Maboza

No food kiosks until the Dundee Utd game then. I guess they’ve not had long to plan for this. 🙄 https://www.stmirren.com/all-news/4081-new-catering-partnership-agreed Hopefully the new partnership goes well when it gets started.

Good for him. I hope a good number of St.Johnstone fans do likewise and bring some much welcome revenue to the club despite our best efforts to balls things up.

I’ve been critical of the club on this thread but this shouldn’t be any sort of witch hunt against individuals in specific jobs. That’s not helpful. Let’s hope that whatever has been organised for stewarding goes well on Sunday. And also hope we have food kiosks open and working well.

It doesn’t explain why St.Mirren originally said there was tickets for away fans and then amended that to say that there wasn’t.

Mibbe for me. Where would this be? How much would it cost? How much demand is there? edit: One thing I noticed from looking at the seating map today for St.Johnstone tickets is just how few seats are taken in W7. I would guess that’s the target audience but it appears we actually have very few season tickets there.

Is there any legitimate reason that the north stand shouldn’t have been allocated to away fans?

And so appears the latest shambles... No tickets for St.Johnstone fans on Sunday. Why are we turning away revenue after 18 months of no income from fans?

There are surely enough seats in home stands for those displaced from the red zone. In fact, I’d guess that the main stand could host most, if not all of them in sections to the sides. They’re apparently meeting today to decide about away fans. I can’t see any reasons why St.Johnstone wouldn’t get the full away stand as normal. Albeit they’ll only use a small portion.

Links to the shop and replica strips are working fine for me when I’m on the official site. Browsing on mobile

So now it appears that the business is sitting with a £45m turnover, established security company. Just last week we were being told that it was a good thing that the contract was given to a SME. Some key questions - What has changed? Is the business being subcontracted from Asigura to SGL or has the business for some reason been stripped from Asigura and the club have found a replacement supplier?

I generally think the Joma quality is okay to be honest. I know there was some problems with badges previously but generally been ok. This year is a bit of a shambles not of Joma’s making it would seem. Comparison to adidas btw ... they are £65 for an official adidas kit vs £45 for a Saints top. Not sure if the DIY adidas kits like Hamilton get would be closer to the £45 mark, and whether those versions would have the desired quality and be profitable. No idea.

Remember the days that season ticket holders used to be entitled to % discount on strips? That no longer exists. Now some people want fans to accept sub-standard products rather than the club suffer financially for their own errors. Mental.

I assumed it was Goodwin preparing us for after McCarthy is sold.

I can only answer for myself: I would actively encourage the club to do deals with small business - where it can be assured that the club will get the required level of service at the right cost. Btw... I don’t think anyone was saying that SMFC ‘should completely avoid doing deals with small business’. It’s a rather bizarre style to twist the debate on such emotive terms. I really don’t see what you get out of that style but I see it’s not uncommon for some reason. For me, the question is this - we’re seeing companies spring out of nowhere, presumably driven by Kibble, winning contracts with St.Mirren - are those decisions being made with the interests of St.Mirren at heart as the single priority? I hope so, and I hope that it all goes perfectly well. Time will tell. However, it’s worth recognising that as long as we have a 27.5% stakeholder who have their own priorities then it will remain the case that people have the right to question to what extent that is impacting the club’s decision-making. Maybe that will fade into obscurity if business operations improve but initially there will be a fear that the tail is wagging the dog - particularly with allegations of cronyism, etc. Good thing is, we’ve just under 2 weeks to wait until a normal crowd at St.Mirren Park. That will allow us to assess the capacity, stewarding and catering on the day and to see what extent the club is successfully managing these transitions. I guess the financial side of said activities may or may not come out in AGM or accounts.

You’ve just linked to a company that has a turnover of over £34m and record back to 2001.

This is a valid point. I guess it comes down to a number of factors. Do SMFC have a good feel for the marketplace in order to determine they are getting best value? If not, Do SMFC have the skills to run a competitive procurement exercise? How does the procurement effort (time/people/cost) sit against any time pressures and is the effort worthwhile in terms of the expected savings it would generate (by making the exercise a competitive tender).

Baz / BuddieEk , I think you guys are just going to unfortunately need to agree to disagree. FWIW Baz, I know you’re heart’s in the right place with your instinct to instantly defend the club at all costs from any questions or criticism. I think the thread is valid and it would be a shame for discussion to be nullified by bickering. I guess the proof will be in the pudding as we see the ongoing stewarding and catering operations on the forthcoming weeks and months.

The problem is that the width we are crying out for is wingers and pace that can get us up the pitch. Unfortunately that requires a shift away from the 3-4-1-2 that Goodwin is set on. If we go 4-4-2 with wingers then you have the question over how to get best out of McGrath and where. Nobody really plays with a diamond any more. If we try 4-5-1 then we have 3 strikers warning the bench and don’t really have a lone striker type to actually play that system. Definitely a challenge if we can’t get this current setup to work.

A disappointing day. We don’t really seem to have found our feet or any sort of rhythm yet with the system and personnel that is being deployed by Goodwin. Still early days but we are definitely miles off things just now in terms of being in any way effective going forward. Hope none of the injuries are serious.

I’m not sure that asking questions of what’s happening with our club necessary equates to stirring things up. I would argue that being overly trusting of essentially external parties who have influence in our club is a risk. Although I do also recognise that this is balanced with the fact that fans can’t expect to be privy to the behind the scenes aspects of the club finances and contracts. I don’t know anything about family connections that others have posed. It would seem however, if the mention of appointed companies is correct, we have a Darren Baillie at Asigura, a Liam Baillie at Renderworks - both winning contracts with SMFC. Both from Airdrie. Are any of our Directors from there?

Not any sort of expert in employment contracts so I’ll ask a daft question. I know of certain instances where TUPE applies to transfer of business operations from one company to another. https://www.gov.uk/transfers-takeovers Is this not something that could have been done to retain the existing experienced, long-standing stewards? Rather than scrambling around for new stewards after the season has kicked off?

So I wonder... Is it the case the incumbent contractors have been removed and replaced with Asigura / Renderworks for certain operations at SMFC? Presumably with a commitment to in some way fulfil Kibble ambition of ‘job prospects for our young people’ as a community benefit type requirement of the contracts? So maybe Kibble young people get a potential direct route into employment and if that doesn’t make up the numbers then Asigura / Renderworks have to advertise and employ from the open market - as we are seeing in the SLO pushing advertise for new stewards.

Quick question for those in the know ... Do SMISA have the option to unilaterally force a buy out of Kibble’s shareholding or is it only if they decide to sell that SMISA have first dibs?

More or less aligns with the areas of operations where Kibble expected to have influence I think it’s fair to say!: At the centre of this will be Kibble’s young workforce development model that will continue to thrive, with increased job prospects for our young people aligned with the current job market. This will complement existing provision offering skills and qualifications in areas such as: catering, hospitality and retail, along with apprenticeships in grounds keeping and maintenance. https://www.kibble.org/services/st-mirren-partnership/

Valid questions indeed. Someone presumably thought this will improve this part of the business operation, financially or otherwise, to change. I guess that’s the sort of change that Kibble said they would drive in SMFC to improve but it would be good to know if that’s how this came about. If we’ve lost all previous stewards then there’s a level of knowledge that disappears with that and that may have an impact with recent stadium experiences as others have alluded to. That disruption would mean that it must have been financially appealing to change? I wonder if we tendered for the work or how we arrived at Asigura. Do Asigura have other work or was it a company incorporated specifically for our stewarding operation? If we are now trying to recruit, did a lack of stewards contribute to our inability to host bigger crowds in recent weeks? Are the club going to have enough stewards in time for the St. Johnstone game in 2 weeks’ time?