Allan Moore's comments about the amount of travelling Stirling has to do this season are interesting ones, as he highlights the ever-rising fuel costs as a factor that could cripple some clubs this season.

Is there too much travelling for lower league sides having to travel the length and breadth of the country with restricted budgets or should a regionalised set-up below Division One be considered that could allow clubs to play with some extra cash saved from travelling as well as fans having to cover the same distances to support them?

Every team has to travel. Central belt teams will obviously spend less travelling than others so I don't kknow why Stirling should be unduly affected. The SFL should not be regionalised, if a pryamid came in, that should be regionalised.

Getting the excuses in early is what I call this.

What's he on about,we need to spend £300 on a bus for the HOME games.

In the words of Norman Tebbit, "Get on your bike". Stirling Players could organise a team bike ride to teams within a few miles such as Alloa, Raith Rovers and East Fife.

The club would save a bit of money and the players would get super fit.

IMO it will be the cost of players travelling expenses to and from Edinburgh/Glasgow to the Central Belt clubs for training and match day travel rather than run of the mill coach expenses to take them to the out-posts in the SFL which will cost more. I know one club have cut petrol expenses for players travel drastically.

When Albion won promotion to Division 1 2 seasons ago, I remember one of the first comments Moore made was that he was happy he didnt have to travel to places like Peterhead anymore.

I do agree with the Stranraer fan though, there are many clubs/fans a lot worse off than us central-belters when it comes to travelling.

Probably cos other clubs are generally well run and would be able to think of ways to cover the shortfall, whereas our board will do piss all.

For me as a fan, the travelling is a good thing, the away days trips to Ayr, Dingwall, Stranraer and the like.

And even at that you're not exactly travelling far, it's a small country and for the central belt teams even the furthest trips would be relatively local games for most English teams - are there any clubs more than, say, two and a half hour's drive from Stirling?

a friend of mine remembers the celtic squad getting the same train as fans back from aberdeen....perhaps clubs should look at the £1 megabus deals to save money.

i love the fact that every body thinks going to peterhead is like travelling to the moon and back,its 45mins past aberdeen its feck all!!

anyway friends and family rail cards are the way forward £40 for 4 people anywhere in the country then hire local buses to get you the rest of the way,thats £200 for 20 people and say £100 for local bus hire £300 smackers all in

The travelling to me is part of football. Whether it's player's or fans, if amateur teams can afford team transport surely to hell the 2nd divison can!

It's about 4 hours from the Central Belt/Glasgow to Peterhead which is a fair treck especially when you consider that not that long ago that the maximum journey time for a centrally based lower league team was about 2 hours.

Obviously costs are increasing and longer journies are going to cost the equivalent of a couple of weeks wages for a player, but every club is in the same boat. Times are getting tight in football with several clubs now in real financial difficulty but you need to cut your cloth accordingly. Fans obviously want to see better players attracted to their club but this should not put the club's existence into question. If clubs need to cut back on wages and take the hit of dropping down a level to stay afloat then so be it.

This is never going to be easy from a fans point of view but some of the wages in the lower leagues seem astronomically high in relation to turnover as clubs attempt an all or nothing push for promotion. At the Warriors we are very fortunate to everything under control but in the next few years I'm sad to say that a few clubs may be in real danger of going out of business