GLF77: GB has a second bite....
MORE VIEWS FROM THE MAIN STAND
JOHN BOYLE!!
Following the announcement there was a lot of praise heaped on the former owner and his commitment to Motherwell. I was a bit concerned that history is already being slightly re-written with regard to his contribution to the club.
I admired his ambition in the initial period after he took over but with hindsight his strategy now doesn’t appear to have been thought through all that well and we know where that landed us. While it is commendable Boyle wrote off the debt he had accumulated it was him who got us there in the first place.
This impacted not only players being made redundant but also administration staff who worked behind the scenes. Then if it hadn’t been for Falkirk’s derelict Brockville we would have been relegated the following season, and who knows what would have happened then…..
I do accept that since then he has done a good job for us and kept us in a decent position in the League, but a lot of the credit has to go to players who played above themselves.
Boyle will be remembered favourably but he for me he does not deserve the honours and praise heaped upon John Chapman who took us to success without ever bursting the budget and kept us on an even keel throughout his tenure.
The whole situation also gave Davie Provan the opportunity to have a go in his News of the World column on 27th Feb about 19 players made redundant! Don’t let accuracy get in the way of a good story!
OUR PITCH
|Once again our pitch has disintegrated as the winter has bitten hard, but all we get once again is a list of excuses from the club. Initially it was heavily sanded as part of the planned improvements.
Then at the AGM we were told it was an Algae attack, following on from our micro-climate and other assorted excuses, we begin to look a bit silly.
While that is the downside of our pitch there is a positive side - we have had no games called off this season due to our pitch. The only game we have lost is down to the surrounding area not being fit for people to travel.
This hasn’t stopped the press having a field day (pardon the pun) and had a go at our pitch as the do on an annual basis. Other teams seem to escape the attacks we do, with St. Johnstone and Dundee United having a number of games cancelled due to their pitch escaping much criticism.
Hopefully next season will see us finally have a trouble free season with the pitch…
CUP TV GAMES
When the draw for the Scottish Cup Quarter finals was made I thought that one of the TV companies would follow the romance of the Cup and take the chance of covering Brechin v St. Johnstone.
But not surprisingly neither Sky or the BBC showed any imagination and stuck with the three all SPL ties. While it is understandable they would cover our game as a 20th anniversary thing, and also the Celtic game, I would have loved them to have shown the Brechin game rather than the St. Mirren v Dons game.
Having watched the game from New St. Mirren Park I was wishing they had shown the Brechin game, then as I heard the commentators describe the game from Glebe Park I was feeling even more regret they hadn’t.
Thankfully they have managed to come up with a date that allowed the replay to be covered and the Division 2 side got a wee bit of the TV money on offer for the teams reaching this stage of the competition.
Hopefully the two companies will now have learned their lesson and will show more imagination next season. Sky were lucky earlier in the season when they covered the Ayr v Hibs replay and captured that shock live.
Graham Barnstaple
Back to GLF 77