Jaggernaut

No it's not. What does "support" mean? Do we actively desire it? If the club announced that it was moving to become part-time playing staff only would we continue to support the team? A mix of full-time and part-time?

So what should they get? What the Dundee fans and club think is "reasonable", i.e., a 10-point reduction? They've won more than 10 points since their punishment was announced! So it's actually no punishment at all! If that's all the punishment that repeated and chronic attempts to cheat your way through the system incurs then every team might as well just spend millions that they don't have and then go crying for administration. That cannot be allowed, or we might as well just chuck it.

He's "mistaken", or at the wind-up. There's never been a Joe McFarlane, according to the Official History, and certainly no McFarlane anywhere near around that time. Edited to add: unless he was a youth player or got the odd reserve game; but one of the League Cup winning squad, no way.

But then anything goes.

Not according to the Warriors, it wouldn't. (I'm pretty sure that's what I read.)

No, the full punishment should stand. Haven't they won every match they've played since they were punished? In other words, the players that they bought and are still paying on money that they didn't have are continuing to give them an unfair advantage over all their competitors. If anything, their 100% record since the judgement reinforces the view that they need to be punished severely.

Don't ask why, but last night I walked past East End Park, along the car park where we go into yon wee stand. Every turnstile was hidden below a 12-15ft mountain of hard-packed snow and ice that ran right along the length of the stadium. I'm not sure if it was due to snowdrifts or had been scooped up there by some machine. In any case it'll take some thaw or clearing-away operation to get those turnstiles clear for Tuesday. Not that I care too much, as I'll be sunning it in Tenerife!

I'd love to think that he can, but I just don't see it. Not quickly, in any case. He couldn't stop the decline when it set in early last season, and although there has been a slight improvement in the last couple of months, quickly doesn't describe it.

Probably the first of the Thistle books, and a good read.

The board might consider more "one-off" raffles at a quid or two a pop, for a range of prizes. How much would it cost them to offer half a dozen hospitality places? Pennies, yet I would buy a raffle ticket for that if I knew the money was going to the club. Christ, even a "free and thorough financial health check" by one of the Board's accountants or the like could be offered as a prize (couldn't it?). Why is there no special range of leisure wear in the run-up to Christmas? As mentioned in another thread, there would be a lot of interest in a new run of Thistle tartan scarves. The club could buy the material at cost price and get some kind of sewing club to do the rest, and come away with a healthy profit. I've never seen the thistle play that was performed, but I'd pay good money to go and see it, and I know for a fact that people with few or no Jags connections would go. Could a company (even amateur) be persuaded to take this on? How about a 50/50 "car boot" type sale inside either the Aitken lounge or the AR lounge (without the cars!?). Each seller pays a fiver, and donates 50% of their sales to the club? Books, clothes, household items, anything goes. Etc. etc.

Excellent photies.

With a slight bit of luck in the 2nd half we could even have won the match. I thought the 10 players came onto a really good game, working for each other and getting stuck in. But before the red card they were as bad as they can get, starting from the 4-sec-after-kick-off "pass" that went out for a shy in the general vicinity of nobody at all. The the ball was up in the air, bouncing around, or getting passed behind players so that they had to track back or stop and wait for it. During that time Fox had been pretty busy, whereas their keeper was a spectator. McCall did the right thing to hook Buchanan, as he looked totally out of sorts. And yet in the 2nd half I think he might have done much better than Doolan when there was the chance of barging past the defender. Liam is good at harassing guys that way, whereas Doolan just looked too lightweight, and he won not a single tussle as far as I recall. Almost a McQuadish performance from Erskine; one of his best games for us. No real failures in the team, but my MoTM would be Fox. I always liked the Tuffmeister for his flair, but there was always a little doubt about what he was going to do with a cross, or where a kick might end up. But Fox looks pretty much like the complete keeper to me. Catches crosses confidently, knows when to punch and does it cleanly, a good shot stopper, good kicker. I really hope we can hold on to him. That would be something for a fund to finance, imo.

Excellent photies. We did better with 10 men than we had been doing with 11.

Unbelievable price! A new run of Thistle tartan scarves would sell by the score, maybe even hundreds, if they were reasonably priced. The club and Greaves are both slow off the mark here. Great that we've got a calendar, but the total lack of any Christmas-related effort for PTFC goods by the club?Greaves is disappointing.

Nobby Clark was one of my "reserve heros"; a decent enough central defender who eventually came good enough to make 154 appearances for the first team. Other heros from the time I used to watch the reserves were Sandy Caddell and Charlie West.

It only got used for a handful of games in the mid/late 60s. White, with a broad yellow band sandwiched between two thinner red ones. Black trimmings. Red shorts, white socks with top red and yellow bands. It was really a cracking outfit.

Nah. I probably feel pretty much like you.

Let's say almost 50% of people are now leaving school and going on to further education. In many cases (e.g., nursing), these days it's an obligation, not simply a whim. So, 3 years at university in order to treat bedsores and empty bedpans. Most of the people that I know who are graduates are not in especially highly paid jobs, and those who are will be paying higher taxes in any case, so they're already paying back any advantage. The whole expansion of the university sector was actually so that the government wouldn't need to pay masses of unemployed youngsters, then they went further and further to the point where people have been conned into thinking that getting tens of thousands of quid in debt before you even start out in adult life will somehow solve not only their problems but some of the government's too. The argument is exactly the same for health care. Why shouldn't we pay if we want to get or stay healthy to improve our chances of getting or staying in a job? I suspect that a lot of people look on students and higher education as a soft target, but not health care, and yet there are millions of chancers costing the NHS billions every year through malingering of one sort or another.

Then why stop at education? Why not pay for all your medical services too? And I don't mean a token few bob here and there for prescriptions, I mean the full whack. Maybe once you've paid up front, if you survive, you can pay it back for the rest of your life.....

What's the crowd like?

That's right. I remember the H*n equivalent. But the material was definitely not silk. But there was a another kind of scarf that was also black with diagonal red and yellow stripes, spaced further apart, and with a thistle logo between the pairs of stripes. That had more of a silky feel to it. There are still quite a lot of thse kicking around too.

Anybody taken a look to see what Clyde supporters have to say about all of this?

Correct. Correct. And correct.

Maybe, if they want to play in front of nobody on a freezing Friday night!

That is indeed very interesting. But I wonder what they're aiming for, a Gretna-type "fairytale" financed by crazily obscene amounts of money, or merely a lower-division hobby club somewhere that's slightly less of a wilderness than the Croy/C'naud outback.