King Crownest

It was put to an advisory vote in 2017 and the view of the members was that the chairman should go. A similar vote cannot now be held precisely because of the issue you raise - the well has been poisoned by the manner in which additional members have suddenly appeared. The result would be endlessly squabbled over. What the club needs right now is for the constitution to be respected and followed by everyone. That means the Trust board will appoint a board to run the club. And Trust members will elect new Trust board members at the upcoming AGM if they are unhappy with the current ones.

Willie Gibson was there aye?? I will bet you all the hallucigenic drugs you're on that the current Queen of the South manager did not roll up pished to a Stirling Albion Supporters Trust meeting and start ranting about Stuart Brown. Also, you say the chairman reneged on the mediation AFTER the Trust board quit. Actually, he reneged on the mediation weeks BEFORE the Trust board quit. If I were indiscreet, I would be able to tell you about the joint Club/Trust meeting at which it happened and who was the CLUB director who was left seething at the chairman suddenly changing his mind. This is already too fractious an issue for you to keep splurging BS and fantasy into a public forum - and yet you keep doing it!! Finally, you keep saying it's a coup. No it's not. How can it be a coup when the Trust is using its legal powers to sort out something it legally owns? I hold no torch for the Trust board at all - this should have been sorted years ago. But the fact is it IS getting sorted now and there is no going back. The Club board says it has the best interests of the club at heart - so it will surely do everything now to make sure this transition is smooth. That is what Stirling Albion needs.

The chairman is sending a legal letter demanding a vote by Trust members or mediation, leading to a managed transition? Been there, done that!! August 2017 at the Mayfield, the members voted 58 per cent to 42 per cent for the chairman to go. He ignored the members' wishes. Instead, the Trust board went to mediation with the chairman, who promised he would abide by the result. The mediator advised for him to go via a managed transition - he ignored the mediator. Yes, this whole thing is a shambles and been badly handled. But the Trust board represents the majority shareholder and is invested with the power to hire and fire Club board members. Under the constitution, the Trust membership is NOT ALLOWED to give the Trust board binding directions on who to hire and fire. In fact, the Trust board actually WANTS to change the constitution so that members CAN have a vote on who's on the Club board!! Everyone who is currently on the Club board will be able to stand in those elections. But the Trust board CANNOT GET ON AND DO THESE THINGS because the Club board WON'T GO. The Trust board IS TRYING to implement a managed transition via a new interim board. Club board...you've had your fair vote, you've had all the democracy and legal timetables that it is possible to have. There is nothing more to discuss. The people with the shares have decided it's time to go. So, PLEASE, in the name of God, GO!!!

If you got an electric shock every time you told a lie, you'd have hair like Don King. The money is not plain to see in the club's audited accounts. Because the club auditor didn't audit that account. He didn't audit that account because it's not a club account. Which is why the trust board is still asking what this £4,000 of members' money was spent on. Still waiting to hear. You're a member of the trust. Are YOU not curious where YOUR money's gone??

Still wondering whether WC Boggs has had chance to ask his pals about that non-club bank account. £4,000 of trust members' cash inexplicably diverted. What was it spent on? Trust board has asked the club - answers still awaited apparently. One thing we can be absolutely sure of though... it certainly was NOT spent on topping up players with extra cash-in-hand bungs. Because that would be a breach of SFA rules and cheating, basically. And say what you like about that Stirling Albion board, they're honest as the day is long and only have the club's best interests at heart. That's why I have every confidence the answers will be forthcoming so members can know how their hard-earned money has been spent.

The Trust accounts for 2020, published ahead of last year's AGM, showed that two tranches of cash totalling £32,313 went direct from the Trust to the Club. But that "a further £4,000 of society [Trust] funds were gifted to the subsidiary [the club] but paid to Stirling Albion Associates, a separate entity set up for the purpose of supporting the subsidiary". So why would money go from A to B - owner to a subsidiary - via C, a third party? Who asked for the money to be diverted via C and what was it spent on? As Stirling Albion is a club run competently and with complete transparency, I've no doubt at all there is a reasonable explanation and the information will be forthcoming. Maybe WC Boggs can shed some light?

Only found out recently - years later - that the EGM of club shareholders in 2018 actually took place. My understanding is that nobody from the Trust board turned up - so the wishes of the majority shareholder and the opinion of the members, as expressed at the Mayfield, were not given a voice. If that was indeed the case, it would be yet another example of the chaos at this club.

I'm sorry to break this to you but you are fundamentally wrong on all the above. The Mayfield Centre, 29/8/17. The motion was "that the Trust Board call an Extra Ordinary Meeting of the Shareholders of Stirling Albion FC with a proposal to remove the Club Chairman as a Director of Stirling Albion FC, due to irreconcilable breakdown in relationships between the Trust (representing the majority shareholders of the Club) and the Chairman of the Club". The result was 58 per cent in favour and 42 per cent against. This vote was advisory. Why was it advisory? Because the Trust constitution's Rule 24 gives members the right to give direction to the Trust board as long as those directions do not cut across the Trust board's powers under Rule 26. Rule 26 states that the Trust board "shall appoint and dismiss the Chief Executive and other members of the [Club] board". In short, the Trust board hires and fires the Club board without a vote by the members. However, on the one occasion the members were asked for their opinion on whether Stuart Brown should stay or go, the clear message was GO!! So please stop rewriting history and inventing rules and passing them off as real. It's time this debate was informed by facts.

Were you at the Mayfield in 2017 where the members voted for the Trust board to remove Stuart Brown as a director of the club?

The Trust board has the power to replace club directors without a vote of Trust members. That's the rules. The members have voted once, at the Mayfield - and they voted by a clear majority for Brown to go. Yet he's still there. But the longer this goes on, the less it's about people who haven't got a clue about football being stubborn and running a famous club into the ground and more about a cowardly Trust board that hasn't got the guts to use the powers their members have handed them. Robert Liston's resolution is filling the vacuum where decisive action should have been. Whether you agree with him or not, at least he's trying to shake things up and get things done. Neither board comes out this looking good. Meantime, Stirling Albion's dying a slow death.

Greig brought in three new players that window - not sure which one of them transformed the team?

Offering to refund season ticket money is a good idea and absolutely the right thing to do. That's why I suggested it. You're welcome.

Don't think we're actually disagreeing here. But giving up the chance to chase promotion and telling fans they've just wasted their cash for the last nine months isn't going to get them back. Also the club can hardly dispense with KR when KR can say he was set the target of play-offs, the chairman told the nation 4th place was still on but the club voted to pull the plug on the season! BB is right - time for footballing people on both boards. And that's not a dig at Stuart Brown. He was only mentioned because it was him that went on the telly. This is about the club and trust, which are bigger than one person. If we can match the ambition of Alloa on the pitch and Stenny off the pitch - two smaller clubs - imagine what Albion could be again.

So we're allowed to disagree with Stuart Brown just not while there's a pandemic on?? Have you told Rangers? The club and trust launched an appeal for funds from the wider community because they claimed the city needs to keep its successful team and they can only achieve that by putting on football matches which they can't do because of the virus. Now with the money in the bank, playing football matches is apparently the worst thing that Stirling Albion can do because, according to someone off the trust board, the team's crap and it's not going to get any better next season either. In 2014, everyone thought Albion's season was over with six games to go but they went on a run, sneaked a play-off spot and the momentum won them promotion. The club and manager have said the play-offs is the aim for this season and the chairman's just been on TV saying that 4th spot is still up for grabs. So why the lack of ambition and rush to cancel the season in mid-April? It is not in the club's sporting or financial interests to lack a drive to succeed and that's where I disagree with you. PS As for season tickets, if you're extending the current season ticket into the first five games of next season, it's exactly the same effect as a refund and the club will still be out of pocket...think about it.

Football's about striving to achieve not caving in when the odds are against. I wasn't "predicting success" in the play-offs - it was Stuart Brown and Kevin Rutkiewicz who were doing that at the start of the season. And it's the chairman who's gone on national TV saying the club can still make 4th. Now that the fans have paid their money to back the team in pursuit of that why is the club trying to pull the plug? Form will go out of the window after a long lay-off so, yes, it is a total lack of ambition on the club's part and your part. Who will play the games? Every other league in the world seems confident of having a solution and I'm sure if all the clubs said to all the players we're restarting the season for an extra month starting on x and finishing on y, they'd sign one-month deals. Much of the extra money from the League Cup would surely have to be repaid to season ticket holders that have been sold short - or do you think they should be sold short twice? But if the club's message for the new season is the same - "we might succeed but it's unlikely so not really sure it's worth trying" - I wonder how many of those fans will be back.

Stuart Brown on Sky Sports saying it's a "no-brainer" to vote to end the season because the best Albion could get is fourth. Play-off spot not worth going for? Total lack of ambition imho.

Apologies, we’re clearly not better than this. Name-calling, factions and squabbling. On you go. Stirling Albion RIP

The consortium is dead in the water because it won’t get 75 per cent support. I’m quite happy to point out the massive flaws in the bid all over again if you want. But my point is that the Trust, club, members etc. need to move on and find a plan that everyone can get behind. The Trust board has to lead the way on this.

As I said before: “This club needs a totally fresh start with a blank sheet of paper. The lack of ideas has turned the focus onto personalities. Trust members with something to offer, from whatever background, need to get round a table and establish a new direction for the club. We're better than this, better than name-calling, factions and squabbling.” Hardly mud slinging. I understand that it matters to some people who swaggered at a meeting last summer, who called who a p**** and who drank a cup of tea in a smug way last week. Meanwhile though the club – our club - is about to implode. So you trying to tell me what my name is, what my opinions are and what I can and can’t talk about really is a brutal waste of your energy.

I think you're fast losing your grip on reality my friend!

We must have different memories of the meeting. There was a week’s notice given and the place was packed. The board explained why they believed the chairman should go and there was a thorough debate for around an hour and a half with plenty of people both for and against. In the end, there was a clear majority in favour of removing the chairman. It was an advisory vote but the Trust board offered to resign if the members didn’t back their stance so there were real consequences either way.

At the Mayfield meeting, the membership voted in favour of the Trust removing the chairman. It’s a funny old game Saint!

When the chairman was suspended, the old Trust said there would be an independent inquiry into why the Trust wasn’t told about the police investigation and an independent review of child protection at SAFC. Did they get done in the end?

Here’s the quote from FB: “What powers do the Trust have over the current system with the Exec? No any less than they would have under the Consortium would be many people’s analysis.” That is not an accurate description of what signing up for the consortium's bid would mean. The Trust board currently have extensive powers to set and regulate the direction of the Club – It is a watchdog with real teeth to safeguard the future of the Club. Under the consortium, all that would be taken away. It’s up to Trust board members to use the powers they have, which is what we Trust members select and elect them to do. If this system works as it should, members enjoy an indirect influence over the Club while the Trust board plays a vital role. Nobody’s asking for a referendum on every issue. But we do expect Trust board members to take seriously their responsibilities - which include giving members accurate information on important issues.

Exactly! And if they castrate the Trust board, they castrate us all as Trust members. Balls to em!