Woodstock Jag

This is a minor quibble, as the fan engagement side at Falkirk is entirely valid. Falkirk Football Club is not fan-owned and it rips my knitting when it's made out that they are. The Falkirk Supporters' Society holds something like a quarter of the shares in Falkirk FC. There is no single majority shareholder, and lots of individual fans hold significant minority shareholdings, but this doesn't make them "fan owned" any more than Thistle was "fan owned" after Save The Jags.

Really sad to hear this. I knew he wasn’t well but he had seemed to be soldiering on in very good spirits and humour. Rest easy Rob. Once a Jag and all that.

I think I’m going to get tattooed on my forehead: ”The election is the vetting process.”

Conscious I’ve let this thread slip a bit. Most TJF members should hopefully have seen, by now, the Bring-A-Friend ticket initiative we launched earlier in October. Put simply - if you’re a current TJF member, or join/rejoin this month, you are eligible for a free ticket to a league match of your choice this season. This is partly a “thank you” for your efforts contributing to our fundraising efforts, but also a bit of a call to arms to get new and lapsed fans (back) to Firhill and get them bitten by the bug of Wilsonball. To claim your Bring-A-Friend ticket, you just need to email [email protected] and provide the following information: (a) your name (b) your TJF membership number (c) the home league fixture you’d like the free ticket for (d) the stand you’d like the ticket for (Husband or Lambie) This system isn’t as streamlined as we’d like, but it lets us track uptake and ensures that those claiming are eligible. We’ll be using the outcome of this scheme and the take-up to inform our wider discussions about member benefits and incentives. If you’re claiming tickets for a Saturday fixture, make sure to email no later than the Wednesday morning, as there’s a standard 72 hour window for responses via the [email protected] inbox (especially at busier times). With the upcoming Tuesday fixture against Ayr United, make sure to put your ask in by COP Thursday.

Next 3 home games are massive: Montrose, Aberdeen, Motherwell. A decent crowd at Petershill would make a difference. And of course you can enter TJF's free prize draw to be the Captain's Sponsor at one of these fixtures and take home the signed armband post-match! https://thejagsfoundation.co.uk/ptwfc-be-the-captains-sponsor/ Only takes 20 seconds to enter!

That’s why it’s an average though! More than half of the first quarter leaders and almost half of the league winners conceded fewer goals after 9 games than we did even if you remove the 5 St Johnstone put past us.

This inspired me to do some stats checking on this. Here are the last 14 seasons Thistle have played in the Championship/First Division (data from Transfermarkt) And here's the table for the teams in 1st place after 9 games for the last 20 seasons And here's the table for league winners, and their first 9 games What does all this tell you? Well it says that "it's a bit of both". The team leading the pack after 9 games wins the league about 85% of the time. The team that wins the league typically scores 19 or so goals in their opening 9 fixtures and concedes fewer than 9. Only ICT has ever failed to win the league after winning 7 or more of their opening 9 fixtures. St Johnstone are a textbook favourite for the league against essentially every metric. And Thistle's form is absolutely typical of an also-ran that finishes in the play-offs. We don't quite score enough goals. We concede slightly too many. But we're run-of-the-mill and doing a better job of turning goals into points than in our typical season.

We did ask if there was a more elegant way to do it for our deal (e.g. generate unique one-time use Fanbase codes and TJF sends them direct to each member) but for whatever reason that wasn’t possible. We want to make sure that take-up is being monitored, apart from anything else, so we can see what kind of appetite there is for a member benefit like that, and whether it drives people’s decisions to sign-up/pay more through TJF as a fan fundraising route.

It might have been helpful to have a standalone article on the website notifying the JagZone monthly price increase, and I don’t know if there was direct comms to existing subscribers by email about this (I wasn’t previously a subscriber but took up the J4G deal this year). But it is only fair to note that the new pricing of JagZone was communicated in at least five website articles and on the Jags For Generations season ticket page. 3rd June (when the Jags For Generations deal was announced) 5th June (as part of a piece explaining how JagZone accounts would be activated/migrated for those taking up the new J4G deal) 23rd June (as part of the article confirming pay at the gate prices for season 2025-26) 25th July (as part of an article further promoting season tickets and the J4G deal) 28th August (as part of a J4G and JagZone update) A quick glance also suggests it was included in the promotional material in the Club’s weekly email newsletter throughout June and July.

Celtic were house in (what was then) the North Stand and the Northern half (or thereabouts) of the Jackie Husband Stand. Matchday attendance 7.5k.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying here. That said, I'm reasonably certain that the last time (or the time before) that Hearts played at Firhill they were given both the Colin Weir Stand and part of the Jackie Husband Stand. This isn't a uniquely Rangers and Celtic discussion. They're just the particularly extreme example of a disparity in demand for home v away end tickets. ETA: It's also worth saying that the additional logistical, stewarding and policing challenges of splitting the Jackie Husband stand can (substantially) wipe out allocating only part of it to away supports. The reason that smaller supports are accommodated in the Jackie Husband stand only is because it cuts those costs versus having to open up an extra stand.

If Aberdeen, Hearts or Hibs ever showed that they were likely to bring 6,000 fans to Firhill, I’m sure we’d have the conversation? Plenty of fans on here and elsewhere were calling on the Club to increase Falkirk’s allocation back in April (and in the end, Thistle didn’t do it).

To provide a bit of context on the crowd numbers, and with the benefit of some input from one of the Fan Reps Allan McGraw… The official attendance was 8,817 (Club socials had a typo when it said 8,117). I understand that more than 9,200 tickets were issued. So more than 400 of the issued tickets either weren’t scanned successfully or the holder didn’t turn up. My best guess here is that it’s quite common for Celtic fans to hoover up tickets and then attempt to resell on the day, plus the usual last minute no-shows. The 9,200 or so figure is less than 9,850 (the theoretical capacity of Firhill) for two main reasons. Firstly, and subsequently to the consultation, it became clear that the Colin Weir stand would need to be sold on the basis of unallocated seating. This cuts its permissible capacity by about 200 seats. This would have had to happen regardless of whether it was used for home or away fans. Secondly, and subsequently to the consultation, the Police asked for “sterile” zones in both the Jackie Husband and John Lambie Stands. This was presumably to reduce the risk of disorder in the event of pitch incursions and/or projectiles being flung between the supports. I understand this cut the capacity by a further 400 or so seats. The underlying revenue difference between Option A versus Option B will not have been significantly impacted by these developments, but it will have meant that the available ticket allocation for each clubs was 200-300 less than the theoretical maximum. If we had gone with Option A and capped the away support at 1,800 or so (unallocated, Colin Weir only) and sold 3,800 or so home tickets, we’d still be looking at a 40% reduction in ticket volumes and revenue under Option A compared with Option B (which was the comparison the consultation gave in the first place). I am sure plenty fans will say “we would have sold more than 4,000 home tickets if you’d kept the Jackie Husband stand”. Maybe you’re right. That’s why there was a consultation and why there will be further fan engagement on this issue later in the season.

That looks significantly closer to the pitch than watching some games at West Ham's stadium feels like.