BallochSonsFan

I'm not particularly happy with arrangements for the Rangers cup game. I'll say right from the off that I'm not going. I'll use the money that I'll save on the Rangers game for some German football the following Saturday. That doesnt mean that there's not a few things to be concerned about. Ticket pricing seems fine for this round and against this opponent. It's the other things I'm not happy with. £120+ vat for hospitality. Thats a lot of money to be charging. If folk are willing to pay it then who am I to stop them, but at £120+ vat it has to be better than our usual offering. If it isnt then it has the potential to do reputational damage to the club. If fans feel that it's overpriced then there will be complaints and demands for refunds. For any local businesses who may want to attend then a poor experience potentially discourages future hospitality or even sponsorship income. £120+ vat per person? It has to be good because if it isnt then we're going to have a lot of unhappy people. Likewise the parking. £10? Thats a fair amount to add on to the usual cost. We've got a decent number of older fans. We've got a fair number of disabled fans. Have we made any provision for our fans with mobility issues who'll be driving, or be driven, to the game? Tripling the usual cost seems excessive to me. Up it to a fiver? Fine. Offer a number of accessible parking spaces for those who need them? Should be a priority. A tenner just seems steep. Then there's accommodating hospitality in the community suite, so home fans can't use the bar before or after the game. The bowling club will be rubbing their hands at the extra income. Personally I don;t really like the idea of Sons fans being treated like second class fans in our own ground. I can understand the club wanting to maximise income from this game. We certainly need the money and this is probably the worst draw we could have had at this round - we don't get a share of Ibrox gate money and are therefore left trying to make the most of the opportunity that this presents. I just hope that in doing so then we don't end up doing ourselves some reputational damage or treat our own fans poorly. On the wider issue of how the club is run? We could be talking about that from now until kick off and the same folk would either be ultra positive, pessimistic or even out and out cynical. Thats the nature of being part of the Dumbarton support right now. As for fan engagement? We know that the chairman isnt fond of the idea of open forums, but there certainly has been engagement between the club board and supporters trust. It's a 2-way street and if fans want to see better engagement from the club board then that has to involve some input from the support. How many people put themselves forward as the potential trust rep on the club board earlier this year? Engagement can't just be fans expecting Neil Mackay to give a state of the union address and answer every single question that the supporters aren't actually asking of the club. If fans wan't proper engagement then fans need to be willing to engage.

You seem to be struggling with the concept of a 50/50 draw. So yes. £1.00 will go into the 50/50 fund, along with any 50/50 ticket money sold within the ground. 50% of that fund goes to the winner. 50% goes to the club. Meaning £9.50 of any parking payment goes to the club.

I won't be going. Absolutely no interest in this one. Rangers will win. Some absolute idiots will end up acting like arseholes. It's just not worth the hassle for me. £32 for a ticket and car parking? That'll cover whatever German game I end up at the following Saturday. I can understand why the club want to maximise income from the cup game. But I'd hope that Sons fans don't end up being treated like second class fans in our own ground. Get the game out the way.

It was already bad for clubs dropping down into a division where spending a few quid could basically win you promotion. But the prospect of dropping down to a league with B teams? That's just absolutely tragic. The prospect of a relegated team ending up being a chew toy for Rangers, Celtic and Hearts B is more than enough to drive fans away from football.

Bravo fellas. Bravo. Club chairman bending over for the sake of a few grand. I hope the big boys weren't stingy with the lube.

Even better than Annan?

Brett Long fractured his ankle in training. f**k. Harry Broun is an able back up, but Long will be missed.

A rolling contract is exactly that. Rolling. If it's a 1 year rolling contract then today my contract runs from 12/12/23 to 11/12/24. Tomorrow my contract runs from 13/12/23 to 12/12/24. I don't actually sign a new contract - my terms and conditions roll over each day for a new fixed period. If Mackinnon has a 3 year rolling contract then it's 3 years from today. And then 3 years from tomorrow. And then from Thursday. And so on. If I have a contract that's valid for 1 year then legally I'm entitled to expect it to be honoured. Unless I'm being dismissed for gross misconduct, if my employer wants to dismiss me then they need to pay me according to the terms of my contract of employment. To avoid being on the hook for a contractual termination payment of 1 year, or however long the rolling period is, the contract should have a termination clause in it that restricts compensation to a shorter period. In the same way that your contract of employment will have a notice and termination period clause that states how much notice your company has to give you and what arrangements will be made for either working that period or being paid in lieu.

I can understand the poor attendance yesterday to some extent. We're well into Christmas night out territory. The weather were poor and a lot of fans may have expected the game to be called off. Those circumstances combined and I'm not that surprised that folk stayed away. There's still frustration though. it was a big game against league leading Stenny and we were going into the game on the back of some good results. But the bigger worry is that this wasn't a poor crowd in isolation. Our crowds this season have been worryingly low. Go back to when we won this division and look at our crowds. We were drawing more fans that season than we are now. We've seen continuous decline in fan numbers. Lockdown was a significant issue and I suspect a number of fans simply haven't come back after 2 years of disruption. Folk find other ways to spend their saturday and encouraging them back to games is difficult. There's also the Farrell factor. Despite the fact that we've been doing pretty well this season, we've had a few really poor results and it took time for us to show anything like decent performances. For a fanbase that has already seen Farrell relegate us and then flop in the promotion play-offs, its another hard job to convince folk that he's worth sticking with and that this season will be better. Thats not a defence of Stevie Farrell. A lot of the criticism he gets is well deserved. I think he's been lucky when things clicked - early in the season we were forced to go to a back 3 and it seemed to work. Then we were forced to change to a back 4 with Carlo and Orsi on the right and again it seemed to work. Neither of those felt like conscious choices by the manager. When it isnt working then its rare that he makes game changing substitutions because our squad lacks that kind of depth and variety. Farrell can sometimes make some ill judged comments in interviews that have a tendency to irritate fans. But equally it would be wrong not to acknowledge that we've played some good stuff at times this season. Stevie Farrell deserves criticism when it isnt working and its only fair that he gets a share of the praise when it is. Whatever the reasons are for our low attendances, we need to get more people through the turnstiles. Our next home game is Dec 23rd and it'll either be a bumper crowd or a sparse one. Games close to Christmas are odd and whilst some fans want to escape the madness of the days before Christmas with an afternoon at the football, others will think that there's too much left to do and will give the game a miss. I'd like to see the club try to generate a bit of buzz for the game and there's probably a fair amount that could be done to make it a decent atmosphere. But even if we were able to do something to get folk in for the 23rd, we need to find a way to keep them coming back. We need to find a way of getting the home side closer to 600 - 700. God knows how we do it, but we really need to.

Annoyed with yesterday's result. It was a fortunate deflection for the game winner, but probably showed the difference in the 2 teams quite well. They gamble with an effort through traffic and get a lucky deflection: we fanny about on the edge of the box trying to create a "better" chance. Yesterday's conditions should have seen us throw absolutely everything at the Stenny keeper. Odd bounce. Spills a wet ball. Lucky deflection. That was the difference. Wallace did a power of work, but had to keep dropping back to do so. It left Ruth quite isolated at times. I thought we had some very good spells in the first half, but Ruth was toiling when we subbed him and hopefully he hasn't picked up a knock. He was starting to put in some really good performances. Same with Gray - I thought the tackle on him was reckless and hopefully it was just a dead leg. We can't afford to drop points against the likes of Stenny at home. The absolute worst we should have been taking from that was a draw. It's hard to be too critical of Stenny's winner because it was a lucky deflection, but they gambled with a shot from distance and we didn't. Yesterday was a big game and its another one we've not got a result in. That has to be a worry.

Sons had some decent spells of pressure but didnt do enough with them to test Stenny's keeper. Stenny tested Long in the 2nd half. Got a fortunate deflection for the goal, but in conditions like yesterday then teams should be gambling that a shot from distance is going to take an odd bounce or will be spilled by a keeper. A draw would probably have been a fairer result but Stenny got their lucky bounce because they were willing to gamble with a shot from distance. How many times yesterday did we have the ball around the edge of the box and fail to get it on target because we were fannying around trying to create a better chance?

I'm not being optimistic. I criticised him at the time for being too eager to appear on PnB. Wrong time, wrong forum as far as I was concerned. But several months down the line there's now a clear opportunity for better communication.

PnB was not the correct forum for a club director to be trying to engage with fans. 10/10 for early enthusiasm, but it was the wrong forum and he was perhaps too eager and a little naïve if he thought that it was the right place for proper fan engagement. I'd hope that he's planning for something more appropriate in the near future. Fan engagement is an area where our club can and should be doing far better, but it's got to be done properly. If he's keen to speak with fans then a better opportunity would probably present itself on a match day in the supporters bar.

What investor type guy? If it's Paul McPherson then he's part of Cognitive and also on the club board. He almost certainly jumped in with 2 feet by posting on here before properly settling in to his position with the club, but hopefully a bit of time spent getting to know the issues at Dumbarton will see him engage in the future from a more settled and better informed position. If he can find a bit of that early enthusiasm for engagement and go with it in the future then hopefully we'll see the club engage more with fans and with far better outcomes.

Rusty always struck me as a guy who was going through the motions. Clearly been a good player at one point. Still technically very good. Unfortunately the passion for the game and the willingness to work was long gone. He could have been absolutely lethal in the lower leagues. Very technical. Good with the ball at his feet. More than just a target man to lump the ball forward to. But the application just wasn't there. He'd be as well giving up. He looks like he'd rather be anywhere other than a football park.

I'd like to see us restrict home ticket sales to in person at the club. Could even put a requirement to show evidence of attending a recent previous home game - season ticket or recent payg match ticket purchase - as a requirement for buying a home end cup ticket.

Not a tie I have any interest in. Absolutely no intention of going. Get the game out the way, get whatever money we can from the tie and get back to league duties.

Pish draw

Should also give a shout out to the Galabank steak pie. A thing of wonder.

Incredible game at Galabank. Sons well worth our 2-0 first half lead and it was only some inspired goalkeeping by Greg Fleming that kept Annan from an absolute route. Half time wonders from the Annan manager and they suddenly find themselves able to exploit our right hand side. The Annan opener was a really nice finish and came from a really good bit of counter attacking. The home side definitely the better of the two teams in the 2nd half, but Dumbarton refused to accept defeat and equalised with 2 minutes left of the 90. Annan again took the lead in the first period of extra time, before Ruth tied the game at 4-4 and then James Hilton blasted home Dumbarton's 5th - a goal that was a worthy match winner. Max Kilsby's nasty attempt at a backwards stamp/stud drag down the shin of a Sons player saw the game threaten to boil over. Neither the ref nor the linesman had any kind of view of the incident because of the number of players surrounding both of them on the edge of the box. It was a genuinely scumbag move by Kilsby and had it been caught by the officials then it was more than worthy of a straight red. A fantastic game of football. Emotional rollercoaster for both sets of fans. Some really well taken goals.

It really was an unbelievable game. 2-0 in the first half didnt flatter us in any way. Fleming stopped it from being at least 4. He also did well to get a strong hand on an early 2nd half Michael Ruth chance about a minute before Annan got their first. 3-0 would probably have killed the game, but 2-1 let the home side back into it. I thought that we were really badly exposed down our right hand side in the 2nd half. Annan clearly saw something they could try to exploit. It's credit to the guys that we were able to grab a late equaliser to take the game to extra time. And to again pick the heads up when we went 4-3 down. in the first period of extra time. I'd love it if there was a video of the Max Kilsby incident in the 2nd period of extra time. His backwards almost stamp into a Son's player's shin was genuinely nasty. It was an incident that threatened to boil over, but one that the officials had no chance of seeing. Kilsby knows he can do it because of the number of players around him. It was nasty.

I don't think it was a dive. Defender definitely makes contact - he's stretching for the tackle and gets nothing of the ball. Catches MacLean. An absolutely wild game. First half their keeper kept them in it. 2nd half he did a fair job trying to keep them ahead. Some issues with the 2md half performance, but a late equaliser to take it to extra time and then coming from 4-3 down shows incredible fight and desire. It was a cracking game to watch. A real shame that TV won't show any highlights. That was the kind of cup tie that is a great advert for the lower leagues.

Keeper has kept them in the game. We've been very good. Ruth having a fantastic game. Nobody really not playing well. We look very dangerous going forward. Tested their keeper plenty.

No match thread in the domestic cup forum. Are we really so unenthusiastic about tomorrow's game? Disappointing to see Byrne unavailable. I know thats always a risk at this level of football, but Byrne hasn't given us anything. Also frustrated at just how unreliable Chucky is - he was unplayable through at Stenny earlier this year. His movement and link up with Hilton caused them no end of problems. Unfortunately we only get that from him 2 or 3 times a season. Would be good to get Shiels back for tomorrow's game.

You're only a couple of posts away from turning into the letters you used to get in Razzle aren't you.