The St. Mirren FC 2023/24 thread

[Paxo]

8 minutes ago, SuperSaints1877 said:

Did you not one end of season game give up 3 stands to Sevco? I’m sure you used to regularly give up 2 stands to the bigot brothers.

You and Motherwell have a major advantage over St Mirren in that you each have a massive away stand which is probably twice the size of our 2 stand system.

Personally I’d rather just ban the cnuts.

We used to give up two ends, which as I've mentioned above, nobody wants to go back to, but never three sides to my knowledge.

[IrishBhoy]

27 minutes ago, Paxo said:

I still really can't understand from a purely financial perspective tbh. £30 a ticket (less the VAT)for every additional attendee, but reduced home support, more overhead costs to control the great unwashed, no ability to sell full price season tickets for one stand - surely the extra wedge they pick up is miniscule as a proportion of their overall revenue? Not to mention that putting much of the fanbase's nose out of joint on a fundamental level 4 times a season isn't really a very smart business strategy if the aim is to grow the support.

Leaving all of that to one side for a moment though, the most important thing to my mind is the self respect that comes with not cheaply whoring out the club so grievously. Hard to put a price on that obviously, but personally I would rather Killie had a lower playing budget and finished further down the table than bent over for the very clubs that are strangling the life out of the game so much that this becomes an attractive option for the smaller clubs in the first place.

Can’t disagree with any of that, and I did say earlier that the optics of having empty home stands in contrast to 2 away stands packed with OF fans is not a good look. In an ideal world the demand for home end tickets would negate any need to punt empty seats to OF fans, but unfortunately most teams can’t get their own fans up for it.
 

A Celtic fan in my work was ranting away last season because his bus only got half the tickets they usually get for Tynecastle, because I think Hearts had halved their allocation. I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t his god given right to have teams bend over backwards to accommodate Celtic fans, especially with all the nonsense that follows them around. What made it even worse was Celtic not allowing ANY away fans in to their stadium for the first few games after Covid, and were the only club in the country not to offer away fans a legal way to stream games that were played behind closed doors at Parkhead. There’s an entitlement that comes with OF fans and it’s good to cut them down once in a while. 

Edited May 29, 2022 by IrishBhoy

[IrishBhoy]

3 minutes ago, Paxo said:

We used to give up two ends, which as I've mentioned above, nobody wants to go back to, but never three sides to my knowledge.

I’m possibly misremembering but did you not give 3 stands to Rangers for the game they won the league? Wearing their black away top with Tennents as the sponsor, Lafferty scored I think? 

[NorthBank]

Give them one stand and charge them 50 quid.

[RandomGuy.]

6 minutes ago, Paxo said:

We used to give up two ends, which as I've mentioned above, nobody wants to go back to, but never three sides to my knowledge.

 

2 minutes ago, IrishBhoy said:

I’m possibly misremembering but did you not give 3 stands to Rangers for the game they won the league? Wearing their black away top with Tennents as the sponsor, Lafferty scored I think? 

They did, yes, in 2011.

3 stands handed to Rangers as a special event to celebrate their title win.

[Paxo]

1 minute ago, IrishBhoy said:

I’m possibly misremembering but did you not give 3 stands to Rangers for the game they won the league? Wearing their black away top with Tennents as the sponsor, Lafferty scored I think? 

As far as I remember (patchy, mind!) they got the two ends as usual at that time, but bought a load of home tickets and were in with us in the East and Frank Beattie stands as well.

This sort of illustrates my point actually - many of the Killie fans there that day vowed never to return after the experience they had, fuelled by or no-righter chairman not really giving a shit who was getting the tickets so long as the register was turning over.

New chairman now who learned that lesson straight away.

[Coventry Saint]

8 minutes ago, NorthBank said:

Give them one stand and charge them 50 quid.
 

This. It just makes perfect sense.

And if they do the same to us? Who gives a f**k?

[capt_oats]

Folk are rightly pointing out that there's a difference in our circumstances because we built a c.5k stand with the express intention of being able to house OF fans in it but fwiw Burrows articulates our position on the subject well in this reply to a Celtic fan. Tbh, I'd have thought it'd be something that Lasley would be mindful of.

[GAD]

20 minutes ago, Paxo said:

We used to give up two ends, which as I've mentioned above, nobody wants to go back to, but never three sides to my knowledge.

How much does the away stand at Rugby Park hold?

[IrishBhoy]

12 minutes ago, Coventry Saint said:

This. It just makes perfect sense.

And if they do the same to us? Who gives a f**k?

Is there any rules against clubs doing something like that? What is it we charge the Old Firm currently is it £30? 
 

Was it St Johnstone who bumped the price of OF fans tickets up to something daft, but then had to charge their own fans the same, so gave them a voucher for the extra amount to be discounted from their next ticket? We should look in to something like that. 

[RandomGuy.]

1 minute ago, IrishBhoy said:

Is there any rules against clubs doing something like that? What is it we charge the Old Firm currently is it £30? 
 

Was it St Johnstone who bumped the price of OF fans tickets up to something daft, but then had to charge their own fans the same, so gave them a voucher for the extra amount to be discounted from their next ticket? We should look in to something like that. 

You're not allowed to charge home and away fans different prices I don't think.

And yeah, last season we charged OF fans something like £28 with a reduced ticket available for home fans if they bought via a season ticket holder, who were allowed to buy unlimited amounts of tickets per season ticket.

[Paxo]

14 minutes ago, GAD said:

How much does the away stand at Rugby Park hold?

About 4.5k.

[GAD]

3 hours ago, Paxo said:

About 4.5k.

Yeah, so it's a pointless comparison really as it's a totally different situation to St Mirren's. You are still selling well over 1000 more tickets to OF fans for these games with one stand open as we are with two.

[Paxo]

56 minutes ago, GAD said:

Yeah, so it's a pointless comparison really as it's a totally different situation to St Mirren's. You are still selling well over 1000 more tickets to OF fans for these games with one stand open as we are with two.

Just because our away end is bigger than yours doesn't change the frame of the debate. Our Chadwick stand could hold 500 and I'd still be on the side of giving the old firm the same allocation as everyone else, not uprooting the home support to accommodate them.

[GAD]

3 minutes ago, Paxo said:

Just because our away end is bigger than yours doesn't change the frame of the debate. Our Chadwick stand could hold 500 and I'd still be on the side of giving the old firm the same allocation as everyone else, not uprooting the home support to accommodate them.

Of course it does, Kilmarnock have well over 1000 extra OF fans at each game than St Mirren do. You'd have nearly 3k per game if we shut the second stand. The situations aren't even remotely comparable.

[Lola montez]

Does anyone know what Ross County do?, they only give one stand by the looks of highlights.

 I think we should give one stand and 2 sections of the main and make it public that their scummy songs are not tolerated in football, i doubt it would have any effect but someone has to take a stance and if every team did the same it might make a difference. 

[Paxo]

3 minutes ago, GAD said:

Of course it does, Kilmarnock have well over 1000 extra OF fans at each game than St Mirren do. You'd have nearly 3k per game if we shut the second stand. The situations aren't even remotely comparable.

I think you're missing my point.

Kilmarnock stopped the old firm taking both ends at (say) a 50% financial 'hit'. I think every Killie fan would agree that was a good idea for the benefit of the club.

In fact, now that you mention it, wouldn't Killie taking a bigger financial hit than St Mirren, given our bigger stands?

Perhaps it's costing us more to refuse the green/blue pound, but I'm 100% certain it's the best thing for us.

[Hendo]

3 hours ago, oaksoft said:

For some reason the board have continued to push the absolute lie that we make £120k from those 3 games by giving the stand away.

Enough of our fans buy that lie to keep the situation as it is.

I've tried my best to point out this sum assumes there are no losses incurred by the policy, when any comparison of attendances clearly show there are, but some on here dont want to listen.

We often got bigger attendances giving them only one stand than we have recently had giving them two.

[SuperSaints1877]

3 hours ago, oaksoft said:

For some reason the board have continued to push the absolute lie that we make £120k from those 3 games by giving the stand away.

Enough of our fans buy that lie to keep the situation as it is.

You have no skin in the game. You don’t ever go to any games.

[Bairnardo]

The same logic applies to letting your home ground be filled with the vile hordes as wanting them to do well in Europe. Theres potentially more money available for your club, but it comes at the cost of morals and decency. f**k them. Give them the same as everyone else and in doing so, have a slightly better chance of your home fans getting to enjoy getting one over them. 

For me, I agree with Paxo, if that comes with the price of the club having a wee bit less money, fine. Thats the natural position. Bending over for them is an artificial inflation that has a price in terms of football and your matchday as a fan, which is the be all and end all really.