3 moffat buds

Forgot about the new rules last night when waiting to cross the road in Dundee. A car stopped halfway round the corner and we thought ‘wtf are they waiting for?’ then we remembered and had to acknowledge them abiding by the new laws.

At least that is an improvement on the stance from the ticket office when they refused to post out tickets for a game at Tynecastle.

£2 well spent - pays for today’s assault on Bet365.

One failure cost me over £300 last night. Actually watched the Forest game - 32 attempts on goal but it was like watching us play against us - a few good saves but anyone sitting behind the goals was due danger money.

It is probably too late to get the game moved to Murrayfield to accommodate the hordes too. As I stated earlier this week SMFC ticketing arrangements are a shambles at the moment and the Jambos aren’t much better. In no way am I pointing the finger at the office staff - the problems are with the hierarchy who appear to be quite happy to preside over the ongoing fiasco.

Using my bus pass to get the game so via Glasgow it is - after all you can take the boy out of Paisley but you can’t……etc, etc.

I agree with your comments on the way the club is managed at the moment. I have now arranged to have someone collect the tickets and I will go to the game via Glasgow to pick them up.

Hearts have cash turnstiles for home fans but not providing one for away fans is another example of how clubs treat all fans. Maybe their interest free loans mean that for a little while clubs can turn down additional income. There are ways to eliminate potential loss of tickets in the post - the initial issue of SMFC season tickets was by barcoded emails.

The ticket office have the tickets but they just won’t post them out so that really isn’t the fault of Hearts. I have bought batches of tickets in the past for several away games and have always had them delivered promptly so it does appear that there has been a change of policy by SMFC about posting tickets out. Like I stated in my original post I was making the point that clubs generally need to up their attitude towards fans e.g. issuing of e-tickets would solve the situation I referred to. I wouldn’t imagine that members of Wick Loyal or Lerwick Emerald supporter clubs would be too pleased if they were told that the had to pick up tickets in person for any match

I have decided against my better judgement to head to Tynecastle on Saturday. Called the ticket office only to be told that they don’t/can’t post tickets out, they aren’t available online, no cash turnstiles and that I would need to collect them in person which would entail a roughly a 120 mile round trip to do this. It really shouldn’t be that difficult to purchase tickets. Clubs, not just ours, need to waken up and realise that we are customers and we can walk away as a few have done since the pandemic started.

Invested some of yesterday’s win but missed out a six timer then got a nice wee cash out from a free bet on the Liverpool demolition of United.

Yippee!!

I may be missing something I.e I might be getting it totally wrong, in relation to the ticket sales for this game. I see that tickets will on sale on the day from both the main stand office and for the first time at the west stand kiosk. So can anyone one including supporters of ‘them yin’s’ can just rock up on Sunday and by a ticket for the main and west stands. If so it makes for an interesting Sunday afternoon and a complete mockery of the idea of keeping fans apart. I know that there are always some away supporters who find their way into the home area but this looks like a free for all with these arrangements.

Must have been my £3 stake that had them scared sh1tless !

It was a wee bit of fun yesterday and I thought it was beat until Ritchie whacked the Spurs guy with quite literally the last kick of the match. One thing that is a pain when you are betting like this is when refs play the advantage rule when there has been an obvious foul. I find that it does add a wee bit of interest on a TV game but bet365 are frustrating since they remove the cash out option at times for what seems like fairly random reasons e.g I was only waiting on 2 or 3 free kicks with about 10 mins to go but the cash out option wasn’t available.

Nice one. My bet on this match came up in the final seconds due to Matt Ritchie fouling someone. If I had known Shelvey was going to be involved I would have added a red card too.

Good article on Jamie from the Irish section of the Times today ... Jamie McGrath coming of age in Ireland’s new generation Paul Rowan Thursday October 14 2021, 12.01am, The Times Such is the nature of St Mirren’s operations that their players who earn international recognition generally do so at under-age level, before their services are required elsewhere, but the Ireland international Jamie McGrath is proving an exception. McGrath picked up his fifth cap against Qatar on Tuesday night and in the aftermath inevitably faced questions about whether his future lay away from one of the less fashionable SPL clubs. “I’m happy where I am,” McGrath replied. “I have a year left on my contract, up until next summer. So we’ll see what happens, but I love every minute there. It’s a great bunch of lads and the gaffer has been brilliant for me as well. I can’t speak highly enough of him.” That was a reference to fellow Irishman Jim Goodwin, who signed him last year. McGrath goes back considerably further with the Ireland manager Stephen Kenny – who once managed Dunfermline and then hooked up with the attacking midfielder at Dundalk for a highly successful spell before both men moved on. McGrath’s lengthy apprenticeship in the League of Ireland and a determination to complete his business degree studies at a Dublin university means he is now regarded as coming player, even at the relatively old age of 25. Kenny himself – who reached a Scottish Cup final in 2007 with Dunfermline but was relegated in the same season before being sacked – is not one to stick his nose up at players from smaller clubs, and nor can he afford to either. Whereas Ireland once was able to boast of a number of Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal players capable of giving a game to some of the best teams in Europe, now more ingenuity is required and McGrath hasn’t looked out of place so far. “I don’t think Stephen Kenny cares who you play for,” McGrath says, “As long as you are doing well he will give you a chance. During the last lockdown I put a lot of hard work in. I came home for about three months and worked my socks off. It’s nice to get the rewards. Hopefully this is just the start.” At one point he felt he was being left behind by some of his peers, but what McGrath has had at clubs he has played for is plenty of game time and along with that has come a plethora of goals, including 17 in 46 appearances for St Mirren last season. He hasn’t been quite so prolific so far in this one for his club, but for Ireland he has already contributed with an assist against Portugal last month and won the penalty on Tuesday that was converted by Callum Robinson, even though McGrath is the regular spot kick-taker for his club. “I had a brief discussion with Callum, but he was on a mission so I didn’t want to stop him,” McGrath said as his team-mate went on to score a hat-trick, his fifth goal in three days for his country. Playing in a wide position rather than the central role for his club, McGrath also played a part in the neat build-up for Robinson’s first goal “I’m not playing as an out-and-out winger, so that suits me as well. I have the freedom to come in and join in if I want. I really enjoy that position.” McGrath is already proving a firm favourite back in Ireland, blessed with boy-next-door charm and genuine humility, which probably comes partly from growing up in rural Co Meath. From Lansdowne Road, McGrath heads to Ross County on Saturday, with St Mirren on a run of five games unbeaten. On a previous weekend, McGrath entertained a handful of Ireland fans he met on the plane coming to Glasgow for a music festival after the September international window. He showed them some of his favourite spots in Glasgow after they had been reacquainted watching Snow Patrol. Just another face in the crowd, but perhaps not for long.

Why could Biton not have booted someone after his booking …. Ruined my freebie bet🤨

Just saw this today. Wild night in Foxbar, especially for those charged with ‘nobbing’ !

Nice wee win at the weekend ….

Any advance on 5 ?

The full article is shown in earlier.posting above.

Full text from the article - sorry about the big gaps. I was going to paste this without comment - that was bfore the crap strip arrived and this afternoon's debacle. FOOTBALL | GRAHAM SPIERS St Mirren chairman: We recognise our position. But we can still thrive if we continue to get it right John Needham made his dad proud by becoming the new chairman, writes Graham Spiers John Needham remembers being five years old and crying at the window of his Paisley home as his father departed, as he did most Saturdays, to go off and watch St Mirren. It wouldn’t be long, though, before Needham was deemed big enough and old enough to join his dad on his trips to watch the Buddies, a routine the new St Mirren chairman has pursued virtually every week over the 55 years since. These are fascinating footballing times in Paisley. St Mirren are now in the majority-shareholding clutches of their supporters, and Needham, who had risen to the top of RBS in an impressive 40-year career, was the overwhelming choice by the fans to become, first, a club director, and now chairman. His father, Ian, now in his late 70s and still going to games, can hardly believe that the little boy who used to weep at the window is now St Mirren’s top man. “He could scarcely believe it when I became a director and I think he’s now beside himself with pride that I’m chairman,” Needham says. “As for me, the euphoria of taking on this role quickly wore off. I now very much feel the weight of responsibility on my shoulders. In my business career I learned how to maximise opportunities and get the best out of people, so I hope I can offer St Mirren something good.” To this day you get shysters and con artists getting their claws on football clubs for their own gain . . . Needham most certainly is not one of them. A polite and diligent figure, his rise through the ranks of RBS to become an executive director of a company employing 150,000 people rarely got in the way of his other great passion: going to watch his football team. Needham was marked out for the role of St Mirren chairman in this new era, not just for his impressive career CV, but also because of his sheer authenticity as a supporter. “When my parents finally allowed me to start going to watch St Mirren I saw a few games back in 1966 but season 1967-68 was really my first full campaign watching the team, and that was the year we ran away with the old Second Division title — we scored something like 100 goals and conceded only 23,” he says. “For a kid like me it was fantastic — you were watching your team winning week after week. Back then I was beguiled into thinking this was how life was with St Mirren, but the years since taught me otherwise. “I watched St Mirren win the Anglo-Scottish Cup in 1980 — the only Scottish club to lift the trophy — when we beat Bristol City home and away in the final. In that competition I saw George Best play for Fulham at Love Street. “I also travelled with friends to St Mirren’s first ever European away tie in 1980, when we played Elfsborg in Sweden and won 2-1. It was one of those typical Scottish football fans’ trips abroad: we laughed all the way from the minute we left to when we got back. I remember playing football with fellow Saints fans on the front at Felixstowe before boarding the ferry. It has been a brilliant — and testing — journey being a St Mirren fan.” Needham has very fond memories of watching Jimmy Bone lift the Anglo-Scottish Cup in 1980 EVENING TIMES Needham comes into his chairman’s role bearing big ambitions. While he recognises the size of St Mirren in the wider scheme of Scottish football, it has not stopped him from viewing the potential of his club as “enormous”. “There are a lot of areas here where I see an opportunity for improvement,” he says. “St Mirren has made great progress over the last ten to 15 years, from being almost bankrupt at one stage, to a position now where we are much more stable. “St Mirren’s supporter base has been increasing steadily. We need to maintain that and keep it going, but everyone knows it is a challenge. We need to hold our position among the St Johnstones and Motherwells of this world in the top flight. But football, as you know, is a very fickle business. Kilmarnock have proved recently that you can be in a very strong position only to then find yourself being relegated. “There is a lot of progress and growth we can still make as a club. Renfrewshire is a fairly big catchment areas for us and I believe we should be getting more bums on seats. “I know it was a different age but I can’t help looking back to when Alex Ferguson was the St Mirren manager. When he had a really good team back then St Mirren could get crowds of close to 10,000 for home games. So I believe there is still headroom for us to increase our core support. “The fans we have are very loyal and, in fact, we’ve just surpassed our best-ever season ticket sales, with over 3,200 being bought. That is tremendous but I think there is scope to increase that further.” Ever since the St Mirren Independent Supporters Association (SMISA) started campaigning to get fan-ownership, Needham was a willing and regular financial contributor. But not everyone, he recognises, can blithely stump up, so different tiers of fan-contribution have been set, with supporters paying £25, £15 or £5 a month to the cause. “We’ve had a fantastic season on the park under Jim Goodwin — probably our best since the 1980s,” he says. “So now we have taken a position as a board to invest a bit more in the playing squad to try and drive more onfield success. Hopefully, that will then get a response from the local people. “The number of fans signing up to help the club through SMISA — over 1,300 of them I think — shows how well embedded this club is in the community, the passion that there is for the club, and how much potential we have. “The other thing is that, now that SMISA have purchased their shares, their money will now go straight into the club. From the money raised, a tranche will go into the club for the team, another tranche to our youth academy — that will be about £50,000 per year — and the rest to our smaller causes and charities. But all this is ‘new money’ which is going into the club. It’s quite significant, because that extra money would be quite hard to come by. McGinn, right, is one of a number of well-known players who gained valuable experience with St Mirren BILL MURRAY/SCOTTISH NEWS AND SPORT “I see real headroom for growth at this club: both at bums-on-seats level and in terms of success on the park.” In Goodwin, who is Covid-struck and will miss today’s trip to Glasgow to face Celtic, Needham believes St Mirren have yet another gem of a manager, whose way of building and developing his team fits precisely with the club’s ethos. St Mirren have recently improved their coveted manager’s remuneration, as well as tightening his contract so that, if Goodwin does eventually leave, the club will be suitably recompensed. “Jim is hugely impressive,” Needham says. “He’s made the transition very quickly from a player to a manager, and since coming to St Mirren he has done a very good job. “He is very good in how he recruits and attracts players. He also has an eye for how a team can be put together, and how you establish a kind of pattern of play. Under Jim, we now look like a team which knows what it’s doing. Jim has attracted a higher quality of player to the club than we’ve had for many years. “He also conducts himself incredibly well publicly with the press and the fans, and is very highly regarded. We needed to increase his reward for how well he did last year, and we did so. That was a recognition of how quickly he had developed our club. We want him to stay for as long as possible.” St Mirren have a recent, highly impressive tradition of rearing their own: such players as Kenny McLean, John McGinn, Lewis Morgan, Kyle Magennis, Stevie Mallan and others have all been nurtured at the club before leaving for bigger stages. It is a model Needham wants to see continuing. “We recognise our position in the hierarchy of things: we will always be a club which will hopefully produce excellent young talent and move it on. That applies to St Mirren managers as well. But we can still thrive if we are judicious in the way we go about things. “We’ve done that with players — John McGinn being a great example — and now Jamie McGrath is one they are all looking at. He is attracting a lot of interest at the moment. We can live with that fact. We can still thrive as a club if we continue to get it right.”

I’ll copy the text later and post again.

Cheers for that. Probably now need to get him a shirt for his wee team - Liverpool!