I'm sure you're right. Anyone to do with club will be brilliant. it'll just be the local neds out to make a name for themselves that will cause bother....just like the young bams who follow Bo'ness sometimes

I would venture to suggest that it could literally kill Darvel or Muirkirk. It could kill us.

To suggest it's harder for Pollok or Beith to absorb these costs is, with respect, very hard to swallow.

Pretty sure it would hit very hard on any teams finances having 9 consecutive away cup ties. I know how much it cost's us on buses every season and that's for every away league game. Since we came back in to the league after abeyance we have only had 1 away draw in the Scottish cup and that was in the 4th Rnd last year to Thornton Hibs. Then this year we have been drawn at home again to Dundee NE. Hopefully we can get past them and get an away trip somewhere.

But as I pointed out, smaller clubs will never be in that situation (nine successive away ties in a relatively short period of time) and they don't have to worry about finding hundreds of pounds worth of wages every week either.

Seeing as you ignored the rest of the paragraph and picked one deliberately understated line to focus on, here's the whole thing:



What I was trying to say that the cost of maintaining success is a lot higher in relative terms than the cost of survival.

I would say it's very possible when you consider the East of Scotland Cup and Fife & Lothians Cup in our region. Plus, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that smaller clubs have a good couple of years in the Scottish and pull out a lot of away ties (or home ties against these teams with the accompanying £ guarantee's).

As an illustration, two away ties in the Scottish Junior Cup to Ayshire & North, away tie in the East of Scotland Cup to Dundee/Perthshire, away tie in the Fife and Lothians Cup, that's very realistic, and very expensive. Have a couple of seasons with that sort of luck and it gets serious.

As for finding hundreds of pounds of wages, well there's an easy answer to that.


I didnt deliberately misconstrue anything, your paragraph above was quite clear and I quite clearly answered it.


Given the number of clubs that have fallen by the wayside in recent years, and in my own experiences, I would have to strongly disagree.

Clubs fall by the wayside when they run out of people willing to keep them going. There is very little cost in putting out a side that doesn't pay wages or expenses (ie Benburb). There actually haven't been that many lost in recent days though for financial reasons... Ormiston Primrose merged, Bonnybridge had ground issues, Preston to EOS, Harthill popped up in Polkemmet's place, Tulliallan (committee), Halbeath (?), Benarty (merger, now amateur), Clackmannan (?), Leven (?), Comrie - steelend there now I think, locos to HFL, Bon Accord lost backer, Crombie Sports - ground, Insch amateur, cuminestown ground (or vice versa), Inverurie crap, Rosslyn and Mugiemoss merger, Caberfeidh and Rothes dec no idea, kinloss to welfare, portgordon players, elmwood ground, st joseph's - out at the top, balbeggie ams, stobswell no idea, perth celtic (?), blantyre celtic (?), baillieston ground.

To keep a club COMPETITIVE at the top of the super divisions will involve paying the better players the going rate. The going rate at the moment in the West Region is anything from £50 and up a week, basic. The top players will be able to command not far off three figures, and some are on more. If Club A don't pay it, Club B will - or worse Club C will offer double and thus push the going rate up even higher. There's no point dreaming of a Utopia where everyone plays for the love of the game and pays their own way to get to away games. That's fanciful and it doesn't happen at the top level. Maryhill showed exactly what happens when you stop paying the going rate and fear of that will stop others doing likewise, maybe to their own cost eventually.

Therefore IMHO it is far harder to maintain the finances to put a team out onto the pitch that will COMPETE for the Super League and national honours than it is to put out a side that only hopes to keep the score down in the bottom division.

Re: away ties, I was talking about the Scottish Cup, not all the minor cups which generally involve distances travelled for leagues games, the inter-regionals apart.

You have to ask yourself why Benburb dont pay anything? they must be a bawhair away from folding in that case as it's obviously a move forced upon them. I understand St.Anthonys are the same, Dunbar United were a bawhair away from folding last season and they couldn't pay their players their signing on fees, Tranent weren't too healthy in thet respect either. We pay our players expenses and little more, yet player expenses last season were less than 25% of total expenditure. To say that it costs very little (relatively) is simply wrong.


I am suggesting that if clubs at the top end of the Superleague find it tough to pay for a lot of away buses - which comes with the territory - then they have to look at their expenditure levels which includes player expenses. I have no doubt it's hard work keeping an income level to match the large spending, but you have a lot more room for manouever.


My opinion is well known on that score, that Junior football should be completely amatuer, but that is unlikely to ever happen but then again, just as in the SPL and the EPL clubs need to take a long hard look at what they are playing players, then so do Junior clubs (at all levels) if the game is going to progress.


How many clubs put out teams with the sole intention of keeping scores down ie "pub teams"? very few, so we can discount that as much of a comparison. For everyone else, you would need to look at say, player expenditure versus gate income, and look at what size of gap (if any) needs to be filled by other means (which is where the real hard work is). Then again we will never be able to see those figures to make real comparisons of whose job is the most difficult, so we'll just have to agree to disagree.


Regardless of where a game is, if a bus is required it costs the same amount of money regardless of what competition it is.

They were sustained to a high level by a social club which closed a few years ago. They will, like us, suffer from being in the city of Glasgow and will have to suffer the pain of high rates etc...



I'm talking about an unusually high amount of bus journeys of a great distance - Fife 3 times, Dundee, Ellon, now Culter, on top of Lanark, Irvine and Linlithgow closer to home. Luckily prize money covered the Kirkcudbright, Edinburgh and Montrose buses.

In terms of player expenses, market forces dictates them. No room for manouvering if a club wants to remain competitive.



Well it never will be, so a better solution is needed other than don't pay the going rate. That's all well and good - watch the big sides become the next Newmains.



Darvel and Muirkirk are examples of sides who usually set out to keep the score down, though Darvel this year seem to have a good squad and have a few promising youngsters. Muirkirk have already conceded 5, 7 and 8 in league games.

If we say the average gate in the West Premier is 150 (over 13 guaranteed home games) it probably means a gross of about £8000 in gate money. For a squad of 20 that means an average of £400 a man per season on that alone, about a tenner a week. Hmmm... There are clubs with gates smaller than that paying much closer to the £50 a week mark...

That still doesn't detract from my assertion that it is wrong to say that it costs very little to run a club that pays little for players. I have illustrated that that is not the case and that players expenses can form less than a quarter of overall expenditure.


I'm not saying it's easy, but we're talking about relative expenditure here and I would imagine it's easier for a club like Pollok to swallow 9 away games to Culter over 2 seasons than Benburb for example having to pay for 4 away buses to Culter.


We're talking in terms of survival here. For many clubs there is little or no room for manouvering, for many clubs at the top end there's plenty of room. However that said, money does not equal success, if you offer a player £50 a week, and someone else offers £30, you dont always get your man for a whole host of reasons.


If the thinking is spend big or become Newmains then we really are shafted, and the players will be rubbing their hands in glee. Players are not always attracted purely by cash, a different approach is needed eg. improvement of facilities that the players use, of the environment they play in, etc.


Muirkirk are one of the teams I alluded to in a previous post, but Darvel haven't always been so. In any case, if Darvel's team dont take a red cent out of the club, it doesn't neccesarily mean it's easy to run the club or that it takes very little money to do so. That's just not the case.


That's not what I'm on about, no club pays players solely from gate income alone, the measure is the difference between player expenditure and gate income, and how much work needs to be done to make-up the difference and to pay for all other expenditure. That I think would be a good measure of "who needs to work the hardest", which is the crux of what I'm taking issue with.

Ah, right. Cheers. Larkhall derby. Tasty.

What are Forress Thistle like, league, past reults etc. ?

They're currently 12th in the North 1st Division (middle division). They've lost their last 5 games in all competition. Probably won't get relegated as Cruden Bay are, as ever, dire.