Sportsound Watch

[ewan14]

5 minutes ago, Mr Positive, sometimes. said:

Suspended I believe. 

Said something along the lines of "with all that moaning they should be wearing skirts"

Didn't hear/see it myself but seen some quotes kicking about. 

Incredible !

[craigkillie]

I saw in a screenshot of the sun that Steven EBT "Tomo" Thomson has been punted off the BBC is this true?

It's a different Steven Thompson who works on some English BBC radio station.

[101]

8 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

49 minutes ago, 101 said:

I saw in a screenshot of the sun that Steven EBT "Tomo" Thomson has been punted off the BBC is this true?

It's a different Steven Thompson who works on some English BBC radio station.

Aw I see cheers for clearing it up - I shall look forward to his contribution to the national broadcaster with the cold destain he deserves 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, 101 said:

Aw I see cheers for clearing it up - I shall look forward to his contribution to the national broadcaster with the cold destain he deserves 

Will Ye?

[bennett]

17 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

58 minutes ago, 101 said:

I saw in a screenshot of the sun that Steven EBT "Tomo" Thomson has been punted off the BBC is this true?

It's a different Steven Thompson who works on some English BBC radio station.

He said that it was handbags between 2 players, the virtue signallers weren't having it.

[101]

2 minutes ago, bennett said:

He said that it was handbags between 2 players, the virtue signallers weren't having it.

https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/local-news/lincoln-city-football-steve-thompson-4746612

Some of his comments are pretty poor for a national broadcaster especially when he was on a warning.

[bennett]

4 minutes ago, 101 said:

https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/local-news/lincoln-city-football-steve-thompson-4746612

Some of his comments are pretty poor for a national broadcaster especially when he was on a warning.

Ridiculous. 

[diegomarahenry]

1 hour ago, craigkillie said:

government's position on outdoor sporting events compared to various indoor businesses is entirely incompatible with every other piece of advice they give out about the relative safety of indoor v outdoor mixing.

You are missing a key point that Doncaster chooses to miss. It has been agreed several times by the Scottish Government that the risk of attending a sporting event outdoors is less harmful than an event indoors. It was mentioned on both off the ball and Sportsound on Saturday. 

However, it is easier to control people going to the cinema or bingo, people are less likely to travel 80 miles, pissed up on a train to watch a film at a cinema in Brechin with their mates. The staff required to be in the ground on a match day can be close to 100 in some cases, plus 300 fans. These people all have to get to the same place at roughly the same time. 

No crowds at outdoor concerts, Rugby, polo, horse racing or football.

They also explained that they can only reduce so many restrictions on Saturday, it was described as a bucket and you can only add so much in to it or it overflows and they have to measure how much risk to overflowing every time they add more. 

The Hearts guy on the program had the right attitude, keep asking the questions and ask what they need to do so that they aren't forgotten about rather than have a grubby meeting with a Tory MP  and SFA employee, which was rumbled AFTER his last appearance on Sportsound, where Doncaster said the decisions being made were political, leading to calls on the program for this "to be remembered at the Holyrood elections.  

2 hours ago, craigkillie said:

I'm struggling to see what big favour the government have done to Scottish football. They've granted them an exception to play, but this is in line with literally every single other country in Europe.

They allowed the return of professional top flight football before other industries opened up, they allowed contact training with testing regulations when the population weren't allowed within 6 feet of a pensioner, they allowed contact training for all lower league clubs without testing, saving them a weekly four figure sum. 

In the mean time, gyms were shut, dentists, clinics, Bingo halls, cinemas, theaters......... 

[DukDukGoose]

2 hours ago, craigkillie said:

Most of the comments don't seem to be anonymous though, clubs and organisations have generally been happy to put their name to them. If anything, the Scottish government do more anonymous briefing than the clubs do, and do it much more effectively, which is hardly surprising given the relative PR budgets.

You've got folk like Chris McLaughlin at the BBC who must have sore arms and legs given the frequency with which he has been used as a puppet by both sides (mainly the government and Celtic) over the last few months, and in fact probably years. He's at it again tonight, making a mountain out of a molehill about these protests at Celtic Park.

What's the mountain he's making?

His report looks spot on to me?

[Dons_1988]

I'm not a fan of the public lampooning of the government over this, particularly when Doncaster takes the 'but England...' route, but a lot of the questions are fair. If the government are refusing to engage behind closed doors then an argument can be made that a public campaign is the last option available. Not so much if there is plenty of engagement. 

 

[craigkillie]

10 hours ago, diegomarahenry said:

You are missing a key point that Doncaster chooses to miss. It has been agreed several times by the Scottish Government that the risk of attending a sporting event outdoors is less harmful than an event indoors. It was mentioned on both off the ball and Sportsound on Saturday. 

However, it is easier to control people going to the cinema or bingo, people are less likely to travel 80 miles, pissed up on a train to watch a film at a cinema in Brechin with their mates. The staff required to be in the ground on a match day can be close to 100 in some cases, plus 300 fans. These people all have to get to the same place at roughly the same time. 

No crowds at outdoor concerts, Rugby, polo, horse racing or football.

The arguments about fans travelling long distances are a red herring, given that the test events (and as far as I'm aware the current 300 allowed in the Highlands and Moray) are all specifically limited to fans who live in the same council area. It would be very easy to require clubs only to allow local fans to attend games (say within a certain radius), which would be shit for me because I wouldn't get to watch Killie, but would be good for the majority of supporters who do live near Rugby Park.

You've used a cinema as an example there, but surely people do all have to get to those at roughly the same time too, given that films have a scheduled start and finish time, just like a football match. Again, it would be straightforward enough to set up a system of staggered entry if required - I doubt many fans would grumble too much about having to arrive half an hour early or leave half an hour after full-time if it was a requirement of actually getting in.

There were things like outdoor concerts held at exactly the same time that the government were preventing anyone from attending football - my parents travelled from Ayrshire to Glasgow in August (I think) to attend something at SWG3.

 

 

10 hours ago, diegomarahenry said:

They also explained that they can only reduce so many restrictions on Saturday, it was described as a bucket and you can only add so much in to it or it overflows and they have to measure how much risk to overflowing every time they add more.

This is the exact point that sports authorities and other businesses (especially the arts) are making though, they're asking why they are the ones being kept out of the bucket while other much more "dangerous" industries get put in. Are they supposed to go "ah well, our business is going down the drain, but I suppose they can't open everything so we'll just shut up"?

 

10 hours ago, diegomarahenry said:

They allowed the return of professional top flight football before other industries opened up, they allowed contact training with testing regulations when the population weren't allowed within 6 feet of a pensioner, they allowed contact training for all lower league clubs without testing, saving them a weekly four figure sum. 

In the mean time, gyms were shut, dentists, clinics, Bingo halls, cinemas, theaters......... 

That's exactly what I said. Nothing that every other country in Europe wasn't doing at exactly the same time.

 

The point here is that football is one of many industries which has somewhat been left on the outside looking in throughout this. The government has difficult decisions to make and this may or may not be the right one, but there are people on here to seem to think that football and other sports should just suck it up and get on with it rather than doing exactly what everyone else is doing by lobbying to get more concessions from the government.

Edited November 30, 2020 by craigkillie

[NorthBank]

I believe the Scottish Government's concerns are not necessarily the stadiums although ICT bussing stewards in from Glasgow demonstrated that even Clubs can be stupid. Their concerns are fans. And given the scenes at Parkhead last night who can blame them?

[TheScarf]

5 minutes ago, NorthBank said:

I believe the Scottish Government's concerns are not necessarily the stadiums although ICT bussing stewards in from Glasgow demonstrated that even Clubs can be stupid. Their concerns are fans. And given the scenes at Parkhead last night who can blame them?

What did The Caley do that was wrong?

[Stellaboz]

Remember though- these idiots aren't just fans in that moment. They also walk around in normal society probably not adhering to any health recommendations. They're biggest problem is their incredibly fragile ego though- overgrown children with f**k all self esteem and no will to sort it out. 

[NorthBank]

2 minutes ago, TheScarf said:

What did The Caley do that was wrong?

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/inverness-face-sfa-probe-drafting-23056998

Caley claim they technically did not break the rules bringing stewards up from Tier 4 Glasgow in a minibus. But the Scottish Government's rules are made to educate not hide behind. And Caley made a bad error of judgement on this one.

[TheScarf]

Just now, NorthBank said:

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/inverness-face-sfa-probe-drafting-23056998

Caley claim they technically did not break the rules bringing stewards up from Tier 4 Glasgow in a minibus. But the Scottish Government's rules are made to educate not hide behind. And Caley made a bad error of judgement on this one.

The club checked they were ok to do so and didn't break any guidelines. You're about 2 weeks behind with this.

[NorthBank]

4 minutes ago, TheScarf said:

The club checked they were ok to do so and didn't break any guidelines. You're about 2 weeks behind with this.

Thanks for clearing that up. However I am wondering how they obtained permission then were subsequently investigated. Obviously some communication breakdown somewhere which does not look good. And that story was 7 days ago ago and I have not seen any follow-up.

[TheScarf]

1 minute ago, NorthBank said:

Thanks for clearing that up. However I am wondering how they obtained permission then were subsequently investigated. Obviously some communication breakdown somewhere which does not look good. And that story was 7 days ago ago and I have not seen any follow-up.

There was no investigation.  Everyone's least favourite *** Keith Jackson made it up.  The Caley put a statement out the following day basically calling him a liar.  Which he is.

[diegomarahenry]

32 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

The arguments about fans travelling long distances are a red herring, given that the test events (and as far as I'm aware the current 300 allowed in the Highlands and Moray) are all specifically limited to fans who live in the same council area. It would be very easy to require clubs only to allow local fans to attend games (say within a certain radius), which would be shit for me because I wouldn't get to watch Killie, but would be good for the majority of supporters who do live near Rugby Park.

You've used a cinema as an example there, but surely people do all have to get to those at roughly the same time too, given that films have a scheduled start and finish time, just like a football match. Again, it would be straightforward enough to set up a system of staggered entry if required - I doubt many fans would grumble too much about having to arrive half an hour early or leave half an hour after full-time if it was a requirement of actually getting in.

There were things like outdoor concerts held at exactly the same time that the government were preventing anyone from attending football - my parents travelled from Ayrshire to Glasgow in August (I think) to attend something at SWG3.

 

 

This is the exact point that sports authorities and other businesses (especially the arts) are making though, they're asking why they are the ones being kept out of the bucket while other much more "dangerous" industries get put in. Are they supposed to go "ah well, our business is going down the drain, but I suppose they can't open everything so we'll just shut up"?

 

That's exactly what I said. Nothing that every other country in Europe wasn't doing at exactly the same time.

 

The point here is that football is one of many industries which has somewhat been left on the outside looking in throughout this. The government has difficult decisions to make and this may or may not be the right one, but there are people on here to seem to think that football and other sports should just suck it up and get on with it rather than doing exactly what everyone else is doing by lobbying to get more concessions from the government.

Unless you are limiting access to people that only live within walking distance of a football ground, including all matchday staff, you still have a potential of 300-400 people travelling to the one location, sharing cars, being on buses, trains etc. This wouldn't just be for football, this would be for rugby, horse racing, golf, basketball, shinty..... for Scottish football alone, 300 x 42 league clubs would mean 12600 people moving about the country and congregating for 90 minutes that are currently not doing so. Plus an additional 4200 potential match day staff required, including players, officials and medical professionals that will potentially have to cross different levels of restrictions.

You are not likely to have 300 people turn up to watch a film in a cinema. Major box office films have been delayed because of reduced capacity in cinemas that would reduce takings. There are various ways that entry and exit from stadiums could be made safe, the issue is with controlling travel to the games.

Every other country that has allowed football to return has done so with testing measures, every country that let a small number of fans enter stadiums have now reversed that. 

With a global pandemic, allowing mass gatherings is the best way to increase a spread of infection, which is why every country has followed the approach that Scotland is following. Are you suggesting an alternative approach? The roadmap was set up to allow fans back in, level zero, no restrictions, level one, up to 300 supporters with social distancing. Infection rates have increased since then in parts of the country leading to the majority of the public in Scotland moving a level further away from being allowed back in stadiums.

So at this point, Doncaster asks why fans are not allowed back in and asks for a plan for fans to return? He uses England as an example and why they are being treated differently. Only fans of 10 top flight clubs can attend matches after this lockdown ends because of the similar tier system. so they have an almost identical requirement to Scotland for a return of fans. If the person at the top of Scottish football cant ( or chooses not to for some reason) Understand that and decides to voice his ignorance on national radio to weaponize others who don't want to understand it, who does it help? 

There has been funds made available by the UK government to help sports clubs and there will be money made available to Scottish sport as this is bigger than just football. The SPFL have a weekly meeting with the sports minister and have the ability to voice concerns there rather than make a total arse of themselves on a national broadcaster once a month. To grandstand and stamp your feet in front of the media making points already explained or debunked is embarrassing. 

 

[craigkillie]

1 hour ago, diegomarahenry said:

Unless you are limiting access to people that only live within walking distance of a football ground, including all matchday staff, you still have a potential of 300-400 people travelling to the one location, sharing cars, being on buses, trains etc. This wouldn't just be for football, this would be for rugby, horse racing, golf, basketball, shinty..... for Scottish football alone, 300 x 42 league clubs would mean 12600 people moving about the country and congregating for 90 minutes that are currently not doing so. Plus an additional 4200 potential match day staff required, including players, officials and medical professionals that will potentially have to cross different levels of restrictions.

Every other country that has allowed football to return has done so with testing measures, every country that let a small number of fans enter stadiums have now reversed that.

This is just the same point about things being inside and outside the bucket, beign made in a different way. Once the Tier 4 restrictions end there will be thousands of people inside somewhere like Braehead who weren't there this week, but that is still going to be allowed. You'll have staff and customers travelling to these sort of places using a variety of modes of transport, but that has been deemed acceptable.

You're also making the assumption that these people who are going to football grounds would otherwise be sitting at home, but in reality they're probably going to spend their Saturday engaged in some other form of activity - be it shopping, going to a pub or something else.

Obviously it's only 21 clubs at home, so you can half your figure, albeit the 300 fans is stupidly low for some grounds so you can probably ramp that back up.

It's just very blatantly not true that every single other country in Europe has now changed their mind on fans attending - their are still numerous countries where fans are attending games. Even Northern Ireland had fans at their play-off game a fortnight ago, so we're not purely talking about far away countries with totally different cultures. I don't know how other countries are operating their lower leagues, but I suspect they don't have testing regimes either.

 

1 hour ago, diegomarahenry said:

With a global pandemic, allowing mass gatherings is the best way to increase a spread of infection, which is why every country has followed the approach that Scotland is following. Are you suggesting an alternative approach? The roadmap was set up to allow fans back in, level zero, no restrictions, level one, up to 300 supporters with social distancing. Infection rates have increased since then in parts of the country leading to the majority of the public in Scotland moving a level further away from being allowed back in stadiums.

So at this point, Doncaster asks why fans are not allowed back in and asks for a plan for fans to return? He uses England as an example and why they are being treated differently. Only fans of 10 top flight clubs can attend matches after this lockdown ends because of the similar tier system. so they have an almost identical requirement to Scotland for a return of fans. If the person at the top of Scottish football cant ( or chooses not to for some reason) Understand that and decides to voice his ignorance on national radio to weaponize others who don't want to understand it, who does it help?

I'm not suggesting an alternative approach or even suggesting that what the Scottish government is doing is necessarily wrong. I disagree with their stance on sport and other outdoor events personally, but still mainly understand why it's in place. My issue is the fact that football authorities seem to be getting criticised for having the temerity to put their own case forward publicly, despite pretty much every other affected industry also doing so.

The rules being introduced in England are totally different from ours - they are also being allowed at a higher tier level than is the case here. As you say, 10 of their 20 top flight clubs can bring fans back, while in Scotland there doesn't appear to be any prospect of more than 1 out of 12 having them any time soon, despite the rates being lower in many of our regions than theirs.

The main issue isn't about getting fans back now anyway, it's about having a genuine and realistic plan for allowing their return. England now has some degree of clarity about what their rules are, while ours remain completely vague. Even if a region does get to Level 1 of our system, there is still uncertainty about how many fans they would be allowed, or under what circumstances. There doesn't seem to be any sort of plan as to what needs to happen in order for the numbers allowed to go above 300.

When the restrictions started to lessen back in the summer, sport was given a fairly clear picture of what was happening. They were given a provisional date in October (subsequently brought forward to September) for having supporters back, with the possibility of test events before that. At that stage, there wasn't much grumbling from the SFA, SPFL or anyone else, since they had a clear plan to aim for. The first major murmurings of discontent started when the government began to reject requests for test events, and then subsequently changed their mind on the roadmap dates based on the increasing infection rates. From that point onwards I'd say there's been a total lack of clarity and that is where this latest frustration stems from.

 

1 hour ago, diegomarahenry said:

 

There has been funds made available by the UK government to help sports clubs and there will be money made available to Scottish sport as this is bigger than just football.

As of right now, not a penny of funding has been promised to Scottish football (or any other sport) through this as far as I'm aware. I'm not aware of any actual support that the Scottish government has specifically put in place for sport. They can't operate on ifs, buts and maybes.