Fighting the good fight in Paisley

Got an email from a St Mirren fan called Pete last night along with some pictures he sent of the banners that the "supras paisley" have had made.

Not only did they get the banners made but the photos show them being displayed at their recent VICTORY over Rangers.

What better way to tell the Old Firm where to stick their charge than doing it whilst beating them?

Well done lads!

This is EXACTLY the kind of thing ALL fans of non Old Firm clubs should be trying to organise!

Folks. Let your owners see that the names on the petition are REAL. Let them know that, although I set the petition up, that you are all against this charge and want your clubs to do whatever it takes to get the Old Firm to drop this ridiculous idea.

Last throw........

Due to the continued silence of 90% of the non Old Firm clubs in the SPL, I have taken the decision today to have one last throw of the dice. I have decided to go right to the top. And no, I haven't written to the SFA or SPL. I'm not nearly stupid enough to think that would do any good.

So far I have written to:-

• The 10 non Old firm Clubs - I have heard back from only 1 that has received the petition.
• Newspaper journalists - Only Stuart Bathgate (Scotsman) replied to me, although Tam Cowan did mention the petition in his Daily Record column before I contacted him.
• Radio journalists - Only Mark Donaldson (Talk107) sent me a reply, although I believe that Tom Miller mentioned it on his show (I'm too far north to hear it).
• The Office of Fair Trading - Got a nice reply from them, but due to the clubs having the choice to sell the tickets direct, there is nothing they can do.

So, with that in mind, I have taken the decision to contact ther First Minister Alex Salmond. I have emailed a letter and a copy of the petition to him today in the faint hope that he might have something to say about it.

Interestingly enough, as I was composing the letter to him, I came across this Enterprise and Culture Committee Report from 2005. Below is a passage copied and pasted directly from it.

Finances

10. The Committee recognises the need to secure the long-term financial viability of football clubs in Scotland. We note the many innovative ideas for achieving this goal that were set out in the evidence we received, such as a review of broadcasting revenue, the introduction of wage and/or squad caps and a sharing of match receipts between the home and away clubs (paragraphs 67 to 94). The Committee agrees that decisions on whether to implement these ideas are a matter for the clubs and the appropriate authorities within football, but that all must work towards the financial stability of the game.

Have another little read of the part in bold text. Are Rangers and Celtic REALLY expecting us to believe that this 5% charge is working "towards the financial stability of the game"???

As always. I will keep you updated on any and all responses that I get regarding the petition.

Cheers, youngy

The silence of the lambs!!

I don't think that the title of today's blog entry could possibly be more perfect. As I (and I think we all) expected, the silence from the non Old Firm SPL clubs has been quite frankly deafening!

So far, I have had only one reply to the letter that I sent out along with the petition. Thats right ONE reply. I must confess that the one reply I did get has filled me with a little pride. Because that reply came from my "own" club, Heart of Midlothian. The rest of the SPL chairmen and chief executives, I assume, decided to adopt the pose that you can see in the above photograph (although I'm not exactly certain which particular person is in the picture). As per usual the majority of the SPL clubs seem quite happy to act like meek little lambs whenever the "big two" shake their fists or rattle their sabres. ONE day, they will all wake up and realise that they have let it go too far. ONE day, they will realise that they don't actually control the fates of their own clubs anymore.

And as far as I am now concerned, they seem to deserve everything that they get! I can only assume that they had to get a note from their doctors to be able to get their collective heads up their asses in the first place! I mean something had to stop Rangers and Celtic from shafting them long enough to enable them to get their heads up there didn't it?!

As for the reply from Hearts. Campbell Ogilvie was good enough to write back to me and ask me to give him a call to discuss the matter further, which I was only too happy to do. This is a man who aparently does not give interviews to the media, yet was only too happy to recieve a call from someone who is basically nothing more than a disgruntled football fan. I'm quite sure that he has more than enough to contend with at Hearts on a daily basis to be taking time to take calls from the likes of me. Yet he did. He was prepared to do just that. Not only that but he was prepared to actually discuss the matter, not just fob me off with some "nothing we can really do" type of story.

I had never had any dealings with him up until I sent emails and letters to him regarding the petition. But I would just like to state here and now. Mr Ogilvie, thank you. You sir, are an absolute gentleman!

So, in closing folks. I think it is now, sadly, safe to assume that, as we pretty much knew from the start anyway, the petition has failed. It would seem that the owners, chairmen and chief exectutives that control YOUR clubs can't even be bothered to acknowledge that the people who should be the most important thing to their clubs want them to stand up for themselves for once!

Cheers, Youngy