The Ultimate Super Ayr Thread

[ayrmad]

1 minute ago, Hazbart said:

I don’t think it is shite though.

The guy has spunked a small fortune in keeping the club going at this level.

Ok so maybe we would survive at a lower level and could be competing with the Annan’s and the Montrose’s of the world but for me that’s not the Ayr United I support.

We should be in the top 22 in Scottish Football 100% of the time and without the level of support Lauchlan puts in that would be very hard to achieve.

 

We have one of the larger population bases in Scotland, the fact that we can't sustain a club at a level suitable for that population has nothing to do with anything other than how this club has been run for the last 30 or 40 years.

That doesn't detract from the fact that if you take in a tenner and spend a tenner or less then you ain't ever going out the game.

[Hazbart]

4 minutes ago, ayrmad said:

We have one of the larger population bases in Scotland, the fact that we can't sustain a club at a level suitable for that population has nothing to do with anything other than how this club has been run for the last 30 or 40 years.

That doesn't detract from the fact that if you take in a tenner and spend a tenner or less then you ain't ever going out the game.

Bollocks.

We are based on the fringes in one of the most over provided areas in the county in footballing terms. 

Within less than an hours drive there are 6 clubs who play in the league above us and 4 of them  have done so for about 30 years (forget sevco’s trouble years they are an exception). There is a massive number of fans from these clubs who live in Ayr and the immediate area.

We probably have a larger fan based than Hamilton to be fair and that’s reflected in their shite crowds but they are in a position not too dissimilar with Motherwell closer to us than Killie is and about 30mins to Glasgow.

Ayr itself is surrounded by huge pockets of towns and areas that support a particular club. Drongan, Patna and all the ex mining  towns etc have huge Rangers supports mainly due the the love of all things loyalist.

The fact Ayr has been a Tory town for most of my life tells you that the people of Ayr on a whole have questionable taste and gives some insight as to where their allegiances lie.

People no longer naturally support their local club and people move around a hell of a lot for work etc so there are loads of folk around Ayrshire who would never go along to Somerset.

To say that the dwindling support is purely down to the way the club has been run for 30 years is just fucking thick.

[Thumper]

57 minutes ago, ayrmad said:

Can folk stop posting shite like this please, it is the biggest load of nonsense, there are clubs with far smaller turnovers than ours who survive comfortably by living within their means.

Comfortably?

I'd be extraordinarily surprised if there were many clubs at this level of Scottish football who would ever describe their financial situations as comfortable. One that sticks out is Stenny, who make very very good use of their facilities out of hours, but they're even more seaside league than Ayr are. Falkirk (who are having their worst season in a zillion years, and still pull in 5000+ home gates) put out a fucking press release saying that they'd have been insolvent if they didn't scrap their youth academy the other week.*

* that AUFA is financially independent of AUFC is almost certainly the biggest factor in why Ayr aren't currently enjoying a yo-yo period between Leagues One and Two for that matter

Edited October 7, 2018 by Thumper

[Hazbart]

Just to add, South Ayrshire is the smallest of the 3 Ayrshire districts.

Fife has a higher population than all of Ayrshire combined and both South and North Lanarkshire are about the same size in their own right than all of Ayrshire combined.

[ayrmad]

5 minutes ago, Hazbart said:

Bollocks.

We are based on the fringes in one of the most over provided areas in the county in footballing terms. 

Yet there are other sides in this over provided area that seem to have achieved more than us.

Within less than an hours drive there are 6 clubs who play in the league above us and 4 of them  have done so for about 30 years (forget sevco’s trouble years they are an exception). There is a massive number of fans from these clubs who live in Ayr and the immediate area.

See above.

We probably have a larger fan based than Hamilton to be fair and that’s reflected in their shite crowds but they are in a position not too dissimilar with Motherwell closer to us than Killie is and about 30mins to Glasgow.

Hamilton and Motherwell are just around the corner from Glasgow and Killie appear to have managed fine at times.

Ayr itself is surrounded by huge pockets of towns and areas that support a particular club. Drongan, Patna and all the ex mining  towns etc have huge Rangers supports mainly due the the love of all things loyalist.

We are not alone in that respect, plenty of those people will watch their local team when it's worth doing so, for the most part we haven't been worth watching for a long while.

The fact Ayr has been a Tory town for most of my life tells you that the people of Ayr on a whole have questionable taste and gives some insight as to where their allegiances lie.

No, it was a Tory town due to it's relative affluence, we struggle to draw business cash from this demographic.

People no longer naturally support their local club and people move around a hell of a lot for work etc so there are loads of folk around Ayrshire who would never go along to Somerset.

People have never naturally supported their local team in Scotland, most teams have a chunk of their fanbase that is made up of people with a liking for more than one Scottish team, it's that side of it that's probably diminished in recent decades.

To say that the dwindling support is purely down to the way the club has been run for 30 years is just fucking thick.

It's not purely down to it but it's played a large part in it, apart from a wee spell under Barr spunking cash we haven't shown much ambition compared to most other diddy clubs.

 

[Somerset 2010]

All this talk of what will bring you back to Somerset. Isn't this what makes you a fan? The desire to be there when things are grim? Your presence when we lose games and your continued presence when we are in the third tier? I'm not in the "better fan than you" category. People have lots of reason for not making it to games, home or away, but to deliberately stay away smacks of taking the huff/glory hunting. Many of us have supported in what ever way we can through out the hard times. That's what makes you a fan. That's what makes the good times so good.

Great to see more coming back but some of the "excuses" for deserting in the first place.......

Edited October 7, 2018 by Somerset 2010

[ayrmad]

1 minute ago, Somerset 2010 said:

All this talk of what will bring you back to Somerset. Isn't this what makes you a fan? The desire to be there when things are grim? Your presence when we lose games and your continued presence when we are in the third tier? I'm not in the "better fan than you" category. People have lots of reason for not making it to games, home or away, but to deliberately stay away smacks of taking the huff/glory hunting. Many of us have supported in what ever way we can through out the hard times. That's what makes you a fan. That's what makes the good times so good.

All very well but I doubt there are many regulars that haven't contemplated giving it up at some point over the last 10 or 15 years, some of it has been fucking dire to watch, I agree that the bad times make the good times better, but my god, it's been hard work being an Ayr fan at times, playing teams with 200/300 fans and hoping you don't get skelped tests your patience to the limits unless you're someone that puts up with any old pish regardless, I for one don't think there are actually many fans like that.

[Hazbart]

8 minutes ago, ayrmad said:

 

Yeah Hamilton and Motherwell are just next to Glasgow but the population of the North/South Lanarkshire area is double that of Ayrshire. Hamilton have only survived due to their youth academy and probably now to a lesser extent their artificial surface. Their crowd numbers are w**k.

Killie is a bit of an anomaly, they have probably managed to hold on to their fan base because they have been more successful. They’ve been a premier league club for a long time and have a few cup wins too.

Have they been a better run club? Well that depends on who you talk to. Huge numbers of their fans hated the board and how the club was run but went anyway, some stayed away but ultimately they are where they are because they were spending more than they could afford for a long long time and somehow conned the bank In to writing it off. They were probably a couple of months away from being another Hearts/Livvy/Gretna.

You day we haven’t shown as much ambition as other diddy clubs but who do you class as a diddy club? 

The Livingston bubble will burst again and they’ll Hopefully not come back, Hamilton are on borrowed time, QOTS, Morton, Dunfermline all spending vast amounts of money to achieve not very much.

This speculate to accumulate pish is nonsense. It’s f**k all to do with a lack ambition and everything to do with a changing world.

I have always put us in a similar bracket to St Mirren but ask yourself where  they’d be if it wasn’t for Tesco’s millions when they sold Love St.

If it wasn’t for the credit crunch and SAC making a c**t of the Barrett deal things might’ve been different.

 

[ayrmad]

6 minutes ago, Hazbart said:

Yeah Hamilton and Motherwell are just next to Glasgow but the population of the North/South Lanarkshire area is double that of Ayrshire. Hamilton have only survived due to their youth academy and probably now to a lesser extent their artificial surface. Their crowd numbers are w**k.

Killie is a bit of an anomaly, they have probably managed to hold on to their fan base because they have been more successful. They’ve been a premier league club for a long time and have a few cup wins too.

Have they been a better run club? Well that depends on who you talk to. Huge numbers of their fans hated the board and how the club was run but went anyway, some stayed away but ultimately they are where they are because they were spending more than they could afford for a long long time and somehow conned the bank In to writing it off. They were probably a couple of months away from being another Hearts/Livvy/Gretna.

You day we haven’t shown as much ambition as other diddy clubs but who do you class as a diddy club? 

The Livingston bubble will burst again and they’ll Hopefully not come back, Hamilton are on borrowed time, QOTS, Morton, Dunfermline all spending vast amounts of money to achieve not very much.

This speculate to accumulate pish is nonsense. It’s f**k all to do with a lack ambition and everything to do with a changing world.

I have always put us in a similar bracket to St Mirren but ask yourself where  they’d be if it wasn’t for Tesco’s millions when they sold Love St.

If it wasn’t for the credit crunch and SAC making a c**t of the Barrett deal things might’ve been different.

 

We've been suffering from a changing world for over 40 years, long before spunking cash was popular, we have barely looked like being promoted to the top league since we left it, that is pretty shameful for a team like Ayr, there are plenty of similar sized teams who've had a large or small shot in the big league, Morton and ourselves appear to be afraid of having a wee visit now and again.

[Hazbart]

27 minutes ago, ayrmad said:

We've been suffering from a changing world for over 40 years, long before spunking cash was popular, we have barely looked like being promoted to the top league since we left it, that is pretty shameful for a team like Ayr, there are plenty of similar sized teams who've had a large or small shot in the big league, Morton and ourselves appear to be afraid of having a wee visit now and again.

We gave it a shot in the Dalziel years and a half competent manager would’ve achieved it and spend half the cash in the process.

Since Barr left and Cameron snr then junior took it on we’ve been on a period of cutting our cloth to suit coupled with some poor managerial appointments and some underperformance.

Look we were a shambles  of a club long before Cameron took over, the later Barr years exempted (although probably in hindsight you could argue it was still the case) but where we are now if heading in the right direction and hopefully we’ve got this far without risking the club with pie in the sky accounting.

I expect in the next few years some of the teams that have probably over performed through luck or dodgy accounting will find themselves back where they deserve to be (Im looking you Hamilton & Livvy!)

 

[Thumper]

People are being very pessimistic here but I think everyone would in general agree that if the club is to sustain higher gates in the future then the best way to do that, by far, is to carry on the way it's going. The team are better than they have been in nearly two decades, the commercial side has recovered, and organic interest around the town (a town which has itself gone through some absolute shit over the same period, mind you) has rarely been higher.

[ayrmad]

6 hours ago, Hazbart said:

We gave it a shot in the Dalziel years and a half competent manager would’ve achieved it and spend half the cash in the process.

Since Barr left and Cameron snr then junior took it on we’ve been on a period of cutting our cloth to suit coupled with some poor managerial appointments and some underperformance.

Look we were a shambles  of a club long before Cameron took over, the later Barr years exempted (although probably in hindsight you could argue it was still the case) but where we are now if heading in the right direction and hopefully we’ve got this far without risking the club with pie in the sky accounting.

I expect in the next few years some of the teams that have probably over performed through luck or dodgy accounting will find themselves back where they deserve to be (Im looking you Hamilton & Livvy!)

 

The single biggest lack of ambition we've shown is in our managerial choices, that was happening long before Lachlan and long before Barr, we have probably got the worst list of managerial appointments of any club with average crowds of over 1000, cheapest option has been our motto for most of the 40 years, Cowdenbeath have a more ambitious list of appointments than we do and they have crowds comparable to some of our local junior teams.

33 minutes ago, Thumper said:

People are being very pessimistic here but I think everyone would in general agree that if the club is to sustain higher gates in the future then the best way to do that, by far, is to carry on the way it's going. The team are better than they have been in nearly two decades, the commercial side has recovered, and organic interest around the town (a town which has itself gone through some absolute shit over the same period, mind you) has rarely been higher.

There is nobody being pessimistic, I've been telling folk we could be going up this season since I watched our 1st cup game this season, as soon as I could see that Shankland wasn't a one season wonder I was up for a promotion push, you can't dress up our last 40 years any other way than in the negative, as for now and sustaining and growing crowds, the only way that happens is by doing what we're doing today, being competitive at the top end of the Championship or higher and playing decent football at Somerset, like it or not, most of those that don't come are not interested in being competitive in League 1 or scrapping it out to avoid relegation in the Championship.

If you can't compete financially with higher end Championship clubs then you need to be well organised off the pitch, produce your own players and get managers that are capable of outperforming the budget they are given.

[Waniche]

Can we not just enjoy ourselves just now instead of bickering about crowd numbers, stay away fans and wether the chairman has done a good job or not?

We are sitting top of the league by two points, people seem to forget anything above 8th is an achievement! The aim is to stay up and establish ourselves and just now we are seeing something marvellous we haven’t seen for a long, long time. 

The crowd numbers are just about right and increasing with momentum. I had a look at a few statistics and when we were in the top flight in the 70’s, the crowd numbers outwith the so called bigger games were averaging 3.5k. That’s when there was an abundance of industry about the auld toon with the stamp works, aerospace, a functioning harbour....to name a few. So round about 2.5k is also an achievement after the dark years we’ve been through. 

Fans are starting to come back, albeit slowly. As long as there’s money going through the turnstile and it’s increasing then embrace it. 

[Mgc1910]

10 hours ago, ayrmad said:

Can folk stop posting shite like this please, it is the biggest load of nonsense, there are clubs with far smaller turnovers than ours who survive comfortably by living within their means.

As for Lachlan, I've had my say plenty of times in the past, he has put cash in that he didn't need to, he's refused to sell to any old chancer, he's made quite a few mistakes, some of which have caused him to put in large chunks of cash, that's not my fault as an Ayr fan, that's his fault for listening to the wrong people when he was learning what it meant to run a Scottish football club, fantasy crowd expectations spring to mind.

Overall people with opinions I value have consistently told me he was a good guy with Ayr' best interests at heart.

I think his own personality hasn't helped him either, not his fault but you probably need to be less reticent with the general fanbase at a club like Ayr.

I along with others have probably tagged some blame onto him for shit that Barr actually caused.

Overall I'm more than happy to pay my cash at the moment and would urge anyone who doesn't attend to get their arse along to Somerset before it's too late, this side might just be the real deal, for the oldies out there, come along and see what the legend Dixie Ingram would have looked like with less heading ability and dynamite in both feet.

It’s far from shite.  The club was crippled by a huge tax bill which we did not have the means to pay.  Without benefactors putting money into the club, with no real expectation that it would be repaid,  we we were heading towards insolvency.  Today the club still runs at a huge deficit.  We wouldn’t be watching the team we are without huge personal backing from Cameron.  

[AyrTroopMajor]

Those still staying away for bizarre reasons or because they are out of the habit of going are quite simply missing out on a special period in our recent history.

Having stood and watched us get absolutely shagged by teams like Cowdenbeath, East Fife and Stirling Albion during my 20 years as a ST Holder, I can honestly say that what I am witnessing at Somerset right now is all that any football fan could ever ask for. A team that absolutely love playing here, love playing for each other and who give absolutely everything that they have got to do well for the club.

Having seen some of the absolute charlatans that have been brought here in recent years, we really need to make the most of what we currently have. I f****g love this team. 

[Guest]

Lots of good posts there and I suppose the reality of where we could / should be in terms of Scottish Football is completely open to debate. It also shouldn't be forgotten that league reconstruction and the addition of extra clubs and an extra league also impacted us with regards to being in the 3rd tier, when previously we would still have been bottom end in the 2nd tier which is where we've found ourselves for the majority of our history.

The bottom line is that we're currently playing great, our crowds are back to a pretty decent level, we've got lots of exciting young players, we've got a highly respected Manager, we've got a Chairman who's backing us, we're starting to get lots of positive publicity and all in all things are as good as they've been since the height of the Barr era, when, it could be argued, that we ourselves were "doing a livvy". 

Let's just all be "UNITED" here and all get behind this fantastic and exciting young side..............

[AYRSHIRE_ANGUS]

I'm loving this season and I'm gutted I have a party down South on the 20th, but equally I'm fearful that the whole thing will come to a shuddering halt!

There is no reason it should, but we've been given a taste of what it feels like being quite good, and none of us wants to revert back to type.

[Trogdor]

I think you can be thankful to the Chairman for being a good custodian but critical of his decision making. The views aren't mutually exclusive!

When Roberts contract was renewed it was the worst I have ever felt as an Ayr fan. I didn't renew my season ticket and I only attended when I felt like it. Call me a bad fan if you want? But getting drubbed by diddies week on week and watching a diddy who wasn't up to it in the dugout with an owner who didn't care (how it seemed!) was not for me. I felt the only way I could influence change was to vote with my feet. I returned for home and away games as soon as McCall was appointed and renewed my season ticket. It's been great since! 

I have a great deal of sympathy for those who felt their only recourse was to vote with their feet. I came back but I could have very easily ended up like mccurdieboy.

53 minutes ago, WATTOO said:

Let's just all be "UNITED" here and all get behind this fantastic and exciting young side..............

What he said!

[ayrmad]

1 hour ago, Mgc1910 said:

It’s far from shite.  The club was crippled by a huge tax bill which we did not have the means to pay.  Without benefactors putting money into the club, with no real expectation that it would be repaid,  we we were heading towards insolvency.  Today the club still runs at a huge deficit.  We wouldn’t be watching the team we are without huge personal backing from Cameron.  

The tax bill had nothing to do with the size of the club or whether we could operate as a going concern with our turnover, you head to insolvency because of bad stewardship not crowd numbers.

You are correct, we probably wouldn't be watching the team we are lucky to watch today but we would be watching Ayr United at whatever level that happened to be.

 

[ayrmad]

24 minutes ago, Trogdor said:

I think you can be thankful to the Chairman for being a good custodian but critical of his decision making. The views aren't mutually exclusive!

When Roberts contract was renewed it was the worst I have ever felt as an Ayr fan. I didn't renew my season ticket and I only attended when I felt like it. Call me a bad fan if you want? But getting drubbed by diddies week on week and watching a diddy who wasn't up to it in the dugout with an owner who didn't care (how it seemed!) was not for me. I felt the only way I could influence change was to vote with my feet. I returned for home and away games as soon as McCall was appointed and renewed my season ticket. It's been great since! 

I have a great deal of sympathy for those who felt their only recourse was to vote with their feet. I came back but I could have very easily ended up like mccurdieboy.

What he said!

I'm not going to slag Marco, I liked the guy and he was a great player to watch in an Ayr jersey, I agree about his contract renewal but Marco blew it himself before a ball was kicked, he'll rue the day he chose not to get a very experienced guy next to him in the dugout, it was too late by the time he rectified it.