Bainsfordbairn

I believe the hope is for the club to have a full academy up and running again for season 25/26. This presumably means that next season we'll still have only U6s and U18s teams with nothing below them. Whether we can afford to recruit enough current U18 player on modern apprenticeships to make up a development or reserve team next season remains to be seen. Only the BOD will know the answer to that, and ATM they've made no comment on the subject. Which is fair enough as there are other things to be secured first. I expect we'll hear more about the youth /reserve setup in the close season.

Kick offs in Alloa are 1030 and 1300 I believe. Time to reach both from Falkirk if you leave now. I might have made the 16s game if the weather had been decent but I'm still drying my gear out from last night.

There will be plenty, but I'm just home and have a date with a beer. Might get a chance to look at them tomorrow after I come back from the girls game against St MIrren. The club used the one of him waving a scarf at the end and Falkirk Daft might use some when they post early in the week. If they don't I'll get back to you midweek.

In a cup no-one cares about where the opposition may not have played their strongest squad or may not have been 100% committed. All this talk of what we might do next year scares me. I'm sure we'll aim to be competing at the top but I'm worried that expectations might be so high that a bad start sees the atmosphere turn quickly.

That rings a bell. Everyone else piled on and after a while the abuse came to a natural end. Then you appeared. You weren't just flogging a dead horse. You were flailing around with a whip long after after it had been turned to glue. Boring doesn't even come close to describing your posts. I've given you a greenie for admitting it. Schadenfreude has been ordered and will be served in due course.

When we got relegated there was the usual pile-on for a couple of weeks as every opposing fan ripped the piss out of us. And then there was one QOTS fan who kept posting on our thread, for probably the whole of summer, with a fresh post on the same subject every few days. He was incredibly boring. Can't mind who. I'm so tempted to look back for those posts and respond with a picture of the Champions when we finally win the league.

It doesn't matter. The league is won, and while we're all so cautious after being burned in the past even Morten couldn't throw this away. We need three wins from our last eight games and that's worst-case if Accies win all of theirs. It will happen against either Edinburgh at home or Montrose away. The only reason to have a preference is if you can't make one of those two games. I thought it was interesting that today saw the first "championees" songs being sung.

McGlynn is very good at getting people onside and all our players love him. As for Tait, he's only been here a month and a half but we haven't seen anything on the field to criticise him for. He works hard, shows for the ball and genuinely looks to be a very good player. His arrival undoubtedly improved our squad.

The whole stadium certainly was. I don't remember the photo and it's not one I've kept, but I think everyone knew that when he walked down the tunnel at fulltime his time was up.

I can't remember the wording of the departure statement, but he was definitely sacked. The QOTS game was our eighth competitive match of the season and in almost every one of them we were outplayed by the opposition, including three games in the League Cup against lower-league teams. After his final league game there were no shortage of calls for the manager to be binned. On the Monday the reserves were away to Brechin for a match against Aberdeen. As I always did, I sat beside our media officer on the team bus. He also doubled as our football admin person. Because of that, his phone never stopped ringing all day. Emergency board meetings, management called in for discussions and by the time we got back to Falkirk I knew he was gone. The departure wasn't his choice.

He was sacked on Monday 27th August 2018 after a 3-0 loss to QOTS in which Queens had 27 shots on goal and we had 3, none of which were on target.

Sorry, but this is complete and utter nonsense from start to finish. We have sixteen players under contract for next season with offers having been made to others. There will be no major rebuild. Evolution not revolution, to quote a conversation I had with a director. All arrivals will be surprises because the club are now good at keeping transfer activity private until it's been announced. For that reason, you have no idea whether there will be surprise departures. And it doesn't depend on getting up, because if it did the club wouldn't have announced extensions already.

Having looked through the pics, I'm beginning to wonder if Long should have had a foul. Looks like the boy jumped into him, and from the angle he was at the ref wouldn't have had a clear view. Possibly number 17 and definitely Finn Yeats would have been blocking his line of sight. The fact that Long was knocked over while the forward stayed on his feet after the punch suggests to me there was contact. Shouldn't make any difference in the long term but maybe someone needs to make the case for Longs defence.

I'd say there's a slight difference. Were you at Inverness in 2006? We were 2-0 up and then ICT put a high ball in on our keeper, Scott Higgins. He tried to punch it and got about five yards distance on it. Caley realised that was a weakness in his game and for the rest of the match they just lobbed high balls into our box from everywhere on the pitch, including our own half. It worked. They beat us 3-2 and every goal was a carbon copy of that one we conceded yesterday. Higgins never played for the club again. Every opponent we face will have seen yesterdays video by the time we play them. They'll all try the same thing. Including Cove on Tuesday night. If he deals with those balls confidently and plucks them out of the air it won't matter.

That has already happened. A number of years back, I took a picture of a young girl, maybe 3 or 4 years old, sitting behind the wheel of a lorry when MAN trucks were a sponsor. I know her father and he and the player are diehard Bairns. I always hoped that one day I would photograph her as an adult in the senior womens team because it would kind of complete a cycle for me. Three months ago, following a conversation with one of their coaches who's a friend of mine, I covered their awards night. Under 13 girls. For probably the last time. That whole team now play in the strips of Bo'ness United.

Unfortunately I've heard a similar story, though as I haven't heard it first hand I can't be certain it's true. Hopefully our board are aware and will be asking some questions.

I might be wrong on this, but there's something in the back of my mind about the Foundation largely funding the development of the South stand interior. Because as a charitable organisation they were able to get external funding for the benefit of the wider community which wouldn't have been available to a professional football club. And build a meeting space to help train unemployed youths to find a job, or a blether with lonely older people, or help folk with their mental health. All are laudable initiatives. I think that's what it's used for most of the week and then every second Saturday it gets turned into a bar run by FFC volunteers to benefit the club and our supporters. I think the same charity funding route applies to the construction of the community pitch at the back of the stadium & Woodlands. And presumably this new project that they trumpeted about a few weeks ago.

The building above it caught fire and the whole block was demolished some time ago. It's now a fenced-off wasteland. Next to the barbers shop and what's now called The Fusion Corner. Was the Golden Lion chippie when I grew up.

I honestly have no idea. I could ask the coaches at the weekend, but I'd need their permission before making the info public. Albeit there may be other people on this messageboard who run amateur teams and who could give a ballpark figure. In terms of the womens development team, it doesn't matter. They're gone. The senior womens team are self-funding, mainly due to various initiatives and sponsorship brought in by the coaching staff.

They moved to the community pitch at the start of this season. I believe it's to save money, as there will be either no pitch fees there or reduced ones because it's owned by the Foundation. I could be wrong on that though. I also know that some of the girls prefer it, either because it's smaller or the surface was better before the main pitch was relaid.

I have no knowledge of overall Foundation finances and so can’t comment on them. As for “excelling at”, I have an extremely biased opinion because I’m heavily invested in the womens team. I have friendships with coaches which go back years and spend every Sunday travelling all over the country to support them. It was just over a year ago when I had a fourteen hour day taking some of our players to Golspie in my car, as did the coaches, so that the girls could play a Scottish cup tie in a town not far from Wick. I don’t believe the Foundation excel at supporting their womens team. One of the things that frustrates me is that Falkirk women are at the bottom of the pyramid with only the regional leagues below them. Big names such as Spartans and Montrose are three leagues above us. Gartcairn, Boroughmuir Thistle, Stirling University, Glasgow Women (not City) are two leagues above. Rossvale, East Fife, Dryburgh, Renfrew, Westdyke & Hutchison Vale are one league above. Those are massive clubs for our girls to try and compete with. I’d love to know what support those teams get from their parent organisation that allows them to be so much better than Falkirk.

We’ve had a womens development team for a number of years and some really good players have come from it. Current womens first team goalkeeper Rachel Pirie, midfielder Iona Bridges and winger Ella Stewart spring to mind. The first two are superb and the third has massive potential. The development team suffered a major setback earlier in the season when one of their coaches left to join another club and took a large number of players with him. There are no transfer windows or rules surrounding player movements at this level. However, they attempted to rebuild and had found enough players to make up a new team. Before I go into the next part, I should explain that all womens football at Falkirk is amateur and costs money to participate. To cover fees for referees, pitch hire, strips, travel, etc. In many cases, amateur teams raise money from monthly player fees. The senior womens team have scrapped those. Our A licence coaches have given up any reimbursement and the team is paid for by fundraising and sponsorship from various companies. It was done that way to make it easier to attract good players. Every one of us who help the Falkirk womens team do it for the love of the game and are out of pocket because of it. Falkirk FC cover my fuel costs if I drive to Kelty to shoot the first team, as I did on Saturday, but if I drive to Dundee to shoot the women it costs me £sss. That’s not a complaint and it’s no big deal for me, but it is for the girls. This is a direct quote from one of our former development players as to why they all left. "None of them have committed because of the massive monthly fee and not getting anything in return" It’s one of the reasons why I’ve posted a few times online about womens sponsorship. And why I’d love to see our girls team brought into the main football club instead of being with the Foundation. A tiny fraction of the mens first team budget would transform our womens team.

Yeah he's still about. I saw him in reception on Saturday.

No because a lot of people were hurting after the Airdrie result and just wanted to lash out. Hence all the vitriol over the summer. But when you looked back at last season there were a lot of positives. Improved performances, better league position, vastly improved recruitment and some really enjoyable games. It's undeniable that McGlynn improved us last season. The calls to bin him because he hadn't improved us ENOUGH were just mental.

Wow. We have a squad of 20. 4 loanees and 19 signed players, 3 of whom aren't rated which is why they've been punted out on loan. All 20 are very much part of the squad and are regularly involved as either starters or subs,