ictchris

Accies have banned fans for being involved in a fight with St Mirren fans. I think the counterfeit money fans were Motherwell fans. ictchris - for all your fan ban information needs.

1-1, Ian Murray own goal! Early kick off because the East Stand at Easter Road is demolished, presumably.

Forgot this kicked off at 2pm. Colin Nish, good to know he is allowed to score against teams other than us.

I can do a report ont he Partick game on the 27th.

I don't want County in a semi-final. Hibs to win 5-0. I have instructed my Hibbee mates to keep me updated on how long it takes for their fans to sing a song about Caley, I'm thinking it will be within the first five minutes. I live near Hibs ground and was faced with dozens of tinks wandering the streets a few minutes ago when I nipped out to Greggs. Ugh. Still, at least the Romany woman who sells the Big Issue outside Scot-Mid has some kindred spirits about today.

Rooney has scored 18 goals this season. I was just looking at who got the assists and it breaks down roughly thus: Imrie - 3 Foran - 3 Hayes - 3 Penalties - 7 (including the goal against County when he knocked in the rebound) Won the ball himself - 2 Reading through some of the other reports a rough estimate to how many assists Rooney has chalked up is around three or four.

I think they had a clause to buy him back at teh end of his first season with us. As Rooney isn't six foot six and can't throw the ball 100 yards I doubt Tony Pulis would be interested anyway.

Just turned on Radio Nan Gaidheal and they were speaking Gaelic. Either that or the open all mics crowd were turned into babbling idiots thanks for Barrowman's goal.

County one up, Barrowman.

We are going to need a near perfect run in to challenge for the title. Very frustrating stuff. If our forward line plays well I don't think there's a better attackuing force in the league but we seem to let points slip too often.

2-2

Can't listen to this, might go out for a run. Fvcking hell.

Fvck. 1-2, Kerr

Penalty for County Scored, 1-0 County, Brittain.

Woot woot. PS - What is CaleyStan posting?

Shane Sutherland scored for Elgin today.

Dundee probably started the better of the two sides but didn't have any real chances. Caley then came into it and had a large spell on top. A huge chance was wasted when Rooney was unmarked at the back post but turned his effort away from an open goal with Douglas already beaten.

is it Dean McDonald?

Me neither I haven't been to a game in ages, it's ****. Surely a trip to Dundeh is what any discerning lady wants for her birthday? A romantic stroll up the hill, a small sherry in the Troll bar and then onto Dens for a peh.

What do you mean by "community club"? Because Stranraer are geographically far away from other senior clubs they have more right to exist than Stenhousmuir? More people support Stenhousmuir than Stranraer, Stenny have had a bigger average crowd than Stranraer over the last ten years by miles just about every year. Stranraer are actually one of the poorest supported teams in Scotland - so far this year their average crowd is probably less than Clach's! What sort of area are they serving? You say that Stenny have clubs on their doorstep so would be booted out under your system but the reason there are quite a few clubs in that area is that there are plenty of reasonably sized towns there. Larbert, Stenhousmuir, Camelon, Denny - these are reasonably big places, lots of people live in Central Scotland, hence there are more teams. What you are suggesting is the franchising of football and that certainly wouldn't work at the level you are talking about in Scotland. Good players will usually end up at clubs at a higher level, that'll be the case whether Albion Rovers are playing in the West Region Juniors or the Third Division. What's stopping Stirling and Queens signing all these hidden gems now? Nothing. Simply removing clubs from the league won't result in the resources (players, fans, coaches etc) being shared out among the remaining clubs. the good players will always rise to the top, no matter what the structure is. Going by current league standings you would have a lower league of Raith, Morton, Ayr Utd, Airdrie, Alloa, Stirling, Cowdenbeath, Brechin, Peterhead, Stenhousmuir, Dumbarton, East Fife, Arbroath, Clyde, Livingston, East Stirling, Forfar and Berwick. Is that so much more attractive and exciting than the set up we have at the moment? I don't think that the clubs who you would jettison (Queens Park, Annan, Albion Rovers, Stranraer, Elgin and Montrose) have many players who could add to the clubs staying in the league. Do you think that the existing SPL clubs and fans would be fired with enthusiasm about being joined by Dundee, us, County, partick, Pars and Queens? The only way to improve Scottish football is to improve the quality of play. The only way to do that is for clubs to be better run, to make better commercial decisions and to use this to sign better players. Expelling a few teams into the non-league set up or the Juniors wouldn't do anything to help this.

I can't go

Why should Stranraer be given entry to your league but Stenhousmuir be denied? Stenny's crowds are bigger than Stranraer's. Stirling, who you also mention, get a couple of hundred more, not many at all. The phrase a 'better concentration of players' is meaingless. If players who played for Stenny and Albion Rovers were good enough to play at a higher level then they will be signed up by a better team - this would be the same whether you had a league of 36 or 42. Clubs like Stirling Albion and Queen of the South are not sitting around saying 'if only all the best players weren't playing for Albion Rovers or Stenhousmuir we'd be in the SPL!'. Clubs in the Third Division aren't the problem in Scottish football. The problem is that clubs higher up in the leagues have squandered money and wasted opportunities in the last decade and more. Binning a few teams from the SFL won't make the SPL a better league, it won't make the national team perform better and it won't add any more fans to the gate. Let's be clear - the SPL will not get a bigger TV deal by admitting Dundee, Ross County, Caley and Partick Thistle. The combined average gate of these four clubs this season is around 12,000 - even if every single one of these people signed up to ESPN HD it would be a paltry ammount. No significant number of customers are going to sign up for pay TV to watch sides like us, Dunfermline, Partick etc. All ESPN, Sky et al are interested in is showing Rangers and Celtic games as they are the only one's that will attract significant audiences. Maybe (a big maybe) if Aberdeen or one of the Edinburgh clubs made a sustained title push (like Hearts in 2005/06) they might get an audience but the clubs outside the 'Big Five' are insigificant. Setanta's viewing figures for games like us v Accies last season or St Mirren v Falkirk were notoriously low.

Pwopah nawty.

From a selfish perspective increasing the number of teams could see us promoted and that would be great. However, I don't think that the way to improve the SPL is to further dilute the quality of teams in the league for the sake of variety. Also, it's wrong to pin the blame on the Old Firm for the way Scottish football has become poorer over the last few years - if you think that any of the other clubs would agree to a 16 team league with 30 games a season then you're kidding yourself. That sort of set up would significantly reduce the money that clubs would make from the gate - currently SPL clubs play 18-20 home games per season, taking that down to 15 is a loss that most clubs wouldn't be able to take on the chin. TV money wouldn't increase to cover the losses and cup attendances are lower than in teh league so putting a group stage in the League Cup would be a non-starter. The main reason why Scottish football is in a poor state is due to the ridiculous decisions taken by the SPL board and the club directors over the last decade or so. The SPL had a great TV deal from Sky but rejected an extension to try to set up their own TV station - the stupidity of this still makes me smile. Then, just as the league pulled itself up by the bootstraps, they signed a massive deal with Setanta, just as many analysts were pointing out that the company were going into difficulties. The collapse of Setanta has left the SPL out of pocket on TV money for the second time in less than ten years, yet how many chairman, board members, chief executives have been held to account? Incidentally, on each occasion the Old Firm have been on the right side of the argument - they rejected the SPL TV farce and they (alongside Aberdeen) wanted to take the SKy option last time out. Blaming the Old Firm is always fun but in these instances they aren't the villans. One thing I do think would be a positive move is for there to be play-offs between the 11th side in the SPL and the 2nd team in teh First. No reason why this couldn't happen, it'd be a good wee end to the season and would liven up both the SPL and SFL1.

I can't go.