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What's the most "Tin Pot" thing you've seen in the SPFL


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2 hours ago, craigkillie said:

Any major change like this should require consent from the supporters, this should be something that's enshrined in law for major community assets such as football clubs.

With the increasing presence and influence of American owners in football in the UK (even in oor own wee league), this is a more pressing issue than many people seem to realise.

It's the kind of thing that should be tackled early, as people will play it down until some catastrophe inevitably happens and it's too late to stop it. 'Something should be done!'.

Edited by VincentGuerin
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7 hours ago, craigkillie said:

Yes, Meadowbank was a small and poorly supported club, which wasn't really missed by many people, and may not have survived much longer anyway, but that doesn't make their murder any less distasteful. Any major change like this should require consent from the supporters, this should be something that's enshrined in law for major community assets such as football clubs. That goes for the risible "FC Edinburgh" name change too. These aren't commodities that one individual should be able to buy and do what they want with.

I don't blame the current Livi fans who have grown up with the club essentially always existing in the town, but they shouldn't be able to handwave away what the club is.

I'd avoided jumping in on this until now because the Vincent Guerin guy shows up to derail Livi match threads regularly with this and now he's at it again in this thread. He's relentlessly bad faith on the topic and that's likely why you'll see some slightly brazen replies to him from Livi fans. I read them more as pushback against him than sincere Livi fan opinion on this. That said, Livi fans will all think differently so I'm only speaking for myself here. I think what you've put above is entirely fair. You're correct that most Livi fans are similar to myself in that Livi either arrived or already existed in our childhood and therefore its all we've ever known. However, I'm fully aware that for someone born two or three decades prior to me in a particular area of Edinburgh, they'd have been exactly the same with Meadowbank Thistle. These people did lose out by the club moving to Livingston and yes, there weren't Old Firm-level numbers of them but one thing I'll certainly never be as a Livi fan is a snob. So whatever their number, Meadowbank Thistle was their club and their team which they'll have felt as strongly about as I do now about Livi. These folk lost out and that was very shite. 

What you put about community assets and therefore fan consent is spot on. "These aren't commodities that one individual should be able to buy and do what they want with". Absolutely. Moneybags McArseface Bill Hunter was a villain, for that reason. So while I agree with the thrust and sentiment of your comment above, I'll just add a wee bit of extra detail which is more a response to some of Vincent Guerin's stuff than anything you commented:

If Livingston are a franchise of anything, it's of the local council. The same as Meadowbank were before. The club's history isn't just one of various Moneybags McArseface figures pissing around with it. It was the local council who sought the move to Meadowbank away from Pilton. Livingston in turn were then given a home stadium by the local council (this is similar to Inverness Caley, incidentally). Beginning as a works team, that gave the club a slightly different character from the start. It's for that reason that John Bain, one of the founding Ferranti workers of the club, was instrumental in the transitions to first Meadowbank and then to Livingston. Presumably, he felt that different origin of the club, perhaps less rooted than comparable football clubs, gave him the right to make those decisions. The ethics of that can be and is debated, obviously, I'm just mentioning it as it's a huge aspect to why the history went the way it did. Finally, on the "stealing Meadowbank's history" thing that Guerin is claiming. That's absurd. Livi has always endeavoured to keep alive the 21 years of Meadowbank Thistle not only out of respect but also due to a huge sense of gratitude. As a Livi fan, I know well that I'm a fortunate inheritor of all the efforts a great many people put in during that time. 

 

Edited by FreedomFarter
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7 minutes ago, gannonball said:

Admittedly I know little about Airdrie or Livis history but Airdrie do come across as the bigger scumbags in all this and that’s before you even look at their fans.

Have to agree.  They are only good for pumping Hearts in the Scottish cup about 100 times in the 90s.  Even John Martin was a scab ***. 

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3 minutes ago, Hoose Rice said:

Have to agree.  They are only good for pumping Hearts in the Scottish cup about 100 times in the 90s.  Even John Martin was a scab ***. 

That’s a blast from the past I can vaguely remember being at a Stirling Albion game in the 90s and remember him getting it tight and had no idea as was just a kid. Possibly the worst set of fans I have seen at CP also.

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10 hours ago, topcat(The most tip top) said:




According to Wikipedia the 1965-2002 version of Clydebank F.C was the 4th Clydebank F.C

The Clydebank F.C  that are currently respectably mid table in the WoSL are the Mark 5 version

Their "honours" page lists "lowest attendance" which is probably worthy of mention on this thread

https://www.clydebankfc.com/honours/
 

I was looking up for some more information on that as I find it interesting 

Found this video from Hampden curator guy 

 

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59 minutes ago, Hoose Rice said:

Have to agree.  They are only good for pumping Hearts in the Scottish cup about 100 times in the 90s.  Even John Martin was a scab ***. 

To this day, whenever  Airdrie get eliminated from the Scottish Cup I can’t help but think “maybe this is our year…”

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15 minutes ago, Clown Job said:

I was looking up for some more information on that as I find it interesting 

Found this video from Hampden curator guy 

 

Put’s the whole  tiresome 

Rangers are a new club! No they’re naw! aye they are! No they’re naw! aye they are! Etc…

trope into some perspective 

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2 hours ago, FreedomFarter said:

1) He's relentlessly bad faith on the topic and that's likely why you'll see some slightly brazen replies to him from Livi fans.

2) Finally, on the "stealing Meadowbank's history" thing that Guerin is claiming. That's absurd. Livi has always endeavoured to keep alive the 26 years of Meadowbank Thistle not only out of respect but also due to a huge sense of gratitude. As a Livi fan, I know well that I'm a fortunate inheritor of all the efforts a great many people put in during that time. 

 

1) You'll need to explain this. What's bad faith about openly and honestly saying I think your club is a disgrace and explaining exactly why I think that?

2) Now THIS is bad faith. Sanctimonious shite like this should make any fan's blood boil. You are stealing another club's history, one which your community stole against the wishes of its established fanbase, and you have the brass neck to say it's out of 'respect' and 'gratitude'. That's utterly laughable. You could have shown some 'respect' by not murdering their club in the first place. You're not an 'inheritor' of anything, you're a thief. It's a disgraceful thing to say.

You're a Livi fan, so you're going to disagree with me. You have to, you have no choice. But do not mistake my views for trolling or some kind of wind-up.

I'll repeat what I said above. I deeply regret that Livi have been normalised and accepted in Scottish football to the degree that you have been. You should be a pariah club like your brothers in Milton Keynes. You represent a dangerous precedent in our game, and the fact that you continue to claim the legitimacy of the club you murdered is absolutely disgraceful.

Edited by VincentGuerin
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3 hours ago, FreedomFarter said:

I'd avoided jumping in on this until now because the Vincent Guerin guy shows up to derail Livi match threads regularly with this and now he's at it again in this thread. He's relentlessly bad faith on the topic and that's likely why you'll see some slightly brazen replies to him from Livi fans. I read them more as pushback against him than sincere Livi fan opinion on this. That said, Livi fans will all think differently so I'm only speaking for myself here. I think what you've put above is entirely fair. You're correct that most Livi fans are similar to myself in that Livi either arrived or already existed in our childhood and therefore its all we've ever known. However, I'm fully aware that for someone born two or three decades prior to me in a particular area of Edinburgh, they'd have been exactly the same with Meadowbank Thistle. These people did lose out by the club moving to Livingston and yes, there weren't Old Firm-level numbers of them but one thing I'll certainly never be as a Livi fan is a snob. So whatever their number, Meadowbank Thistle was their club and their team which they'll have felt as strongly about as I do now about Livi. These folk lost out and that was very shite. 

What you put about community assets and therefore fan consent is spot on. "These aren't commodities that one individual should be able to buy and do what they want with". Absolutely. Moneybags McArseface Bill Hunter was a villain, for that reason. So while I agree with the thrust and sentiment of your comment above, I'll just add a wee bit of extra detail which is more a response to some of Vincent Guerin's stuff than anything you commented:

If Livingston are a franchise of anything, it's of the local council. The same as Meadowbank were before. The club's history isn't just one of various Moneybags McArseface figures pissing around with it. It was the local council who sought the move to Meadowbank away from Pilton. Livingston in turn were then given a home stadium by the local council (this is similar to Inverness Caley, incidentally). Beginning as a works team, that gave the club a slightly different character from the start. It's for that reason that John Bain, one of the founding Ferranti workers of the club, was instrumental in the transitions to first Meadowbank and then to Livingston. Presumably, he felt that different origin of the club, perhaps less rooted than comparable football clubs, gave him the right to make those decisions. The ethics of that can be and is debated, obviously, I'm just mentioning it as it's a huge aspect to why the history went the way it did. Finally, on the "stealing Meadowbank's history" thing that Guerin is claiming. That's absurd. Livi has always endeavoured to keep alive the 26 years of Meadowbank Thistle not only out of respect but also due to a huge sense of gratitude. As a Livi fan, I know well that I'm a fortunate inheritor of all the efforts a great many people put in during that time. 

 

That would be the same John Bain who, when Blobby Hunter had made a pig's arse of running things at Almondvale and they looked like folding, came up to us Meadowbank fans at a Spartans v Edinburgh City game and said "Looks like you boys were right then"

Of course you wouldn't read that in his self serving book 

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16 minutes ago, Kapowzer said:

The seethe in Vincents house when Irvine inherits Ayr United, Cumbernauld hosts any team not including David Goodwillie, East Kilbride offer Queens Park a snifter and Val McDairmid's ladies team decide Glenrothes is for them.

Is it weird to have a problem with football clubs being stolen from their communities?

Some of the reactions on this thread underline my point. It's utterly weird how passive and accepting Scottish football has been of this.

What would your view have been of Motherwell at peak financial crisis in 2002 being moved to EK (bigger population, not that far away, no team in the system at that point), renamed EK FC, and having that club lay claim to your history. All fine, aye?

My guess is you'd have been rattling buckets, attending rallies, writing letters to politicians, signing petitions, calling phone-ins etc railing against the theft of your community asset. That's what Livi is, but it seems we're all fine with it.

Edited by VincentGuerin
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Incidentally seeing as I am a two time loser in that both the teams I supported have been f*cked about with by greedy spivs if anyone wants to me to go and hex their rivals then buy me a season ticket and I'll happily do it :lol:

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25 minutes ago, VincentGuerin said:

Is it weird to have a problem with football clubs being stolen from their communities?

Some of the reactions on this thread underline my point. It's utterly weird how passive and accepting Scottish football has been of this.

What would your view have been of Motherwell at peak financial crisis in 2002 being moved to EK (bigger population, not that far away, no team in the system at that point), renamed EK FC, and having that club lay claim to your history. All fine, aye?

My guess is you'd have been rattling buckets, attending rallies, writing letters to politicians, signing petitions, calling phone-ins etc railing against the theft of your community asset. That's what Livi is, but it seems we're all fine with it.

It was a craic in a fun thread. Not to be taken literally.

The fact that 1,200 of them have adopted the club doesn't make them thieves. Meadowbank may take a bigger crowd to Paisley however, probably feature on a Twitter feed an ensuring fallout on here.

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3 minutes ago, Kapowzer said:

It was a craic in a fun thread. Not to be taken literally.

The fact that 1,200 of them have adopted the club doesn't make them thieves. Meadowbank may take a bigger crowd to Paisley however, probably feature on a Twitter feed an ensuring fallout on here.

Craigkillie's point about not blaming the younger Livi fans is probably a fair one.

I'm going to leave it here, as this is one of my favourite threads to read, and it's for more fun stuff than this.

All fans should be conscious though, that Livi/Meadowbank is a potential disaster that could befall any club, and we should always asterisk Livingston with that point.

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Claiming Meadowbank's history isn't exactly some universal thing for Livi fans. I certainly don't, as far as I'm concerned Livi is 95-Present. I've got no interest in claiming to be some other club, one ceased to exist and then Livi did. 

We've almost been in existence for 30 years, there will have to come a point where even the staunchest defender of this topic lets it rest and finally comes to terms with Livi as a club. 1974-1995 is 21 years, Livi as a club have existed for longer than that. We're over halfway from Ferranti's 1954-1995 stint if you're lumping them both together. 

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4 hours ago, VincentGuerin said:

1) You'll need to explain this. What's bad faith about openly and honestly saying I think your club is a disgrace and explaining exactly why I think that?

2) Now THIS is bad faith. Sanctimonious shite like this should make any fan's blood boil. You are stealing another club's history, one which your community stole against the wishes of its established fanbase, and you have the brass neck to say it's out of 'respect' and 'gratitude'. That's utterly laughable. You could have shown some 'respect' by not murdering their club in the first place. You're not an 'inheritor' of anything, you're a thief. It's a disgraceful thing to say.

You're a Livi fan, so you're going to disagree with me. You have to, you have no choice. But do not mistake my views for trolling or some kind of wind-up.

I'll repeat what I said above. I deeply regret that Livi have been normalised and accepted in Scottish football to the degree that you have been. You should be a pariah club like your brothers in Milton Keynes. You represent a dangerous precedent in our game, and the fact that you continue to claim the legitimacy of the club you murdered is absolutely disgraceful.

This is just a rage-post. Which I've done before myself, @Kapowzer can vouch for me on that. I'll try a response, though.

From what I've read, John Bain and accolytes took the position that many Meadowbank fans were Johnny-come-latelies, only following the club once it had been provided a plush stadium by the council and awarded a senior league place. Bain's clique had been there from the Ferranti Thistle start. They were founders. They felt they'd built up the club rather than Meadowbank fans. As I put in my previous comment, who truly "owned" the club in this case was the debate. The founders or the fans. Money men did later arrive, most notably Hunter, but they were invited by the Bain clique rather than being some American vulture fund. The move to Livingston also had an aspect of councils trading their asset as the football club went from Edinburgh council that'd been housing it at Meadowbank stadium to West Lothian council who decided they wanted it and so built a stadium. That should further show you the move was not some Americanised, profit-making venture. Local government was intimately involved both in the transition to Meadowbank then later to Livingston. I share your concerns about football being ripped away from the fans by private capital and moved to an American model, but Livingston is not an example of that. It's Man Utd and Liverpool you're looking for on that front.

There was still a ripping away that happened with the Meadowbank to Livingston move, though, and folk like Tam the Bam were victim to that. I sympathise and I want the geographic succesor club to succeed - Edinburgh City/FC Edinburgh (I know there's now a separate issue there).

Edited by FreedomFarter
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