They charged £8 to get in yesterday, and £5 for kids, a complete rip-off when you consider that Pollok charged £5 for their game. They didn't dish out admission tickets either so how do Bathgate know they're getting the proper cut of the gate money?

Shocking rip-off if you ask me, considering that was basically just an average junior match.

It was quite funny though, listening to the pensioners complain.

this must surely be down to the fact that b/gate have a shite support and they wanted to make a wee bit more money.but i cant see why lochee would rip of the home fans who go every week.they might have had a bigger support from people who dont usualy go but went because it was the big scottish.and after inflating the prices will they be back.(dont think so.)they might even have put of regular supporters about returning.

Would the entry fee not be decided by both clubs? Might be different with Scottish Cup, but in the juniors both teams must agree to any extra put on the charges.
As regards tickets, this is a real problem with certain clubs, and Lochee aren't the only ones that refuse to give tickets.
On numerous occassions when the Rose visit in a cup tie the home club insist that they are honest and that the correct money is passed on, however, Rose fans will know that the attendance given is often way lower than that which paid to get in.
It's a pity that the Rose feel that they now have to put a "counter" on the gates to compare figures.
The seniors are just as guilty.

the rules of the Scottish Cup (Paragraph 40) state:

Subject to a minimum adult non concessionary charge for admission to matches in the
Preliminary Round (if applicable), Round One, Round Two and Round Three, of £5, and of
£8 for matches in subsequent Rounds excluding the Semi-Final and Final Ties, the charges for admission shall be arranged by the competing clubs. If they are unable to agree, the charges which are normally made for the regular fixtures of the club at whose ground the match is to be played, will apply.

Quite clearly, the minimum charge for rounds 1-3 is £5. It's £8 from round 4. And Bathgate must have agreed this charge or you'd have been forced to charge £5 which is the normal entry fee for a league game. I find it quite incredible that officials of 2 clubs could mis-read or mis-understand such a basic set of rules. On that basis, and on the basis that entry fees for the Pollok game were known to supporters well in advance of their match with Spartans, I'm afraid it looks like Lochee and Bathgate just wanted to rip their own supporters off. You may say it's not the case but a basic check would have confirmed the current position of the SFA.


taken from another site

At Lok it was discussed whether a rise was in order or not, as we'd charged a tenner for the Montrose game. However it was felt as Spartans charge less than we do for league games we'd be taking the proverbial to raise the prices even by a quid.

Whilst I'm on the theme of rip-off at Lochee, there must have been a crowd of 350-400 there yesterday, the prizes in the raffle were:

1st: £10
2nd: £5
3rd: £5

That was it, £20 payout on something that they must have takes £100's

What £8 to get into that dump,thats a complete joke.

Lets face it though, this seems the norm for the juniors, either that or a bottle of spirits to the winner.

I know Bankies do the 50-50 draw, which means the winner normally takes a minimum of £50-£60 (rising to well over £100 in the bigger games) but what do other clubs do for their halftime draw.

In my experiences, for smaller crowds clubs normally halve the raffle takings between winnings and what they keep.

Now I appreciate that very few if any would halve the raffle if they have just taken in eg £300, but I would expect a decent pay out of at least £20 with a few runner's up at £15/£10.

when linlithgow played kelty in the final of the junior cup im sure it was £7 entry.anybody confirm this,still cant believe i was allowed into a senior scottish ground that day.

Confirmed. I'm sure it was roughly the same price for this years final as well.

It was £7 LYT, you'd have to been wearing a t.o.t range Bo'ness top to be refused entry .In Lochees defence tho, i bet they got no help or guidance from blazer brigade at sfa headquarters ,i'm affraid we will allways be shit on there shoes(unless they can score freebies oot it).Anyway !!Long live the juniors.

this was not scottish junior cup - me thinks S.F.A. set the prices - this is number 1 comp. appart from poss. premier league- i don't think £8 and £5 excessive was worth every penny and you would say the same if your team were still in the cup come on burnie before you buy any raffle you ask what prizes are yous are oot the cup deal with it

£8 to see Bathgate getting humped. Looks like good value to me.

He's not a Bathgate fan but his team will not play in the big cup in the foreseeable future. There's a clue in his name if you look closely but I'm sure he'll come on to tell you himself.

As for raffle tickets, you know when you buy them it's a contribution to club funds more than anything else, but the club's take seems a bit excessive in this case.

And who's going to walk away from the gate, refusing to pay the extra to get in when you've made the effort to get there? Of course you'll pay up, even if you grumble a bit, as you've no choice.

In fairness to the SFA, the rules are there for clubs to read. LYT has posted them already in this thread. If they can be found within minutes simply by checking the SFA web pages, how can it be that 2 clubs entering a major competition for the first time can't be bothered to have a look themselves? Clearly Pollok knew the rules. Whether you think £8 is value or not is a personal decision. But the inference is that Lochee would not have charged £8 if they had been aware that they could have charged less. My argument is that one or both of Bathgate and Lochee should have known the actual position. Then, if they decide the game is worth charging £8 to get in, they should stand up and defend that decision. I don't think the SFA have done anything wrong. In fact, I'd be surprised if copies of the rules (or details of where to find them) were not sent out to all participating clubs - maybe that is too much to ask. Ignorance of the rules is never an excuse that's accepted in football.

Fairness and SFA in the same sentence .Come on HTG !!. .Show some sympathy to Lochee, but not to Bathgate(Wullie Hill -an on tra penewer)Surely!! .He should have known or one of his lawyers.!!!!ANYWAY that moanin face cvnt"Love"is oot the big cup again.!!Come on the CHEE!!best of luck in the next round no matter the cost "yer worth it" .

Pollok charged £5, the minimum as set by SFA rules, was the Pollok v Spartans game worth £3 less? I think not. Was Lochee Utd v Bathgate Th in the Scottish Cup worth £3 more than Lochee Utd v Bathgate Th in the Superleague? I think not. To make matters worse, no admission tickets were distributed on entry, this is even a requirement in the Junior Cup so why not the so called big cup? Leaves it wide open to abuse.

Raffles? how often do you ask what the prize is before parting with your cash? most clubs don't decide what to pay out until they know what they've taken in so it's a pointless question, but £20 in prize money is extracting the urine.

As for being "oot the cup", we were never in it

Sorry Newport - fairness and the SFA should never be used together under normal circumstances.

I'm just surprised that both clubs agreed to this error. I wasn't there and so I don't really care whether there was a mistake or a deliberate attempt to maximise income on the day. An outsider looking in would conclude that:

• £8 and £5 on the say-so of the SFA when the rules are quite clear otherwise
• A really poor raffle prize against an attendance of 350-500
• No receipt for admittance

all adds up to clubs trying to maximise income (in case they got beat) but deflect responsibility somewhere else.

Lochee have already said they made a mistake. Some fans are not bothered that the price was £8. Others are peeved because they didn't expect anything like this - they knew the Pollok price. I think if this had been at Bathgate and they'd charged £8, Hill would have been crucified on here - mistake or not.

is creameryparkfan oops sorry. joethistle gone and died on us.he might like to add what he thought he would have been looking at paying for admission.
as said before if you turn up after a long journey you would probably, well defo pay what was being asked.but this is about to do with the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing,so feck the punters.

Nobody's actually complaining that we are out of the cup, we were very poor as usual, and Lochee fully deserved to progress.

Think about it though, pensioners, juveniles etc don't really have money to throw away, so if you have travelled all the way from Bathgate, paid £10 for a bus and turn up at the gate to find you have to pay an extra £3 for lets face it, nothing different from a superleague match, your'e going to be a bit annoyed.

Also, how are Lochee allowed serve up some of the pish that they sell at their snack bar, or did I just turn up, on a day, when treating the actual supporters correctly, came second fiddle, to entertaining the dignatries, who were at their first football match since they were ten. Or were the "Blue Belles" just having an off day, because I wouldn't have given that to my dog.

I did manage to nab myself a free programme though!

You'll have to explain what that is to the Rose boys...

I suppose if the programmes were free that sort of makes up for the extra £3.

Or did you just nick it?

Programmes were £1.50

Sounds strange that there was no official counting method, I've been to Junior Cup games where a man stood with a clicker to count the people coming in as "this lot ripped us off last time" and if a small Junior team can arrange that then why can't Lochee or Bathgate?

c,mon min hes fae bathgate

sorry but it must have been a bad day at the pie-hut,its usually very good the hame made soup wi roll is braw. oh and the chips

The programme wasn't nearly worth £1.50. It was good, but not as good as the fantastic programmes at Tayport, and they cost £1.

And fair enough about the pie hut. It may have just been an off day, so i'll try again next time round.

when does loves ban start

Pollok got most things right on Saturday - £5 entry and a quid for a programme. Couple of things though - the prizes 2 x £20 and 1 x £10 - they must have sold a good £500 worth of tickets at the very least - I bought 3 of them and 2 proggies. The proggie - albeit not too bad was a bit short on readability.

That said the gripes are pretty small - Newlandsfield seemed to cope very well with a decent crowd and Pollok were very well organised. Must be a bit disappointed in the atmosphere though. It was a decent enough game with a lot of chances so you'dve thought they'd have been a bit more excited ... Apart from the complete loon a wee bit up from me who was embarrassing himself with his shouts ... it was a bit like Fergie's Aberdeen crowds - the sweetie bags were making a lot of noise.

All the best to the Lok next week - I hope they can put together a wee run.

BTW - was there ANY Spartans support there ?? Big Cup day and if there were more than a dozen visiting fans then i'll be surprised. Not a big advert for that level of football ... perhaps they shouldn't be allowed into the cup ? Eh Mickey ?

He appealed against the second red, and the appeal hearing, at the Bo'ness game was two weeks away, so he was allowed to play against Lochee. I suppose the hearing will be soon, but I don't know the exact date.

It's his word against the Ref's though, so his case will probably be thrown out, and his ban will be extended from three to five matches.

£500 quid in half time draw tickets? Pardon?? If we took more than two hundred quid in those ticket sales I'd be stunned. I sell h/t draw tickets sometimes and they don't sell that well. Occasionally we're talking maybe only £40 worth. It's not a 50-50 draw AFAIK, I've no idea what amount is put up as the prize money.

The Pollok prog IMO is one of the most informative out there, I know the work that goes into it to make it so, and I personally prefer something I can reference as opposed to endless rambling self-indulgent articles that can crop up in other clubs publications. What makes it readable? I take it you edit the Bankies one?

Honestly Jamie - £200 ??? Out of 1170 or whatever the crowd was ? We make a profit of about £70 - £100 from a crowd of between 250 and 400 - anything more and its more . I think its because we make it 50/50. The girl on Saturday had sweat running off her as the tickets were going great guns - however that's only based on limited visits to Newlandsfield for Lok games so i'll bow to you there.

On the subject of the Proggie - i've given it another scan there just to be fair - and to be ( even more ) fair its not quite as "unreadable" as my first glance at the weekend. It's got a fair amount of info ... No I don't do the Bankies one - I do think that Alun does a great job with ours and I'd say I prefer it - but I partially take back what I said about it

Stick yer neck back in

We tried a 50-50 in 2005 and sales plummeted!

I can't see a baffled emoticon - so take it as read - i'm baffled !!

Put simply, our fans know what they like and like what they know. 50:50 was seen as less chance of winning a prize so the sales dropped. People wanted to be able to buy different coloured tickets, three chances of winning I believe.

is the baffled emoticon.

Banks O'Dee, two sheets of A4 stapled together with a page each from the President, Secretary, Manager and Coach (you can imagine how enthralling that is). Nothing on Fort William at all.

...........£2.00

and we think lochee were at the rip off

At Cumbernauld in 2001 we got charged a quid for a prog that had iirc 1 page of content which was 'welcome to the game blah blah blah'. These were the days when Junior progs were 50p. I held out my hand for change and after reading it I wanted my money back altogether.

Worst culprits in last few years have been Dunipace and Port Glasgow. By all means make a bit of dough from them but don't rip the pish. Both of them were packed with adverts and virtually no mention of the game. If you do that then give them away for free ...

tayports programme is top class also blackburn utds programme great quality and content from a small club

Largs Thistle's programme this season is 40 pages of which 16 are adverts (plus another page of Thistle fund raising ventures).

The guy that does it this year is the same guy that did their unofficial website a few years back. He was saying he was upping it to 44 pages for their Scottish Junior Cup game at the weekend but would probably return to 40 pages for the League games.

There can't be many Junior programmes that are edited on a different continent from the club.

Yeah Tayport's was pretty classy. To be fair, it does help when the proggie isn't being done by the people doing every other job going - gives the editor a bit of clear space to organise things and produce an interesting effort. Also helps when you're selling a few as well. I would encourage at least 1/3 content to 2/3 adverts if smaller clubs are needing to make money - ideally it should be at least the other way about but give the punter something to read at least. The 2 programmes I referred to above actually had pretty nifty covers - and then a total let-down inside.

Wasn't Benburb's written and edited from England for a while ? Not a different continent obviously but a bit removed from Govan ...

Alun does a very good job with ours. Done properly, the programme can be a major source of funding for a club.

Why thank you

Never been at a Blackburn game but have seen a few of your programmes in the programme shop in Albion Road. For being a "small" club you put bigger clubs to shame with your programme - a really good effort keep up the good work