The Greenock Morton Thread - It's Better Than Yours

[101]

Is it true Hopkin was paying players wages?

[vikingTON]

The assistant says so but he has some form for being a gobshite in front of journalists and is a close ally of Hopkin, so we're not dealing with the most trustworthy witness in the world. I can well believe that Hopkin might have offered incentives on top of the basic wage to get players in the door - travel expenses etc. - and perhaps the board didn't follow up on this, but I'm not convinced that he was actually paying contracted wages or else the resignation to save the club money story would make absolutely zero sense.

The place is clearly a fucking zoo though and the sooner that Golden Casket fucks off minus the ground, the better.

Edited December 16, 2020 by vikingTON

[stuartk12]

https://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk/news/18948883.david-hopkin-paid-morton-players-wages-pocket/?ref=fbshr&fbclid=IwAR3A4gioC-GT0Vxq5CRcV9of8XLh4IeEfKuIbkqaVsaAGCU47lqDGd5jmws

[101]

18 hours ago, virginton said:

The assistant says so but he has some form for being a gobshite in front of journalists and is a close ally of Hopkin, so we're not dealing with the most trustworthy witness in the world. I can well believe that Hopkin might have offered incentives on top of the basic wage to get players in the door - travel expenses etc. - and perhaps the board didn't follow up on this, but I'm not convinced that he was actually paying contracted wages or else the resignation to save the club money story would make absolutely zero sense.

The place is clearly a fucking zoo though and the sooner that Golden Casket fucks off minus the ground, the better.

Fair enough. Hope you guys pull through.

[Bigmouth Strikes Again]

All over twitter just now you're away to go bust.

[Coventry Saint]

What's the story with this petition I've seen floating about? Is it legit or is it tinpot? I'd happily sign and share it if it's important/is going to make a difference.

https://www.change.org/p/greenock-morton-keep-cappielow-park-in-the-hands-of-greenock-morton

[GiGi]

28 minutes ago, Coventry Saint said:

What's the story with this petition I've seen floating about? Is it legit or is it tinpot? I'd happily sign and share it if it's important/is going to make a difference.

https://www.change.org/p/greenock-morton-keep-cappielow-park-in-the-hands-of-greenock-morton

It's pretty legit. Look at the state of the club at the moment - the current agreement is that when MCT take over, Cappielow and the car park will remain under Golden Casket and be rented back to the club at a nominal rate. The original justification was that this would safeguard these assets if the club fell into financial difficulty as they'd be held by the benevolent wealthy group to make sure creditors didn't have a bite at it. But the club would be responsible for maintaining and improving these facilities which they would not own.

What we see now is that GC are investing nothing into the club and we're being kept afloat by 10k per month contributions from MCT members unless we see or hear anything from the club or Crawford Rae to the contrary. I'm now worried about the club's only real assets being in the hands of owners who are indifferent to Morton and may in the future be happy to sell this asset to balance the books of they, the parent company, and leave Morton homeless and in a chasm of shit with no other assets.

Given the club is apparently on life support I've signed it. It's inappropriate, at best, for the regime who are leaving us in this mess to walk off with Cappielow.

[G51]

Looks like an incredibly grim situation. I can't see any justification for the sale and leaseback of Cappielow to Golden Casket - for a start, a sale means you have to actually buy something, rather than just be given it in exchange for getting a liability off your books. Having Cappielow owned by Morton would also allow you to borrow against it if necessary.

Signed the petition and hope it works out. We all need to pull together in times like these. Vulture capitalists will come for all of us at some point.

[John MacLean]

Having to lease back Cappielow would hamstring a fan owned Morton right from the very start. Over and above having to fund the everyday  running of a football club they would need to find an additional £x per month to rent the stadium. Also who receives any additional income the use of Cappielow would bring, e.g. renting the stadium for Celtic under 21s, hospitality income, that sort of thing? Who pays for the maintenance costs which given the age of Cappielow I would imagine are not inconsiderable? The owners of the ground or the owners of the club?

Grim times and I doubt Morton are alone on being on the brink either imminently or in the foreseeable future.

I think right now we are seeing the start of some pretty seismic changes in the hierarchy of Scottish football. These changes were probably coming anyway but the pandemic is speeding up the process.

I don’t think it takes a great leap of faith to envisage the current, smaller but well backed and ambitious clubs (the likes of Kelty, East Kilbride) swapping places with previously well established clubs like Morton.

Post Covid we might all have to accept very different long term ambitions and structures for our clubs.

Wish you well Morton.

Edited December 17, 2020 by John MacLean

[vikingTON]

It's hard to disagree with that analysis, which only underlines the importance of bringing the stadium issue and the long-term future of the club to a head right now, instead of letting the Rae family slink out of the door in the summer and then wait a decade or two to put their own interests ahead of an Airdrie-esque husk of a club squatting on the land.

There needs to be a solution that provides a reasonable expectation of the club's sustainability in the long term and if it takes a short-term crisis to bring that about then so be it.

Edited December 17, 2020 by vikingTON

[sirscottyoung]

East fife fan here so neutral view. 

How much would it cost to buy the club and ground off your owner? 

Is there any actual figures? If so what about starting a big funding thing like FOH. 

If not why dont you pull the funding of £10k a month that the fans are putting in and put it to a foh style of thing with everyone putting what they can in so that when the club goes into admin or worst case liquidation from rae that you have a good back up to buy the club and assets(stadium) like what rangers should have done / charles green did. 

[The Moonster]

1 hour ago, John MacLean said:

I don’t think it takes a great leap of faith to envisage the current, smaller but well backed and ambitious clubs (the likes of Kelty, East Kilbride) swapping places with previously well established clubs like Morton.

Don't disagree with your post in general but Kelty only give the impression of being well backed when it suits them. They were talking about pulling out the Betfred due to the cost of testing for 1 match, when weeks previous to that they tried to slither their way in the back door by offering to forego prize money. I'm not convinced these smaller teams with wealthy owners are what the league needs either, seems a lot of them are shooting their muck to try and get into the league system, could easily see them going tits up if they don't make it.

[vikingTON]

22 minutes ago, sirscottyoung said:

East fife fan here so neutral view. 

How much would it cost to buy the club and ground off your owner? 

Is there any actual figures? If so what about starting a big funding thing like FOH. 

If not why dont you pull the funding of £10k a month that the fans are putting in and put it to a foh style of thing with everyone putting what they can in so that when the club goes into admin or worst case liquidation from rae that you have a good back up to buy the club and assets(stadium) like what rangers should have done / charles green did. 

There's no serious market valuation of the land to work on, but there would be no chance of raising enough to buy it on the open market unless there was a relatively disinterested backer like Budge at FoH or Gordon Scott at Saint Mirren. That's clearly not entirely out of the question as an option but you need to have those ducks lined up in a row very quickly.

My feeling all along is that the Raes would be prepared to sell the land significantly below its current book value back to the club. Not least because it isn't listed for commercial development and getting a change of use that is hostile to the club's interests won't get through Inverclyde Council without huge difficulties. If the fans' group could get reasonable terms to buy over the long term with significant concessions on any previous discussions, then that could be grounds for further buy-in right now. The window for that compromise deal is closing though because the willingness to continue dealing with these clowns at all is fast running out.

Edited December 17, 2020 by vikingTON

[Guest 4RedCards]

Just a note to all Face-Painters, 

Invoice Greenock Morton FC, NOW!!!!

if they owe you

[101]

48 minutes ago, virginton said:

It's hard to disagree with that analysis, which only underlines the importance of bringing the stadium issue and the long-term future of the club to a head right now, instead of letting the Rae family slink out of the door in the summer and then wait a decade or two to put their own interests ahead of an Airdrie-esque husk of a club squatting on the land.

There needs to be a solution that provides a reasonable expectation of the club's sustainability in the long term and if it takes a short-term crisis to bring that about then so be it.

When Dunfermline was bought over by the fans a separate group of fans bought the stadium so that they were separate entities, I'm worried about Dunfermline moving away from that model but certainly agree that it would be daft for Morton fans to commit to the club whilst having no ownership of the stadium or the land.

[Bigmouth Strikes Again]

We've not owned Dens for years, it's in the hands of a DAB.

[diegomarahenry]

It all sounds similar to the end of the Barr era, he retired due to ill health rather than died but his sons took aver and had no interest in maintaining a football or Ice hockey team to any level let alone a reduced amount.

Fortunately they sold the club almost immediately to Cameron (Sr) who took on all the debt including a 400k income tax bill that crippled the club for 10 years and we ended up going part time. 

Hopefully that is the worst that will happen to Morton.   

[Guest]

4 hours ago, John MacLean said:

Having to lease back Cappielow would hamstring a fan owned Morton right from the very start. Over and above having to fund the everyday  running of a football club they would need to find an additional £x per month to rent the stadium. Also who receives any additional income the use of Cappielow would bring, e.g. renting the stadium for Celtic under 21s, hospitality income, that sort of thing? Who pays for the maintenance costs which given the age of Cappielow I would imagine are not inconsiderable? The owners of the ground or the owners of the club?

Grim times and I doubt Morton are alone on being on the brink either imminently or in the foreseeable future.

I think right now we are seeing the start of some pretty seismic changes in the hierarchy of Scottish football. These changes were probably coming anyway but the pandemic is speeding up the process.

I don’t think it takes a great leap of faith to envisage the current, smaller but well backed and ambitious clubs (the likes of Kelty, East Kilbride) swapping places with previously well established clubs like Morton.

Post Covid we might all have to accept very different long term ambitions and structures for our clubs.

Wish you well Morton.

If established teams like Morton plying their trade in the 2nd tier with over a century of history and located in a large town such as Greenock are struggling, then I really can't see how there's ANY future for new clubs with nothing concrete behind them but a rich owner.

Scottish football NEEDS Morton and the likes, it certainly doesn't need more Gretna type projects in the form of Kelty, EK, BSC etc, that is for sure.

[Frank conner]

There was a thread a wee while ago claiming how cash rich Morton were i wonder what two face idiot started that!

[sergie's no1 fan]

If established teams like Morton plying their trade in the 2nd tier with over a century of history and located in a large town such as Greenock are struggling, then I really can't see how there's ANY future for new clubs with nothing concrete behind them but a rich owner.
Scottish football NEEDS Morton and the likes, it certainly doesn't need more Gretna type projects in the form of Kelty, EK, BSC etc, that is for sure.

To be fair I think if you put the harshest StMirren fan in control of Morton they wouldn't have made as big a mess of it as the owner/previous owners have since the late 90s. Severely mismanaged from the top for too long.

Maybe this was the plan all along to force the fans into accepting the Easdales as the knights in shining armour. Don't see much of an alternative unless one of lot win the Euromillions.