chapwithwings

Sorry to disabuse you of the notion, MMCF, but you couldn't be further from the truth if you tried. I saw the thread on the Saturday, asked Fraser to ask the club about it, he wrote the story, we ran it on the site. We're not talking Watergate here, for goodness sake.

I don't think it's any big secret, is it? I wasn't down at the away game, but saw Tom's post on here on the Saturday night and asked Fraser - who is online journalist for both the Record and the Glaswegian - to investigate it for the websites on the Monday. He did so. Simple as that.

Ok. There's two mindsets. For the Trust - which is why we have the regular shill-posts. And agin the Trust - hence the Deid Duck-ers. What are the trust doing to engage with the latter and see how their concerns and viewpoints can be accomodated? What are the latter doing to engage the former and try to change the trust? And what of the floating voters in between who sit in the crossfire between the two. The title of this threat says 'Make it your Jags Trust'. The problem for me is that it isn't my Jags Trust. I can't honestly say I know what the Trust stands for these days. It's apparently not for voicing the views of the support. It's apparently not for protecting the club from being run into the ground by the board - the abstention over Propco showed that. What actually is it FOR? Fundraising? Campaigning? Trying to take ownership? Being the BoD's Pravda arm? It's easy for the trust to pop up and say 'Make it your Trust' and get involved etc.or that the only way to change things is to be a part of it. But I don't see them spelling WHY folk should get involved, or what they have achieved this season, or what their aims are for next season.

How about the Trust give people a reason TO join first?

So you're saying the Trust should be allowed to shill on here without criticism then?

To an extent that's true. However, the whole regime is symptomatic of the malaise wrecking the club. If there ARE directors who are prepared to fund the club out their own pockets, they should be welcomed back once the future of the club is secured. But trying to pick off individual members of the board is dangerous. It must be, initially, all out. These two questions are intrinsically linked. It may be simply a case of embarrassing them to the point of forcing them out. But, as you say, Propco makes things very difficult. They own a stake in Firhill above and beyond their stake in the club, so even a new regime will be forced to deal with them. But Propco is such a busted flush anyway that it may not be wholly relevant in the short term. The problem, at a base level, is the fiscal and upper management of the club. We only have the BoD's word for it that there's no investors out there. Lets not forget their predecessor in the boardroom's comments about refusing to sell to some curry shop owner. It may be there HAVE been offers that have just not met the valuation they place on their own shares, or add conditions they don't wish to meet. This is an area I would prefer to see the Trust actively pursuing. If their aim is the best interests of Thistle, it's now increasingly clear that the best interests of Thistle are served by removing the current board and attracting new investment in the club - no mean feat in a recession, yet both bigger and smaller clubs than us have managed it successfully recently. Possibly, but if it attracts the attention of the media, and thus focus away from Pravda Mitchell's latest dictations from the boardroom and more towards the current plight of the club, so much the better. Once eyes are on the board, and the fans' voice is heard by a wider audience than just the forums, it's a lot harder for them to wriggle out or fob people off.

I've got the original files from the first two podcasts last year, if anyone still wants them.

Poor show by Thistle despite the result. Kinniburgh didn't look at the races, but I did wonder how injured he was after McCusker's 'treatment' of him - he was certainly favouring his arm after that. Hodge was a liability - perhaps even more than Kinniburgh. Given how good he looked in the first couple of games last season, his decline has been astounding. Thought Paton looked good today though, and Boyle looked far more comfortable than last season. MacBeth performed well, and Burns showed promise when he appeared. Dramatic improvement needed by the time the League fixtures start though - if we look that ropey against Third Division opposition, we're in deep trouble when we face decent First Division teams.

That's a very good question - I've said for some time that what the support needs is a proper, organised show of dissent. Not just booing or the usual muttered "'ksake..." at the end of the game, but a demonstration or protest. I don't think paying in is the way to do it - I'm sure the board would just say 'thank you very much, we're a bit richer now, protest all you want' but something dramatic is needed.

Well, you're certainly saying fans who choose to stay away from Firhill are damaging the club. That hardly seems a ringing endorsement. I can only make educated assumptions because I'm not one of them - yet. But I absolutely sympathise with them and am getting close to the point where I see no other reason to go to the club than blind loyalty. I certainly see no reason to lambast supporters for actively refusing to give the club money or go to games until some level of change is affected. Let me flip it round - what does blindly going to Firhill every week out of optimism achieve, other than giving the BoD a mandate to continue with what they're doing?

So why are you saying fans who aren't going to Firhill aren't good fans then? And as for supporting this club long after Cowan et al are gone - I'm sure the Thirds fans thought the same in 1966. Bit of a shock for them a year later, wasn't it?

See, this is the bit I don't get Steven. You say why is it different for fans? Because that's the way the club runs. We have a board of directors who have, reportedly, refused offers of investment, who have over the course of the last half decade continually failed to progress the club financially, made a stream of poor decisions and appointments, cut staff numbers to the bone, alienated the support and now plan to bulldoze half the ground - having sold it to themselves in the process - in a last-gasp bid to wring some final cash out of the mess they've left. And what can fans do about it? One thing. Stay away. We don't have substantial voting rights. We don't have the power to make changes at the club. All we have is the power to say 'This week, you don't get my £16. This week, I choose not to give you the money I have earned through my own hard work to reward your failure.' There's a word for it. It's called a boycott. Quite frankly, I'm shocked at your admission you think fans should sit there and not express any discontent at the way the club's being run. Because that's what your saying. Pay your 16 notes and take your medicine, because it's for the good of the club? Ba's, quite frankly. Paying the entrance money and putting up with the ever-more-desperate actions of the board is what got us here. If the club planned for an average gate of 3000 a season and are only getting 2000, doesn't that tell you something? That's A THIRD of the support not turning up. Even allowing for folk who can't go because of geography or economics, that's not small change. That's a substantial portion of Thistle's core audience choosing not to go to give their money to the club. You say earlier in the thread you'd look for other methods to deal with the situation than an economic withdrawal of support? Go on then, give me some credible alternatives.

So you'd rather that people meekly went along to the terrapin every two weeks, handed over their sixteen quid, bough their programme and their pie and bovril, and sat on their hands while the squad is reduced, staff are cut, the ground is semi-bulldozed and the support treated with borderline contempt? Yes, that's being Thistle minded. Let's all get shirts with Nero printed on the back while we're at it, eh? Presumably in your book as well the FCUM guys should never have set up the club, and the folk buying green and yellow scarves to wear to Old Trafford should swap them for officially branded club merchandise in case their actions put United further into debt. If a supporter feels strongly enough that they choose not to go watch the club they've seen every year, week in week out, because they object to the way it's being run (or in this case, run into the ground), it's because making an economic protest is just about the only option remaining now. Finger pointing and accusations of not acting in the club's best interest - the old Thistle-minded argument again - does nobody any favours. It shouldn't be a case of 'you're staying away, you're ruining the club', it should be a case of 'why are you staying away, and what would bring you back again?'.

Mr Withwings? Call me Iain, David, it's a little less formal. The point has been made elsewhere in the thread, far more articulately than I could manage, about the trust's fence-sitting abstention last year, but I think it's worth emphasising. Because while you say try to move forward as best we can, how can members of the support have confidence in the Trust when it continues to either fudge or back plans which are NOT universally popular and are NOT the best direction for the club's long term survival. The club is betting on an unrealistic, ill-thought out property development at a time when the building industry and property industries are in downturn, has sold off a substantial part of the Firhill footprint to a company largely comprised of its own board of directors for a sum of questionable market value, have failed to deliver the investment in the playing staff we were told these developments would enable, failed to consult with fans properly about the proposals... and yet the Trust has not adequately objected to any of this. Elsewhere in the thread it's been said this is the only option we've got. it's not - the only realistic long-term survival option for Firhill is the removal and replacement of the existing management, who have systematically undone all the work StJ did 12 years ago - and replaced it with a feeling of apathy. And before the usual 'well, how do we do that/where's the money coming from' catcalls appear - I don't know. I have no immediate answer, no magic wand to wave. But it IS something that is achievable - look at Stirling as an example of how a motivated fanbase, concerned about the club's future, can save a side in danger. Surely that is what the Trust should be doing - actively engaging with and motivating the support to fight for the club's future, rather than sitting on the fence and occasionally lobbing 'well, you had your chance to come to the meeting' barbs at critics. Instead, with the Board/FDL railroading their plans through and putting Thistle in the position we now find ourselves in, we seem more likely to end up in the Clubs in Crisis pages of When Saturday Comes than the roll-call of champions. We have an apathetic support now rather than a motivated one. But I don't see an incentive for the support TO be motivated. Comments like "had the meeting been well attended by members and non-members who put forth a strong and well argued case against supporting the proposal, then the outcome may very well have been different" don't help. You talk, David, of not dwelling in the past. Fine - so what is the Trust going to do in the future?

Don't know how you've set up the channel in podcastmachine, but this episode doesn't seem to be showing up in the same feed as the previous Jagscast episode.

Or alternatively - since the Trust's attitude towards... well, just about every stunt the board has pulled in the supposed name of the club's survival is to roll over and play dead - perhaps some of those who didn't turn up felt it wouldn't make a difference. If I felt the Trust could make a difference these days, I'd have retained my membership.

Aah. Right, you've misunderstood my original post, when I was quoting you as complaing about the shite people spoke - not that shite people were speaking. Anyway, the original point of my post - if you don't like the original Jagscasts from months ago, why not just ignore them rather than come back on, months later, when a new team are doing them, and criticise them again anyway?

Actually, for the sake of accuracy, that's exactly what you said: But why let the facts get in the way of insulting people's hard work, eh?

So are you saying fanzines are irrelevant because its just the 'shite' people talk, written down? Or forums for that matter, where it's just people talking shite, across multiple threads? Nobody's forcing you to listen to it, are they? Is someone standing over you with a shotgun saying 'listen or die'? No. So don't listen to it. And if you can't be positive about an attempt to do something different and engage the support, how about just shutting up and letting those who did enjoy it appreciate it. Or better yet, go to the Star and Garter, do an audioboo with three old punters there, and put your money where your mouth is.

Well done, gents.