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TheGoon

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This is the situation http://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk/news/15099557.Greenock_Juniors_chairman_fears_club_will_fold/?ref=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

 

I have sympathy, but the "When Morton play away, why don't people come watch us" comment had me chuckling.

 

We could raise a few hundred quid but it dosen't look like its going to make much of a difference.

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This is the situation http://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk/news/15099557.Greenock_Juniors_chairman_fears_club_will_fold/?ref=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

 

I have sympathy, but the "When Morton play away, why don't people come watch us" comment had me chuckling.

 

We could raise a few hundred quid but it dosen't look like its going to make much of a difference.

 

A great chance of seeing Morton win promotion to the top flight for the first time in almost 30 years, but f**k it, let's go and watch Greenock Juniors. :lol:

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This is the situation http://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk/news/15099557.Greenock_Juniors_chairman_fears_club_will_fold/?ref=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

 

I have sympathy, but the "When Morton play away, why don't people come watch us" comment had me chuckling.

 

We could raise a few hundred quid but it dosen't look like its going to make much of a difference.

 

That's even worse than "bring a friend" IMO.

 

I do feel bad for them but there's a real entitlement complex here.

 

And is it just me or is £140 for five hours of stadium rental actually quite good? I'd have guessed it's way more.

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That's even worse than "bring a friend" IMO.

 

I do feel bad for them but there's a real entitlement complex here.

 

And is it just me or is £140 for five hours of stadium rental actually quite good? I'd have guessed it's way more.

I thought that too. If you're struggling to pay that then it really is time to call it a day.

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That's even worse than "bring a friend" IMO.

 

I do feel bad for them but there's a real entitlement complex here.

 

And is it just me or is £140 for five hours of stadium rental actually quite good? I'd have guessed it's way more.

 

It's cheaper than booking 5 hours for a 5s pitch at Lady O!

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There can be only one club in Greater Greenock.

 

The Port can go next (both the pointless, nothing club and the pointless, nothing town).

 

http://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk/news/15099557.Greenock_Juniors_chairman_fears_club_will_fold/?ref=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

 

An interview that literally confirms the above facts; junior football is an utterly pointless exercise in fail. 

 

A crucial point in the above article though is the revelation that Greenock Juniors are a mere 61 years old; they are about as much of a fabric of Greater Greenock then as some shoddy high-rise that is long overdue for demolition. This makes sense though, as history records that the only credible junior outfit to have ever existed in Greater Greenock was the Morton Juniors, who lost a Junior Cup Final in 1940. That's right folks: the only, pretty good alterrnative football club to The Famous in the local area was literally our own tribute act, playing in a different league system. 

 

Just let that sink in. 

 

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The site is supposed to be a place for the extended 'family' of Morton supporters - having an affinity with people that you don't know, because you share a love of your local football club. It's not supposed to be about point scoring and showing how 'clever' or 'funny' you are, or just being downright rude and offensive to people you don't know, because you can get away with it. Unfortunately, it seems the classic case of people who have little standing/presence in real life, use this forum as a way of making themselves feel as if they are something. It's sad, and I've said that before..

 

So, having been on Morton forums for about 15 years I guess, I've had enough... well done t*ssers, another Morton supporter driven away. You can all feel happy at how 'clever' you are

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To be fair, the people of Inverclyde don't give a f*ck about Morton either.

 

That would be why Morton folded over a £140 pitch fee; bellend. 

The site is supposed to be a place for the extended 'family' of Morton supporters - having an affinity with people that you don't know, because you share a love of your local football club. It's not supposed to be about point scoring and showing how 'clever' or 'funny' you are, or just being downright rude and offensive to people you don't know, because you can get away with it. Unfortunately, it seems the classic case of people who have little standing/presence in real life, use this forum as a way of making themselves feel as if they are something. It's sad, and I've said that before..

 

So, having been on Morton forums for about 15 years I guess, I've had enough... well done t*ssers, another Morton supporter driven away. You can all feel happy at how 'clever' you are

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It's cheaper than booking 5 hours for a 5s pitch at Lady O!

Indeed. In fact back circa 2008 when I last played sevens at the Battery it would have been pro-rated, hourly, as waaaay more than Ravenscraig charges the Juniors.

 

I did a double-take at that, seriously. £140 for a decent facility like Ravenscraig, including its catering facilities, and allowing the right to sell tickets... okay, it's not nothing, but it's an absolute fucking bargain.

 

Maybe it's more than £140, maybe £140 is just for the pitch, but even so the high estimate in the article is around £200:

 

“We hope someone will come in to support the club. We need bodies. I’ve got to spend more than £200 putting on a game and I might only make £100 on the gate every week.

 

“We have applied to the council for a grant. That’s a lifeline, not a steady way of operating.”

 

Inverclyde Council says it has not been approached by the club and has pointed out that charges for Ravenscraig are set by Inverclyde Leisure.

 

David McCorkindale, Inverclyde’s Leisure’s head of leisure and community services, said: “These are standard charges and take into account employee costs, utilities, maintenance, insurance etc.

 

“The booking is from 12-5pm and the charge reflects the length of the stadium booking including changing rooms, hospitality suite and kitchen facilities to sell their own catering supplies.”

 

So they can sell pies, they can sell hospitality, and all this for around 200 notes? Okay, they'll have other expenses on top of that (player expenses - maybe wages?), and I guess people don't queue out the door to buy hospitality for Junior football, but like... they're complaining about having to pay this amount, this tiny amount, for a venue that was rebuilt only a few years ago and comes complete with revenue-generating facilities.

 

Sorry to say but although I would throw a few quid in a bucket for them this'll just happen again in a few years unless they can get a committee together.

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To be fair, the people of Inverclyde don't give a f*ck about Morton either.

 

I'm not actually convinced by this. Our gates are pathetic and like everywhere outside the Capital, Aberdeen, and Dundee, the local team will always play second fiddle to the Old Firm. But that's hardly unique - in Spain almost every city has more Madrid fans than fans of the local team (or Barcelona fans a lot of the time, depending on where it is), in Italy there are more Juventus fans in Bologna than there are Bologna fans, France has Marseille and more recently PSG fans all over... but Inverclyde has shown in the recent past, in games against Peterhead and Gretna, that there is a fanbase who will show up even if it's not Rangers or Celtic they're playing. Something Must Be Done to win these fans over again, as many of them have drifted away, but I simply don't accept that we're Livingston or some other no-hope team (reminder: just over a decade ago Livingston were playing in front of 8,000 fans.) It's certainly accurate to say that Morton is a minority pursuit in Inverclyde, but it's not accurate to say that we're a Stirling Albion, where if the team blew away in the wind overnight it'd be months before anyone even noticed.

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I should also add - and to me this is a non-trivial point - that Inverclyde (or the west side of Renfrewshire, when I was growing up) has far more of a local identity than most places in Scotland. It is a source of pride that the Greenock Telegraph, imperfect though it is, remains a daily publication. Inverclyde is by a pretty significant distance the smallest market in Scotland to support a daily paper*, and it is one of just three to still have the location in its name. They may get bigger gates right now but the likes of Falkirk and Dunfermline simply don't have this level of identity. That might be a product of Inverclyde's relative isolation, but it is what it is. For the reason that Greenock is a place nobody ends up by accident, Morton is also a non-accidental club. Of course this brings disadvantages as well as advantages, but for me the point is clear: Morton is inextricably tied to Greenock, and vice versa, in a way that (for example) Dumbarton FC will never be.

 

edit: and what have the Juniors done to capitalize on this? I can safely say that other than the occasional match report in the Tele I never encountered anything even slightly Junior-related in my 25+ years in Inverclyde. I went to watch them in midweek games because I'm completely addicted to football, and guys like me are an absolutely tiny percentage of even the football-watching public, much less the general population. I bet if you stopped people randomly in Tesco and asked them to name a team that plays at Ravenscraig they'd look at you like you were crazy. Again, I have sympathy, and I'd be happy to make a one-time donation, but if the current committee (such as it is) wants to see the club survive beyond a year, it's time for a complete and total rethink of how they do things. There are Junior clubs in Scotland with forward-looking committees... but there needs to be something to entice such people in the first place. And in the case of Greenock I just don't see it.

 

*the PDE, serving a larger area, sells barely half as much, admittedly quite impressive when you account for the number of people in Paisley who can't fucking read.

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Point of order: Morton do not have "pathetic gates". They are entirely in the middle of the pack for the current division - not helped by the fact that the two teams with big crowds in this division are based on the east coast and don't travel well to the Theatre of Dreams

 

Our current attendances are also entirely standard by the past records of the club. Some people have got the 95-96 season and a bit of the early Rae period embedded in their mind as the benchmark of 'how things ought to be' and have discarded all the years of gubbins crowds in a more credible First Division than we're in now. Here are the facts though:

 

http://www.fitbastats.com/morton/club_records_league_attendance.php

 

From 1971, when a credible set of data becomes available, the pattern of crowds is clearly linked to Morton's league status in any given campaign. See our sub-2000 average in 1975-76, with a mediocre side in the second tier of a 10-14 league setup - just before the famous Andy Ritchie team! The Famous won the second tier in 1984 and 1987 with entirely comparable crowds to those that we enjoy at the moment. We have obviously had far smaller crowds outside of the top flight than within it - at its greatest extreme decades ago - because we didn't benefit from thousands of away fans every week as well as having big home games. That is comparable to any other credible football club moving between the same divisions in Scottish football though. 

 

I'd argue that the core support appears to be growing slightly over time. The minimum attendance figure (leaving aside the Scott boycott and admin period) indicates just how flaky the support could be over the course of a season - that seems less so now. 

The site is supposed to be a place for the extended 'family' of Morton supporters - having an affinity with people that you don't know, because you share a love of your local football club. It's not supposed to be about point scoring and showing how 'clever' or 'funny' you are, or just being downright rude and offensive to people you don't know, because you can get away with it. Unfortunately, it seems the classic case of people who have little standing/presence in real life, use this forum as a way of making themselves feel as if they are something. It's sad, and I've said that before..

 

So, having been on Morton forums for about 15 years I guess, I've had enough... well done t*ssers, another Morton supporter driven away. You can all feel happy at how 'clever' you are

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All of that is actually correct. "Pathetic" was overstating it. "Disappointing" would have been more realistic. But again the core figure is representative of Morton's place within Inverclyde: secondary to the OF (obviously) but far from irrelevant.

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The crowds are comparable to 25-30 years ago, but most of the team back then were part time, with a handful of full time players (Wylie for one, whilst Rowan Alexander trained with QoS). I often wonder how we can sustain the current model with team of full time players.

McGhee needs some support, there's no-one backing him up.
Hayes playing it forward, Bell being forced to do it all alone, now forward from Marr, here's Ritchie, still Andy Ritchie, look at the control...

That is a marvellous goal from Andy Ritchie. Twenty minutes on the clock and Morton's supporters come alive. A goal which epitomises the control, the arrogance, the cheek of Andy Ritchie.

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If we win our next 3 games the crowd will start climbing. Even if we don't have a chance of toppling hibs, it'll make us look like genuine promotion contenders and draw in more folk hoping to see a winning team.

If a casual fan going to the odd game here and there were to have seen any of our matches against, for example, "Saint Mirren" or Dumbarton, he might not be keen on handing over 20 quid for mid-table football.

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The crowds are comparable to 25-30 years ago, but most of the team back then were part time, with a handful of full time players (Wylie for one, whilst Rowan Alexander trained with QoS). I often wonder how we can sustain the current model with team of full time players.

Much greater prize money for a start. Generally good cup form hasn't helped. Once we inevitably start moving players on for money we'll be fine.

 

Peter Weatherson is the greatest player since Ritchie, and should be assigned 'chairman for life' 


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What a load of selective shite being posted on here. Football is for playing not just watching or using as an excuse to hide in your bedroom from the the female sex by staying in at weekends and posting drivel VT. Greenock Juniors played at Hampden in the Scottish Junior Cup final in the early 60s when the attendance was certainly bigger than last Sunday's with at least 10,000 from Greenock there.

 

Even in these days of development squads Junior Football could still be a stepping stone and provide opportunities for Greenock footballers.

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