BallochSonsFan

It's a cracking ground. Feels properly old school without being a ramshackle tip. Good views of the pitch. Covered terracing is fine. Fan facilities are absolutely fine. Food is decent. The social club pre-match is great and the staff and home fans are friendly and accommodating before the game. It's a great away day.

I'm hoping that the ref doesnt fancy it this afternoon so that I can watch the national, but it'll probably be playable.

Unfortunately the problem in this case has not been caused by the local club board.

I've been listening to this a lot lately

Been pissing down on and off for the past 2-3 days. Some really heavy showers yesterday and overnight. Anybody confident that this game actually goes ahead today> Groundsman should be down at the club 8:00 this morning starting to try to work on the pitch. Its going to be showery between now and kick off too. Can easily see this one passing a morning inspection but getting progressively worse towards kick off time.

Sausage rolls were decent.

Was it one of the burnt ones?

Bit of a 90s mood just now. Supposed to be a new Lemonheads album released this year. Would love to see them again and it would be absolutely amazing if Juiana was touring with them. I'd maybe even be tempted to travel if she was doing a few shows with them somewhere in the world.

We've had the better of the first half. A couple of good chances forcing the Spartans keeper into smart saves. The free kicks were taken well. I thought Hilton's shot just before our 2nd was smart as the Spartans keeper was on his heels. We need to do better for their 2nd, but Lennon did really well for our 3rd. As Jan said, it's been a good watch. Lynas booking was absurd - he has to challenge for the header and doesn't lead with the elbow or otherwise go in risky. Wins the header well.

No Crighton, Carlo, Orsi or Div Wilson tomorrow. Oh joy.

I believe the novelty is not having to watch a game through safety mesh and with tyre crash barriers between fans and the pitch.

I'd much rather that they didnt play at what is effectively a local leisure centre. Clubs have had to pay to build stadiums and maintain them. Spartans get to play at a leisure centre and don't have the cost burden associated with owning and running a proper ground.

I'm not involved at the club. Obviously I used to run the man of the match award for a few years and I ran the 50/50 for a couple of seasons when the previous volunteers stepped down having had enough of it. As a current trust board member, we've had semi-regular meetings with the club board whist we were without a trust rep on the club board., so I've had some conversations with messrs Mackay and Hosie throughout the season in conjunction with my trust board colleagues. I've always taken the view that the club needs to be better at communication. We criticise Cognitive for it and we've tried to re-enforce the value of proper engagement from the owners and from the club board. Thats a particular challenge when we've got a club chairman who will not put himself out there and actually spend time with fans. I try to be as honest as possible with posts on here - I'll never break confidences or reveal anything that was discussed that is deemed to be sensitive, but equally I'm more than happy to say what I can and when I can. We've just about got the trust rep on the club board in post now (as he's already said on here) and I reckon that our club chair sees both the trust/club board member and the new SLO as being conduits for communication with fans. I still think that the chairman needs to be far more visible. Half the fans couldn't pick him out from a line up. That's not good. I think he'd be genuinely surprised at the nature of conversation in person rather than the sometimes more aggressive tone of social media posts. But it's not going to happen any time soon. At least with the trust/club board rep just about in place, there should be a more direct voice within the club and a means of encouraging better communication going forward. But a state of the nation address from the chairman to let fans know how the club sees this season and what it's plans are for the future would be very welcome.

I think it's a combination of factors. The pitch sits on an old dock. All sorts of shite was used to fill it in. God knows what drainage is like underneath the pitch and it tends to hold a lot of water. Possibly a really poor soil layer immediately below the turf. Then there's the cutbacks to the maintenance budget over the years. Add in 2 teams playing on it and that's just a losing combination right there.

He isnt going to. As much as its a really untenable position for a football club chairman to hold, he seems to have an absolute terror of public speaking and will not address the fans directly. The club really should be making a public comment about whats happening internally. I'd really hope that we'll get proper communication about the club board's plans for the future sooner rather than later. Until that happens it'll be a case of watching for updates. But it is still in their plans. It won't happen until the funding is in place as the board don't want to commit to something that they may be left struggling to pay for until the finances are all agreed. Which leaves us in the unacceptable position of being at the mercy of the weather and how our pitch holds up with 2 teams playing on it.

The club very much are looking to have an artificial pitch installed. But it isnt going to happen any time before the 25/26 season.

Until such times as the police deal with the matter then folk shouldn't be posting or quoting things that make a bad situation worse. There will be plenty of time to do that when the police do their thing, the club does it's investigation and there's actually something to talk about.

You support the team in your way. Other fans support it in theirs. There's enough shite going on right now without Sons fans openly baiting each other. We've not been good enough this season. You'd rather we all clap that bit louder and give the guys encouragement. At times I do think fans are a little too negative, but equally folk aren't going to ignore our rubbish form since the start of December. If the club deserves praise when things are going well then it deserves criticism when they're not. Folk support the club in their own way. What we really don't need is folk baiting each other on here and looking to cause friction.

Stirring things on here really isnt needed right now. There are plenty of reasons why criticism can and should be made of the club in general and the performances in particular. Things are not going to improve just because we all really want them to and we all clap that little bit harder. A degree of realism about our performances this season is needed. We've been wildly inconsistent, in really poor form since December and we've got a weaker squad now than we had at the start of the season. All things that fans are entitled to be worried about.

If possible and there's a thread moderator then a few sensible post deletions might be well advised.

That suggestion also goes to those quoting Sawkeye's post. Be very careful about what you're posting and quoting.

You were careless enough that you indirectly named the player by naming a family member. It's currently with the police as a complaint was made. The police will investigate. The club will then investigate and take whatever action they deem to be appropriate. I'm sure that this isn't going away and that it'll be discussed on here in great detail in the fullness of time. Until then? You might be well advised to edit your original post and take a few days away from PnB until such times as any police investigation is concluded and the club then deal with the situation. There's already going to be a lot of speculation about what happened. Nobody on here needs to be adding butter to the popcorn that the rest of the division's fans will be sitting with right now.

The matter has been referred to the police. Probably best to be very careful discussing until the police element of this incident has been concluded. There will be time enough to discuss what's alleged to have happened and how the club will ultimately react.

Hopefully the trust will have a very visible presence before our next few home games. We need a strong Sons Trust and that means members being engaged with the trust and turning out in numbers. A strong turn out shows the strength of feeling and appetite for change. It's really important with the challenges we're facing that the fans are engaged with whats happening and are ready to come together. The time will come when we're faced with the prospect of taking direct action or risking the club's decline becoming terminal.

Should add that despite having Newcastle and Sunderland on their doorstep, South Shields managed to draw over 2000 fans today to the National League North - tier 6 of the English football set-up. Its almost as if its possible to live in the shadow of 2 much bigger clubs and to still bring in a healthy crowd if you do things properly and create the right kind of condition for the club to attract fans. And certainly not a ploughed field masquerading as a football park.