OK Di it's time to tell you a wee story!!!
2 years ago at an end of season fixture vs Dunfermline (we were already safe) the club proposed a wee initiative where there would be a designated "singing" section, where the noisy ones could all sit/stand together and chant or sing songs without disturbing the sweetie rustlers in the main Stand... I was part of it and was sitting with a few of my pals and a heap of young enthusiastic lads with drums and we were singing our wee hearts out in an uncovered section, through torrential rain and bad football, we were supporting our team like the club had asked us to. Our chief executive
MIKE SMITH
who at that point had only made a name for himself by taking flags away from children
was covering for the safety officer that day and one by one all the folk leading the singing and chanting were cornered by stewards and thrown out of the ground. One of the guys I was sitting with who had travelled from Chorley for the match was chucked out and when we asked the steward why, he said that Mike Smith was against the Singing Section idea and was identifying the "troublemakers" on CCTV so that the idea wouldn't take off. He had spent nearly 200 quid and about 16 hours in travel time to go to that match!
I have never been so angry at a match, and what made it worse is that we came back from a goal down to beat the Pars so they got relegated ~ our two sets of fans are quite friendly and two of them stay with me when they come up the road for matches ~ I was gutted for them and angry and frustrated with my own club and a total storm blew up on our forum when we heard that the stewards had manhandled kids in the course of chucking them out on top of all the rest of the days stories. One of my quotes from the forum made it onto the BBC TV news and website :devil:
Anyway, emails and letters of complaint that were never satisfactorily dealt with by the club led to me publicly announcing that I would not to be back to another game as I refuse to fund the wages of someone so obviously incompetent and anti-fan through my admission money. The only power I have as a fan is to vote with my purse! Last year I managed to go to the Reserve team games (free to get into) and I found myself sitting a couple of seats away from Mike Smith ~ and luckily the person I was with asked me why I didn't go to games anymore ~ so they got the full story along with a fair amount of insightful comments into my opinion of his character :devil: and loud enough for the whole section of stadium to hear. He slunk away red faced like a coward (yes exactly the sort of man who would take flags away from kids) and that's where we're up to...
Except now we've dropped a division there's no room in the structure for passengers like Mike Smith
and when he goes he can take our Director of Football with him...
So positives...
1 - All the superfluous people at the club will have to take it on the chin and look for a new job. We don't need a DoF who takes a 50 grand salary for the privilege of dropping in once a week to pick up his comp tickets for his pals. And we certainly don't need a CE who's main job seems to be pi55ing off the fans
So I'll start going back to games
2 - The Scottish 1st Division runs under different rules to the SPL and terracing is allowed, and I miss standing with my pals getting the crack and smoking!!!
3 - We get our derbies back with local rivals Ross County
4 - We don't have to suffer Old Firm sectarian gloryhunting nonsense (unless we're putting them out of the Cup again :devil
I think four positives from relegation is quite enough for one lifetime :lol: