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Sons' sorrow


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I don't think anything is served by a spat between supporters of the two local clubs. 
If I was to try and sum up the situation I'd say that after being shafted by a number of people with no emotional attachment to Clydebank FC, that club is now wholly run by genuine people who have the club's interests fully at heart.  Good luck to them in their endeavours.  For their part,  Dumbarton FC also has a goodly number of people with the requisite credentials to both protect and promote the club, but they are not in possession of the levers of power, and given both the Clydebank experience and the calibre of those who ARE in charge that is  a very serious concern indeed.
Everyone should also be assured that whenever perceived benefits to the community are highlighted in any stadium plan application they are invariably sweeteners or add-ons as opposed to core objectives.  Brabco, like others before them, is not an association of philanthropists, and planning applications should deal exclusively with  the relevant issues .


I’d agree with most of that but surely the Steedmans had some emotional attachment to Clydebank FC?
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I’d agree with most of that but surely the Steedmans had some emotional attachment to Clydebank FC?
Of course they did, but John Hall and David Low most certainly did not. And Jim Ballantine's only emotion was naked opportunism.
Regards the Dumbarton planning refusal, for three years the club has been granted a derogation from the SPFL in respect of floodlight standards and some additional criteria.
I believe this derogation was granted pending progress on a new stadium to allow us to play in the Championship. It will be interesting to see how this now pans out, especially if DFC retains second-tier status.
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Of course they did, but John Hall and David Low most certainly did not. And Jim Ballantine's only emotion was naked opportunism.
Regards the Dumbarton planning refusal, for three years the club has been granted a derogation from the SPFL in respect of floodlight standards and some additional criteria.
I believe this derogation was granted pending progress on a new stadium to allow us to play in the Championship. It will be interesting to see how this now pans out, especially if DFC retains second-tier status.

It was the Steedmans who sold the ground though.
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Of course they did, but John Hall and David Low most certainly did not. And Jim Ballantine's only emotion was naked opportunism.
Regards the Dumbarton planning refusal, for three years the club has been granted a derogation from the SPFL in respect of floodlight standards and some additional criteria.
I believe this derogation was granted pending progress on a new stadium to allow us to play in the Championship. It will be interesting to see how this now pans out, especially if DFC retains second-tier status.

That’s a big aspect.
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You are correct,there was no need for us to move!
Is that what you want for DFC?
From outside the story looks sadly familiar.Blame the bad old council.
 

I did however see it quoted that the majority of councillors who voted against the development were from Clydebank....my experience of Bankie councillors is they are not the slightest bit interested in anything that happens in Dumbarton
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7 minutes ago, aftershocker said:


I did however see it quoted that the majority of councillors who voted against the development were from Clydebank....my experience of Bankie councillors is they are not the slightest bit interested in anything that happens in Dumbarton

Probably as interested as Dumbarton councillors are in anything that happens in Clydebank?

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There's a lot of heat and not much light in here right now.  So I'll ask the question; did anyone actually attend the Council Meeting last week and hear the submissions ?  I mean, the Planning Committee had already recommended refusal, just as they did recently when WDC turned down an application from Lidl to build a shop on the former Hiram Walker's distillery site - it happens FFS.

And if there are any villians afoot, we all need to make absolutely sure we're targetting the right ones ;)

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There's a lot of heat and not much light in here right now.  So I'll ask the question; did anyone actually attend the Council Meeting last week and hear the submissions ?  I mean, the Planning Committee had already recommended refusal, just as they did recently when WDC turned down an application from Lidl to build a shop on the former Hiram Walker's distillery site - it happens FFS.
And if there are any villians afoot, we all need to make absolutely sure we're targetting the right ones [emoji6]

You can hardly compare a supermarkets application with a football clubs application.
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There's a lot of heat and not much light in here right now.  So I'll ask the question; did anyone actually attend the Council Meeting last week and hear the submissions ?  I mean, the Planning Committee had already recommended refusal, just as they did recently when WDC turned down an application from Lidl to build a shop on the former Hiram Walker's distillery site - it happens FFS.
And if there are any villians afoot, we all need to make absolutely sure we're targetting the right ones [emoji6]

Lidl do seem quite determined. I’d be quite surprised if they don’t succeed in a subsequent application. It happens.
http://www.dumbarton.lidl.co.uk/our-new-store/
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Interesting that 7 of the 10 votes against were from the SNP, despite the SNP council leader's public backing of the development. Was there an element of Clydebank v Dumbarton parochialism at play after all? I'd have expected there to have been an element of SNP v Labour in the voting and for party politics to play a more prominent part.

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2 hours ago, Howlin' Wilf said:

That was the Lennox editorial. This is the Reporter's front page.

IMG_0888.jpg

We're destined for a cycle of decline because of Ian Wilson, not because of the council. And why's he talking about the clubs "majority owners" in 3rd person? He IS the clubs majority owners, surely he'll KNOW if they aren't going to appeal. I honestly despise that wee c**t.

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I wouldn't say that we're locked into cycle of decline. I also wouldn't say that it's down to Brabco. As much as they have been ineffectual owners, we can look a little closer to home for a significant part of the blame. Brabco haven't helped but they're not the sole cause of the difficulties we're now facing.

 

We're certainly staring at a significant problem for the club. How we react to that problem will determine just how severe any cycle of decline is.

 

The club needs a major overhaul.

 

 

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Whilst the new development makes the main headlines, the sports page of The Lennox is a hoot.

Stevie says of the recent Livi game- "I'm very surprised we produced a performance like that, as over the Season I think there have only been about 3 games out of 40 where we haven't turned up" :blink:

Nurse....nurse!

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1 hour ago, BallochSonsFan said:

I wouldn't say that we're locked into cycle of decline. I also wouldn't say that it's down to Brabco. As much as they have been ineffectual owners, we can look a little closer to home for a significant part of the blame. Brabco haven't helped but they're not the sole cause of the difficulties we're now facing.

 

We're certainly staring at a significant problem for the club. How we react to that problem will determine just how severe any cycle of decline is.

 

The club needs a major overhaul.

You could argue our board shouldn't have let the current stadium maintenance get to the stage it's at, but without Brabco's grand plan to move do you believe they let it get it to this stage? Our current board has problems, of that there is no doubt and I agree overhaul is needed but without owners who have spent a decade trying to plan a stadium move (and still coming up short) we would be in a manageable position IMO. Right now, I fail to see how we manage floodlight replacement, perimeter fence rebuild and the general upkeep and that's before we get to the money we've apparently to pay the council to let them build a walkway on our land.

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5 hours ago, Howlin' Wilf said:

That was the Lennox editorial. This is the Reporter's front page.

IMG_0888.jpg

Here we have a classic case of deflection in which the injured party goes into hyperbolic overdrive to scapegoat the body which (probably correctly in my opinion) refused their Planning Application.  And it follows a distinct pattern, one which involved a sustained campaign of metaphorically taking a hatchet to the floorboards of the existing football ground in a direct attempt to influence public opinion and  justify a move which was actually only ever wanted by one party, ie the applicants. 

And so, we now have a 'more in sorrow than in anger' line being peddled in order to soften us all up for the unpalatable truths to come.  The truth that really matters though is that this whole idea has been an ill-founded adventure from the start, and absolutely no favours were done to Dumbarton Football Club when the deal with Brabco was concocted, despite the worthy if misguided intentions of club officials back in the day.

One thing is for sure; Ian Wilson and his ilk cannot and must not be allowed to inhabit the moral high ground, and the newspapers would now do well to consider whether their coverage is sufficiently balanced.

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You could argue our board shouldn't have let the current stadium maintenance get to the stage it's at, but without Brabco's grand plan to move do you believe they let it get it to this stage? Our current board has problems, of that there is no doubt and I agree overhaul is needed but without owners who have spent a decade trying to plan a stadium move (and still coming up short) we would be in a manageable position IMO. Right now, I fail to see how we manage floodlight replacement, perimeter fence rebuild and the general upkeep and that's before we get to the money we've apparently to pay the council to let them build a walkway on our land.


The biggest failure of the owners is negligence. They have been negligent in their hands off approach to owning Dumbarton. Of course you can attribute some of the issues with stadium maintenance to the proposed move - the club wouldn't upgrade floodlight capacity at a ground it believed it was leaving.

That said, there has been no financial provision in the accounts for any maintenance of the current ground and it's difficult to see where the money comes from. With regards to the floodlights it's a one off cost that's needed rather than maintenance so whether it's now or it was 2 or 3 years ago, where would the club have got the money for the upgrade?

Some of the work, such as maintenance of the stadium structure could probably have been done on an ongoing basis. Other work is a one off spend regardless of when it's done. Whether it was last season, this season or next season, the club has never been awash with the cash needed to spend on infrastructure.

The failure of the club board - primarily successive chairmen - is in running the club in a way that doesn't bring in anything like the revenue needed for the club to be sustainable. The failure of the owners was sitting back and allowing that to happen.

We're now in the position where we have no option but to address both situations.
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2 minutes ago, BallochSonsFan said:

 


The biggest failure of the owners is negligence. They have been negligent in their hands off approach to owning Dumbarton. Of course you can attribute some of the issues with stadium maintenance to the proposed move - the club wouldn't upgrade floodlight capacity at a ground it believed it was leaving.

That said, there has been no financial provision in the accounts for any maintenance of the current ground and it's difficult to see where the money comes from. With regards to the floodlights it's a one off cost that's needed rather than maintenance so whether it's now or it was 2 or 3 years ago, where would the club have got the money for the upgrade?

Some of the work, such as maintenance of the stadium structure could probably have been done on an ongoing basis. Other work is a one off spend regardless of when it's done. Whether it was last season, this season or next season, the club has never been awash with the cash needed to spend on infrastructure.

The failure of the club board - primarily successive chairmen - is in running the club in a way that doesn't bring in anything like the revenue needed for the club to be sustainable. The failure of the owners was sitting back and allowing that to happen.

We're now in the position where we have no option but to address both situations.

 

I don't necessarily disagree with that although I do think we'd have put something in place by now to fix the floodlights if we were staying put, we've known about it for years and could have planned to cut our budget accordingly over a few years. I would also argue that the DFC board is Brabco's responsibility (no matter how much they try and distance themselves from the actual football club). They've had representation in the form of Callum Hosie on the board for pretty much the entirety of their time, Ian Wilson was on the board for a short time and appeared to be making a royal c**t of things in the process (quelle surprise) resulting in his swift booting. Any failings of our board has to be ultimately seen as a failing of the owners as they've had someone there first hand to witness what's going on at club level.

I totally agree our board aren't entirely blameless but Brabco have had the power (and still do) to transform this club. They've sat back and ploughed all of their money into a planning application which has failed to meet the necessary criteria for approval. 10 years have passed and the only change they made to the board was appointing and subsequently booting Ian Wilson. They've done nothing to assist with revenue at our current plot as it suited their agenda. They've ignored pushing the board to put the required provisions for maintenance or repairs as it suited their agenda. They're now faced with absolutely no way of making their money back through moving this club. Brabco have two options now as far as I can see - stay in charge, make changes to the board to ensure the club doesn't sleep walk by like this again, fix the ground and look at options for developing the current site. The second option they have is to sell to the highest bidder and get the f**k out of here.  It only takes a swift look at their previous form at the club to know which one of those is the most likely.

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