DoofersDad

And with only 3 games left there is still no club that can’t either win promotion or get relegated

HT 1-0 FT 2-2 ICT White Ope Kiltie Crowd 1571

Liam was the first one to come over and acknowledge the support of the fans.

Absolutely agree, RiG. Putting your house up for sale may indicate you're looking for a new house in the area more suitable for a long term commitment to the area.

Agree with OCG, but it would be a worry if we were to lose Ridgers. After a shaky start he has been generally outstanding for us. Arguably the player I would most want to hang on to, and I am sure there are a lot of teams who have been keeping tabs on him. It's the nature of our club though. We bring struggling players in, develop them and then lose them when other clubs offer them shed loads more than we can afford. Being a professional footballer is a short career and you can't blame these guys for moving on . We just have to accept the harsh financial realities and be grateful for the contributions they have made to the club.

I'm afraid you are going to be disappointed. I'll be sorry to see Liam go but we've lost better players than him before and not missed them as much as we feared. I think that with the youngsters coming on well, and the likes of Walsh, Welch, Trafford and Chalmers all developing, then if we can retain them we will have decent options in midfield next season without needing to bring more players in. I think we may need a bit more cover in defence and options up front. There will be no cash to splash and I imagine that the money available to spend on new signings will be largely dependent on cash freed up from the wages of those who leave. Perhaps a little bit more if we get a fee for someone still on contract.

There was a bit of bemused laughter when that was announced. Poor Carl alone took the best part of a minute to hobble off from one side of the park to the other - my hands were sore from clapping him all the way off! I can't remember a game when there has been as little as just one minute added time. Maybe the BBC needed the extra time for analysis of the 3 given goals and the disallowed goal.

We discussed it at the time and it really is a horrible policy the SFA have. The English system is way better although 40 medals seems a bit OTT. You don't win a final if you haven't won your ties in the previous rounds. and there are likely to several players who featured in previous rounds but not the final. There are also many unsung heroes behind the scenes, for instance, it is not just the manager / head coach does the work in getting the team to play as they do, other members of the coaching staff have a vital role to play as do staff such as the physios who may have worked miracles to get certain players match fit. The team is bigger than just the players on the park.

HT 1-0 FT 3-1 ICT White Hearts Ikpeazu Crowd 18,701 First Yellow Tremarco Time of first goal 42 mins

I've heard we've sold around 3,000 tickets. It's disappointing it's not more, but it would appear to be a good few more than come to watch home games in the league. Hopefully a good performance will persuade a few folk to come along and support the lads in the bread and butter games as well.

Watkins, Shinnie and Christie were all signed up by the club when the budget for signing players was far less than Hughes had at its disposal. What successive managers have been good at is identifying young players with promise or perhaps some not so young who appear to be under-performing at the clubs they are at, and realising that potential. Esson, Warren, Raven, Tremarco, Draper, Tansey, Mckay, Doran are all examples of that and there are many others. But that stopped with Hughes. He had the biggest player budget any manager of this club has ever had, but just who are the signings he made who have gone on to give the type of impact at the club that the players I have listed have done?

I don't expect us to win, but I think we can win. The great thing about the cup is that it is not necessarily the best teams who get to the later stages or even win it. It is the side who gets the breaks and who up their game for the 2 or 3 games which really matter. In 2014-15 we both got the breaks and upped our game for the semi-final against Celtic but otherwise struggled against lower ranked sides - yet we still won the cup! This season we needed a replay to get past Edinburgh City but then upped our game against 2 sides above us in the league. Hearts will be firm favourites to win, and in a season when the Scottish Cup would seem to be their most likely route to European football, there will be huge expectation for them to win. All the pressure will be on them. If they don't have the game comfortable relatively early they will get more and more anxious. The stage is set for an upset! However, let's not get too upset if the reality is that we get blown away. At the start of the season, getting into the semis would have been a distant dream. With the club's financial situation there have had to be significant cuts to the playing budget and Robbo and his team have done brilliantly to both get us into the play off positions in the league and to get to the semi-final of the Scottish Cup. Come what may, let's just enjoy an unexpected trip to Hampden and cheer our lads on to the end. They deserve no less.

There sure is. Alloa's 3 wins in a row have certainly made things interesting. Our promotion play off place is far from guaranteed and if Dunfermline make up a bit of ground on Ayr and us we might go into the final round of games with no club definitely staying in the championship next season. The play offs certainly keep the interest going. Mind you, in the English league one relegation battle where there are no play-offs with only 5 games to go only 6 points separate 13th from 23rd with 3 of those sides going down.

I think Ray Stewart hit the ball harder from the spot than anyone I can remember. Keepers didn't try to get in the way of his shots, they tries to get out of the way! It takes an exceptional player to consistently send the keeper the wrong way or to hit it so accurately that even if the keeper goes the right way, he;s not going to reach it. Keepers are always going to get lucky from time to time and the best way to make sure they don't get lucky to often is to hit the ball hard. We did great in the cup game but we really should have a better conversion rate for penalties in regulation time. Of course sometimes it is the penalty takers who get lucky! Saw this on the BBC website today. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/47865731

Some have questioned whether a club of our size actually needs a CEO. My answer to that is that it all depends on whether the club wants to grow and compete at the top level of Scottish football or whether we are content to be an average 2nd tier side with more chance of going down than up. The separation of the day to day management of the club from the strategic oversight of the Board is an important one. It allows those doing the day to day work to be properly accountable to the Board in a way which is not possible if Chairman and other directors are taking the responsibility for managing their own strategy. That works fine for a small, part time enterprise but not for a business where there is work going on on a number of fronts. I feel pretty positive about this appointment. Scot Gardiner brings a wealth of high level football experience to the club and, to me, his appointment demonstrates some considerable ambition on behalf of the Board. Not only does he have high level relevant experience to do the job and help other staff in doing theirs, but that experience should be invaluable to the Board in providing advice and information which will help the Board in formulating the strategic aims of the club. Of course, Mr Gardiner's appointment will not come cheap and we are a club in a difficult financial position. There will, therefore be an expectation that his contribution to the club pays his way and makes a positive contribution to the club's balance sheet. Hopefully ,as a football man, he can earn the trust and respect of those associated with the club in a way in which the previous CEO unfortunately could not. If he can, then this may well be a pivotal moment in the club's development. As we celebrate a successful first 25 years of the club, I sense the club is developing a more business like approach to the business of football. Of course we want to spend more money on the footballing side of things, but without a solid business structure embedded in the community the club simply won't generate the resource to do that.

Strikers need providers and yet again it is Liam Polworth who heads the list by some margin with 11 in the league so far. Probably in the top 2 or 3 in the division I would guess.

I didn't go to the first away game against Ayr back in January but I have just noticed that the referee on that occasion was none other than Nick Walsh. Just 5 people filled in the match day poll on that occasion with 2 rating his performance as "moderate, 1 as "p*ss poor" and 2 as "terrible". And these were ratings on the back of a spirit lifting 3-2 win! Tuesday was therefore not the first time that he has failed to satisfy the ICT fans' objective judging panel.

HT 0-1 FT 1-1 ICT Walsh Opp Shankland Crowd 2096

It may be a reflection of the ethos of the 2 clubs. I may be biased of course, but I think successive managers have wanted to put honest teams out on the pitch. Of course, there has always been an element of the street wise but there has never been a nasty element. The same, unfortunately can't be said of County this season. There is a nasty streak there and the way Draper played last night made it look as though he had been tasked to intimidate our midfield by fair means or foul. Ably assisted by an abysmal referee, his job was well and truly done by half time with one of our players sent off and others having taken knocks. Trafford's bookings may have been fair enough but I'm sure he only went in to the tackle as he did because he was incensed that the referee had not blown for the foul on Polworth. We are a young side and a lot of these bookings are the result of a bit of inexperience. Draper showed his experience and Trafford showed his inexperience. These games require cool heads and discipline and I don't think it helps when these young lads see fans on social media saying they aren't trying hard enough. They were trying alright! I heard a lot of angry shouting last night imploring players to get stuck in and challenge, take players on or shouting that they should have made an effort to cut out the pass, but more often than not, the player would have simply left space for the opposition to play the ball into if they had followed the fans' advice. Just because you are not running around like headless chickens does not mean you are not trying. The problem is they sometimes try too hard and end up getting out of position or losing possession by taking an unnecessarily risky option. There is a need to maintain discipline both in how the players react to the opposition winding them up and how they go about the game plan. Trafford will learn from last night but I thought it was a really gutsy 2nd half performance from the lads. For me, it underlined that regardless of what position we and County end up in the league, we will have more reason to feel proud of our team that the County fans will of theirs.

The 2nd half was always going to be difficult with 10 against 12, but I'm really proud of the way the players responded. The unfairness of the decisions must have made it desperately frustrating for them and having picked up yellow cards they had to be very careful not to give that disgrace of a referee the opportunity to have us down to 9 men. Yes, there were times when the frustration of nothing going our way made heads drop a bit, but in general we kept pressing and looking for the equaliser and were definitely the better side. I don't suppose County fans will be caring how they win but they demonstrated precious little for their fans to take any pride in. They set out to stop us playing and to kick us off the park. No doubt Draper will get their MOTM for his 1st half hatchet job. In the 2nd half with the lead and a numerical advantage they never tried to play proper football. They simply kept to their nasty, disrupting, fouling game and added in a considerable amount of time wasting. It wasn't pretty but it was perhaps a reflection of the fact that they know we are a better footballing side than them. Ably assisted by the referee, they were able to hold out - but not without a scare or two. As for Tom Walsh being subbed, I imagine that he is not yet considered fit enough for a full game following his injury. I thought he played very well.

The wrong Walsh was substituted.

HT 1-0 FT 1-1 ICT Polworth Opp Mullin Crowd 3889

The chair, secretary and myself as vice-chair of the Supporters Trust had a meeting on Friday with the Graham Rae and Gordon Fyfe. It was the first time that representatives of the new Supporters Trust Board had formally met with the Chairman and we had a very useful meeting. There was no specific agenda but we spent the time chatting around a variety of issues and developing an understanding of how the Trust and supporters generally can link in and help with the work of the club. They certainly seem keen to have our active input. The Chairman felt that meetings every 4 to 6 weeks seemed appropriate and for these to have specific outcomes identified so that it becomes a channel for getting things done and not just a talking shop. That is a very welcome response from our perspective. On a wider supporter basis, Gordon Fyfe will be trying to arrange a second "SLO" meeting with fans to which anybody would be welcome to come along and discuss any issues of concern. Hopefully that will happen before the end of the season. The Trust has a been doing a bit of work behind the scenes on a few issues. This includes working on providing better match day facilities for our disabled supporters, developing a survey for fans to feedback about the matchday experience and organising an end of season party at the ground as part of the 25th anniversary celebrations. More detail on these will follow soon.

I think some folk are being rather unduly negative. Sure, we weren't at our best but let's give a bit of credit to Falkirk who are a much better side now than the team that beat us here earlier in the season to end our unbeaten run. They strengthened considerably in January and have lost only once in 2019 - a 2-1 loss away to league leaders County. In that game they may have conceded 2 goals but they restricted County to just 4 attempts on goal over the 90 minutes. Today was also the first time Falkirk have failed to score in 2019, a fact for which our defence deserve a bit of credit.

Not a great spectacle. We lacked the sharpness we have shown recently but we were generally pretty solid. It was a better performance than a spectacle because it was a game where defences dominated. When we were a bit bolder going forward at the end we nearly nicked and would have done so but for some back to the wall defending. A bolder approach earlier on might well have paid dividends. For the most part our defence looked very solid and the highly thought of Zak Rudden barely got a touch. It might turn into a valuable point for us.