022 is shaping up to be controversial though ... First the CSA (Canadian FA) scheduled a game against Iran for last weekend, without realising there are still some pretty raw and emotional diplomatic issues around the downing of Ukrainian Flight 752 in 2020, given that 55 of the 176 killed were Canadian citizens and a further 30 were Canadian residents. Then after they hastily rescheduled the opponent to be Panama, the team promptly went on strike due to issues over how the association plan to distribute the qualification monies from the world cup. The association - who could rival the SFA for parochialism - have offered a mere 10% of the millions in unexpected windfall payments to the squad and there is also disparity in how they treat the men's and women's teams as well as views on development monies. The teams are asking to be treated equally and for the prize fund to players to be set to 40% (in line with other top 50 nations apparently), and for the CSA to ensure that for Qatar the team's families do not have to pay their own way to the tournament (also standard for other nations). What should be a triumph for Canada in getting to the world cup, and then in potentially hosting about a quarter of the games for the next world cup in 2026 is rapidly descending into a farce that Ernie Walker would be proud of. https://www.sportsnet.ca/soccer/article/canada-mens-national-soccer-team-game-vs-panama-cancelled-amid-wage-dispute/

Agree - and its not just at concert time. When we are planning a trip, which most recent visit excepted, is typically 6 or more months in advance, I could typically rent a house for a month for less than the cost of booking an average hotel room for a week. As a family we do prefer to do the whole AirBnB or VRBO thing and have some go-to rentals in Inverness that we check first ... but we also take a look at hotel offers and the costs are insane so they are quickly discarded. Does seem a bit top heavy on the face of things but all good points you raise. Provided the outlay is generating growing income and improving services then so be it ... we have never operated at a profit, always relying on a cup run or wealthy directors putting in a few pennies here and there. If we can use sponsorship, advertising board sales, and other non-football or non-matchday revenue generators then the outlay for staff to bring those deals in and make our offerings more professional may be worthwhile as that in itself may help get us closer to balancing the books. I am not going to crucify anyone on reducing an expected deficit in the middle of a pandemic when all of these things are challenging even in normal times but we do need to be mindful of it. Its a bit of a broken record, but if there is one area we are still lacking it is communication at some levels and there is no excuse for that. The club have their own website and social media to get things out there, they also have many other fan-based organisations or outlets that the as well.

Good luck to Ukraine against Wales. By far the better team for large spells of this match. Thought Scotland were poor in the first half and - not because he is former ICT - I thought it was only when Christie came on and the midfield got more of a grip of the ball that our performance got better. Almost a grandstand finish, which would have been just like Scotland to do things the hard way, but unfortunately (like ICT in the STJ game) when you commit so many forward, you run the risk of conceding that late killer goal. Hope they do the business against the Welsh (no offence to Wales) and then light up the tournament at the end of the year. If they get there I think they will be a lot of people's sentimental choice and seem solid enough to do well. Oh well, at least Canada qualified so I have that to look forward to, and hopefully for Scotland to get to the 2026 world cup and maybe be based in Toronto!

I think you nailed it from a fan perspective. (For me) it is all about the day out with the actual match being just a part of that. If you are going to go to the football then you are going to go whether its on TV or not in most cases. You might choose not to on a wet and windy night in January, but that decision might have been the same whether its on telly or not. If there is an ICT game on a Saturday afternoon but Celtic -V- anyone is live on TV then I am still going to the ICT game As I said in earlier posts, I could/would argue that removing the blackout could actually be better for some clubs. You may miss out on one or two folk in the local area who watch on telly, but you also broaden your potential viewership to a wider audience, in our case of users from the central belt and beyond as well as those outside the country who wouldn't go to the game anyway. If you can reach a critical mass so that it pays for itself then anything on top of that is just gravy

@No Shin Guards - if you have an issue with how the site is managed, lets discuss this in another thread or via message system. As noted, by a couple of our mods, you are closing your own topics according to the site logs so no-one is shutting you down. However, your methodology and phraseology are familiar to me so lets not pretend here! As mentioned, you do bring some interesting points to the discussions, so lets focus on that, and not the misguided attempt to manufacture censorship that is not in existence.

The 'leadership' of each supporters group at TFC have regular meetings (all groups at once) with the club to talk about things that are planned, or things that have arisen that need discussing. On the club side they get the "south end" filled for every game with flag waving supporters, banners, noise and smoke, all of which the players like and which is great for the marketing folks to use when advertising the club. They also get to tell us what "suggestions" or edicts have come down from MLS to the clubs. It was MLS who banned the streamers at corners for example, not the club. It was also the league who keep changing the bag policy which is now see-through bags only, no backpacks and a few other restrictions. They will also discuss any incidents that might occur which need resolved and where possible give the supporters group the ability to self-police to an extent. On the supporters side the club have done many things. Over and above making the sections all standing, where flags, banners and drums are encouraged, that have also assisted with the technical aspects of hanging TIFOs (which the supporters groups make), they have trained people up on the safe use of the smoke, they have allowed supporters groups to somewhat manage their own sections right down to season ticket level. For example, in an effort to stop touts getting tickets, all season ticket sales in the 'supporters section' are passed through the supporters groups to verify membership in the group before being processed by the club. This year, as they seek to get fans back in the ground post-pandemic, they have also created a supporters pub in a section of the stadium. Again, this requires membership of one of the supporters groups and the beers are $6 instead of $14 which is standard stadium price! Its not perfect and there are moments - on both sides - but for the most part it does work well.

All of this reminds me of TFC early years L-R : The burned pitch I mentioned earlier. Unofficial Flares. 3 pics of corner kick madness in the first season (not allowed to do that anymore)

The club have non-exclusive rights to broadcast their own games worldwide, subject to any local rules regarding UEFA (or other regional FIFA affiliated organizations) blackouts. The SFA have always requested that 3PM-5PM blackout period on a Saturday, hence why anything on telly then was before or after that time. This means that while the club could theoretically broadcast to Ireland, Europe, North America, Australia, they simply cannot do it within Scotland thanks to that SFA request and within England thanks to the FA request. While I would love them to broadcast to Canada on a Saturday, the cost to provide that service would far outweigh the potential revenue so there would be no benefit to them unfortunately. spot on.

Agree it is good to see the club engage with them. From experience at Toronto FC I can say that this works for both parties when both sides are engaged. If one side disengages then that's when problems begin. There will always be numpties (on both sides) but provided the requests from both sides are sensible and rules are understood and followed, and any problems are discussed rationally, then it can work really well. The question about the roof was addressed in the interview with CEO. With the concerts going on at the stadium over the summer, and the stage being in that area, the cost to add, remove and add back were prohibitive. Would be nice to see it happen though once concert season is over and whether or not the design of the roof or indeed the placement of the stage could take account of occasional concerts.

and yet there is the opposite side of the coin with an article about Section 94 that gives some hope to the club working with fans and fostering this whole 'together...NESS' cliche ... seems like a bit of a disconnect somewhere in the mix between these two areas.

Cant speak as someone with Asthma or any other respiratory condition but from personal experience, the "official" smoke used at Toronto FC nowadays is absolutely not as acrid as the smoke from flares or smoke bombs when it was unsanctioned and it also seems to dissipate faster in the air. I am assuming there were specific conditions or H&S considerations for the official smoke. Having said that, it does still hit the lungs if you are in amongst it so for an asthmatic it may not matter whether the smoke is sanctioned or unsanctioned. Those flares are brutal. Marine or road flares burn at an insane temperature and as you said, they are designed to still burn in water or on a rainy road so the only real way to put them out is to dump then in a bucket of sand. Most people who smuggle them in don't bring a bucket of sand so throw them to the touchline when they get too hot. I have experienced one flying over my head at an early TFC game and I was lucky .. these things drip like candle wax and if it gets on your skin you are pretty much guaranteed 3rd degree burns. I did not get any on me, but a woman closer to the pitch did and she got burned on the leg. It was a big story over here when combined with the $40K cost to replace a section of the pitch and directly led to more stringent security at TFC games (and an alcohol ban in our section for several years!)

The carer by the look of it : According to this page with single game tickets : https://ictfc.com/prices and also this page that shows half-season tickets : https://ictfc.com/2021-22-half-season-tickets-on-sale-now New season ticket prices due to be released shortly according to the CEO so you may want to wait a week or two to see what's publicised for 2022/23 season.

Hardy back to parent club. Think this also answers a few questions about standing by those who were injured. While it may cost us a few quid, standing by your players as they rehab from injury is not only morally the right thing to do, but also good for our reputation with players considering a move to the club. You want to work for an employer who knows how to treat you right!

There are two issues in streaming a game and I don't know all the current facts so comments below are based on my knowledge of how it used to be (pre-pandemic). Cost : There are obviously costs for ICT-TV but much of the capital expenditure and infrastructure is already in place so I am assuming the main costs are for bandwidth, internet speed/capacity, care/maintenance of equipment and whatever payments we are giving to the commentary team. If that all exceeds what we are bringing in from direct revenue and any sponsorship then maybe it does need to have budget reduced and go into a care and maintenance basis so we can ramp up again when needed and not have to start from scratch. It would be a shame but understandable. At worst it should be self-financing, at best it should bring in revenue. My experience: Personally we might have Terabytes of storage or a Microsoft 365 account where you get a ton of OneDrive space for a cheap yearly fee, but when you scale that to a business and need a lot of reliable bandwidth and storage the costs can quickly become astronomical. I know what I pay for this site for the year. Its a cloud based VPS server not a dedicated server so a few steps up from cheap hosting but still with modest processing power and storage but even that is more than 10X more expensive than the average cost of shared hosting. We manage to pay for that via Google ads based on our page view level and click throughs, but the club will need far more bandwidth than I pay for on here so unless there are a few hundred subscribers it would be a big ask I think. Media Rights : This is and always has been a minefield. Clubs own the non-exclusive rights to their own footage. It is this kind of thing that allows the old firm to stream all their games outside the UK regardless of day or time. However, where the minefield comes in is with UEFA blackouts and other arrangements. The SPFL/SFA do (or did, pre-pandemic) request a UEFA blackout for the traditional 3PM Saturday timeslot and I believe the English premiership do/did as well hence the reason so many matches get moved to weirder times for TV. Not sure about the rest of Europe, but the info is available on the UEFA website if you go hunting. This is largely what prevents clubs from streaming their games within the UK on a regular 3pm timeslot even though they have their own media rights. A statement that streaming is ending tin the UK sounds like the SFA and FA may be requesting the blackout periods again, which i am assuming were dropped during COVID to allow streaming. In that instance, the club can do very little unless they want to face off with not just the SPFL or SFA but also UEFA ! The SPFL/SFA also segment their rights by country and media type so its different arrangements in different countries for the premiership, championship, Scottish Cup and of course no radio coverage outside the UK as the BBC have UK rights but nobody has them outside the UK. My Experience : The SFA/SPL/SPFL (or whatever acronym you want to quote) have always seemed short-sighted about media rights. On any given Saturday (and many other days) I can watch football from Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, Argentina and many other countries - including live coverage of all MLS and Toronto FC games whether at home or away - on some combination of basic or standard subscription cable channels. At one point the SPL was available but it was on a premium subscription channel that required a subscription to that one channel on top of the main sports subscription package with a monthly charge of about the same as Netflix! It showed sports from around the world including up to 2 SPL games a week, usually at least one, if not both of which featured the OF matches from the Saturday or Sunday. Nowadays it has nothing and the only SPFL games in North America seem to be on Paramount+ who picked up the rights when ESPN dropped them and they have not exercised those rights in Canada. I would have been able to view the playoff games last week in the USA on a free trial of P+ but when I loaded it up in Canada it wasn't available. Yes I could use a VPN, but it also would not take a Canadian Credit Card for billing info for after the free trial. Neither the SPFL or Paramount+ responded to a (polite) tweet asking where I could legally watch the match in Canada! (oh well, at least my wee guy will be able to watch Sonic2 before the free trial of P+ expires tomorrow!). As for being able to listen to Radio Scotland on a Saturday afternoon for Open All Mics, I really dont see why this has to be blocked. They are not selling the rights elsewhere and the rights sold to the BBC are non-exclusive so they could enforce this if they wanted to or someone actually wanted to stream this outside the UK ... come on SPFL, throw us ex-pats a bone! I will even listen to Jim Traynor if I have to. Personally, if I am going to go to a Toronto FC match or any match then I am going to go, the fact that it is on TV has no bearing on my decision, and even if it did, as a season ticket holder at TFC, the club already got my cash ... However, MLS are definitely trying to grow their brand by not enforcing any blackout periods. Will be keeping an eye on newcomers Fubo TV and OneSoccer, both are streaming channels that seem to be scooping up some of those leagues that up to now were free to me on cable including EPL, Liga MX and I believe now Champions League for next year so even our landscape might change ... but it all starts with the leagues themselves and negotiating deals to promote rather than restrict their brands!

Robbo was quoted on the coverage as saying that the payments that come from the league in September would be £65,000 for the championship side and £650,000 for the premiership sides ! That is a large gulf. He then went on to compare crowds noting that we only had around 4500 away fans over the course of the season compared to 45,000 in the premiership. The crowd figures are perhaps an unfair comparison given COVID affected the numbers but it is clear there is indeed a large gulf and it will only get wider if thats the numbers we are talking about ... 10X more funding before a ball is even kicked and for sure higher levels of away support and although costs are higher i doubt they are 10X higher.

I am also aware of the same. I know of one family who have sponsored at least one player each year for nigh on 20 years but they are not sure whether they will continue for the same reasons noted. These are not businesses who are simply writing this off as a taxable donation or deduction, these are hardworking fans, who in addition to buying season tickets, shares, and merchandise also stump up to sponsor a player to 'do their bit' for the club. To be honest, I dont think they are even that bothered with the sponsors' evening or any 'free' lunch/dinner - they just want the club to engage with the fans and at least acknowledge things outside of times where they are sending an invoice or request for cash! From our perspective - we will continue our sponsorship for as long as people on the site want to do it. If we struggle to reach the target or people are no longer interested we would review. I had a chance to speak to Keith at the club recently and put a face to the name. He seemed reasonable enough, but I guess our requirements in going to any event such as a sponsors' evening (no-one ever seems to want to) or individual outlay (per person) is not such that it really comes on our radar as something that sticks in the throat in the same way as it would for someone shelling out £420+ on their own. Technically you do really - as a member of our player sponsor group

I think this is the wrong decision for UK viewers and beyond. If COVID has taught us anything it is that the virtual space can be a revenue generator when used correctly. Whether that's a centralised service from the SPFL or clubs on their own, the monies obviously spent in upgrading infrastructure for live streaming should not go to waste. I am sure there are many people who might consider a virtual season ticket, one-off games, or even a season pass for all games (if it were centralised with revenue splits for all clubs). Also think that season ticket holders should still get this perk (either natively or as an optional add-in for £1 or £2 per game surcharge) as they already have a ticket whether they use it or not … in fact, it may be a selling point or a decision maker on whether to buy that season book or not for out of town fans who think they may only get to games every so often but know they could view online. The one caveat would be the cost to the club - if it can be self-financing or sponsored so its not a drain on resources then that's fine, but if the bandwidth and other costs are higher than the revenue then it is understandable to wind it down a bit or only do it where it might make sense.

Yup. Toronto FC faced the same problems in the early years ... our support was young and rambunctious and flares were often smuggled into the stadium. These were road flares so not safe at all, burning at some ridiculous temperature and then having to be thrown onto the pitch (a plastic one in our first season, replaced by grass in season 2 thankfully) when they literally got too hot to handle. Lots of reports of people getting scalding residue on them as they flew through the air (the flares not the fans) and on one occasion it burned a hole in a small section of the plastic pitch that cost about $40K to replace. It was also very acrid and horrible in your lungs and I do recall having to go for a few glasses of medicinal whisky on one particular occasion. Took a few years, but in the end the club actually got regular communication going with all supporters groups in our 'south end' and established a lot of common sense stuff including the use of flags, smoke, drums, etc. There are signs around now that note its a supporters section so if you are offended by standing or flags or other things that might affect your viewing, then its too bad! The club also paid for nominated people to go on H&S course so they could safely let off controlled smoke (looks like flares but not burning at such a high temperature or carbonising your lungs). Safety protocols are in place, sand is present for extinguishing etc and the 'flares' are approved for use in this environment. Kenny Cameron did try to get the stewards to ease up on the younger fans a few years ago, but I think there is a real chance of sustaining that if we encourage the club to work with the section 94 guys to enhance the atmosphere ... but its a two-way street. As one specific supporters group at TFC found out, if you take a mile when offered an inch then you face consequences. They broke the agreed rules a fair bit and got a lot of repercussions that somewhat filtered to the other groups but overall amongst the club and most groups its a pretty healthy relationship. They even let the groups manage the season ticket relocations in our sections, ensuring that the ticket holders are genuine members of each supporters group before approving the request ...

One of the better media types, that's for sure. Some of the pundits and 'analysts' on Sportsound have been right wallopers, but as you say RG always seems fair to all. Him and Jim Spence always seemed ok to me. As for Traynor, best asy nothing there, dont want to ban myself

Jake Mulraney has moved from Atlanta United to Orlando City in MLS. The trade was $200,000 in 'allocation money'* which is quite high for MLS as it forms part of your wage budget and what you can spend on overall contracts in a year ... it may increase to $275,000 based on him hitting performance benchmarks. Didnt realise he had moved until I saw him come on as a sub against Toronto last weekend!

I could see it stopping for the head knock, but don't think Samuels was offside, not when the ball was played. The ref not blowing for the head knock was definitely good fortune. Probably because our guy got up ... but you got to play the whistle and McAlear did just that

... and with Devine and Duffy available for the next leg, therefore strengthening our defence, signs are positive that we can get this done !

Think the team talk was a good one ! I didnt get to see first half as the source I got was showing PGA Golf ... but found another feed and have been able to watch second half. Sounds like first half was bad but we are definitely not outclassed during this 45. Great build-up play for the first goal and nice finish from McAlear but holy **** what a sublime free-kick for his second. That was in the proverbial postage stamp. World class placement if he meant it.

Thanks - but in this case it wont help. My work VPN actually shows us as in California so when I turn it off I can login in Canada from my home connection, login to paramount+ and see basically just on demand stuff available in Canada, no live streaming. When I turn the VPN on, it wont let me logon. Appears that Paramount+ Canada and USA have different login systems even though the URL is exactly the same. Also cant use a USA address and a Canadian Credit Card to signup for USA trial ... and as I am supposed to be working, cant devote too much time to it Apparently my only option today is to watch Real Madrid play Real Betis !

or not USA only it would appear. logged in on my Canadian IP address and trial account and going to the page they show in their FAQ going back to the same page not logged in but using work VPN which is US based ... I see it advertised but