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On this note, my nephew is in and around the community set up. They had every kid down at cappielow last week to sign for Morton. Photographer there and 3 or 4 different photos taken. A great initiative. Not every kid at my newphews team supports Morton, but my nephew does (obviously. He had no choice) so for him it, at 8 years of age, was a really cool occasion. Above that, I got him ready for his game the other week and he showed up with two sets of Morton training gear, his match day strip, a bag for it all and two wooly hats (for winter). Every kid in the set up the same. They're fantastically well kitted out. I made a point a few seasons ago about the first team being all miss match and some dweeb on twitter shot me down but I stand by it; make them feel professional, they'll act professional. Last night I went for a walk down the battery park and there was about 100 kids all in Morton training gear. Parents in the hats etc. It was fucking fantastic to see. The community set up is a real asset to us and is a sure fire breeding ground for academy and future stars

I feel it should be noted that all the kids attending the Easter training camps are getting free tickets for Saturday’s game, too. That’s a much better initiative for me than something like Dunfermline and Raith’s “Football for a Fiver” promotions. I’d hope parents are advised not to kit their weans out in Celtic or Rangers kits on the day, but having the kids at the game after a couple of weeks of being in and around the club is hopefully a way of garnering interest in Morton. These training camps won’t turn all the kids into Morton players, but if they turn a few of them into Morton fans then that’s fantastic.

I've played 7s on a Monday night for a few years and every week the pitch is stowed with the Morton kids. The setup looks really professional and looks like different drills for the different age groups, a lot of the boys already look like very good players for their age. That'll bear fruit in years to come, shame it wasn't happening much sooner.

The positive we can take out of it is that he’s no longer our problem at least, similar to Hopkin, Dave MacKinnon, Jean Johansson and the like, whose attention seeking turned this club into a soap opera at so many different points over the last decade. He’s obviously an attention seeker who may well have underlying issues that lead to this- I’m clearly no expert on that and don’t particularly wish the guy any ill will and if he does have any issues then I hope he overcomes them, but thank fuck he’s not our problem anymore. Little episodes like this serve as yet another reminder how lucky we are to have such a focussed, driven and ambitious young manager as opposed to this absolute charlatan. You wonder what Dougie must’ve thought every time Shiels opened his mouth.

Amazing what happens when you put in the effort and make the club look attractive and professional. We'll never be Real Madrid, but this kind of thing was always available to us, if only the will was there. As others have said, if we're being optimistic maybe five of these kids will make the grade as professional Morton players. But dozens, even hundreds more will have fond memories of playing at the Battery, and being part of a team that cares about them and part of a broader community to which they can belong. Many will go on to support other clubs - that's fine. Many others will drift away from the game entirely - that's fine too. But those that remain, we've given ourselves a chance of winning a fan for life. At this level of football, that's absolutely vital. I'm delighted to see the club and the Community Trust improving in this way.

Not a new thing by now, but Gareth the social media guy (unsure of his surname, sorry) has been doing really spectacular work since he took over. The graphics for the Cup stuff in particular are excellent, really well done. That it’s taken until 2022 for the club to fully embrace the internet is quite an indictment of the previous regime but even at that, the standard now is remarkable by any measure and both Gareth and Chris Ross deserve a lot of credit for the improvement.

Jean Johansson. Now there's a right stuck up cow

I'm not sure if it's just because the current strip really stands out, but it feels like you see a lot more people around the town with it, so if we can get more children wearing them too even if it's just because they've went to the training camps or whatever then it definitely adds to the presence, if you will, of the club on the streets. It'd be a perfect time for the club to be getting on top of the training/leisurewear etc too, on that front: the more Morton stuff you see about the place, the more it makes it look the club has a big presence in the town. If we can kick on next season as we hope we're going to, then a combination of that and getting posters in shops etc*, then you have the ingredients to generate a really big buzz about the place and get more punters along. *Whilst we're obviously not Barcelona (or rather, they're not us), if you go around the city you'll find almost every wee shop there is selling some kind of Barca-related stuff which is maybe something we could look at (I'm sure other cities are like that but it seems more apparent there). It wouldn't even be money-spinning as such, just wee things that make club seem omnipresent that newsagents etc could stick on their counters be it pens, bouncy balls or whatever else - hell, even ask Golden Casket to knock up packets of blue and white Millions and put them in a wee box with the badge on it. Just have Morton stuff absolutely fuckin everywhere it can go, and fuck it, even devise some sort of grandiose "Greenock is blue and white" type slogan. Flood the place in Morton, make it look like every cunt that lives here supports the team and eventually they will (maybe). On the first and second paragraphs, I think that could in theory be a worthwhile approach if you had all the right circumstances: for example, if we got off to a flyer and were around the top of the table come the end of , say, October and had the closest rival or whatever at Cappielow, then possibly a reduced price could be worth a punt to try to entice casual punters back along and hope the game goes sufficiently well that they then come back for more. It'd be a gamble, but if you're going to cut prices then that'd be the best place to do it I reckon. On the bold bit, maybe a, say, 6 game ticket that saved £9 compared to the gate price in being available in the summer could be a way to get money in the bank right away. It'd probably be difficult to do with the current ticket website if you were basically letting people have pre-bought vouchers seeing as it can barely handle normal sales, but it'd maybe be something out of town fans etc would buy up front, people who don't make many games but might manage a handful.

I'm amazed that that tosser has the brass neck to talk about others emotional responses when you look at his record of foot stamping tantrums. What a twat.

You’d imagine they’ll be supervised and in the seats at the front of the shed, but another recommendation I’d make would be similar to the offer Scotland Supports Club members get in JD for Scotland kit- if the kids sign up for the school holiday camps, give them a 15% discount on Morton kits in Smiths and never shut up about it so the kids are pestering their parents on the hour, every hour.

Even at a tenner you'd have to double your gate to break even, and that just won't happen. The Raith experiment proves the theory that reducing prices will increase the crowds exponentially to give better atmosphere at no net loss, is a piece of nonsense. Raith probably lost about 5 grand on Morton fans alone on Saturday (~350 x 15 quid), which is nice from our point of view, but it's a total riddy of a failure for them as it would probably have covered at least a month of Goodwillie's wages. Lets just bin the idea once and for all.