BrahimHemdani

I am sure that we will find space for any friend of yours Boabie, but you can PM me details.

I said there is no need i.e. I made a request to be given time to reply, because IMO further comment about my position would be premature until I responded to Craig's points which I fully understand but with which I don't agree; but I know well that you are no respecter of anyone else's opinion. As you found out last night it's most certainly NOT up to me what is posted on here; there are Admins and Mods for that.

Gaffer, I have enjoyed reading some of your recent posts on here especially your comments about the team; but IMO if you don't see the damage that Mr King is doing to the reputation of the Club by defying the TOP then you have seriously underestimated the situation and the potential consequences if he continues down the same route when the High Court rule against him, as must be the inevitable outcome. It's not the TOP that is responsible for any waste of public money, it's Mr King who is responsible because he is defying Company Law. Some of FS and BD's earlier comments on this are well worth reading; I'll try to add some of my own tomorrow night.

Craig, I spent an hour or more typing a response to this earlier this evening then lost most of it when the system timed out and only saved a few lines. At the moment I will say only that I don't believe that my past criticism of Mr King was unfair and I don't accept that means that my assessments of the current situations are invalid. I'll come back to this tomorrow night. There's no need for you, FS or anyone else to say any more until I reply.

An ex Gersnet poster who could see a clear case of mistaken identity felt he should try to put matters right. The blogger has now accepted that he was wrong and I'm told he has published a retraction and an apology.

Yes, that's noted, I got an email. I'm assuming you're wanting the bank details, no worries, I'll PM you tomorrow, I don't have access to the details right now.

Thanks. There appear to be many on here who are rapidly reaching the same conclusion.

Third Lanark Football Club were laid to rest on the banks of the Clyde on April 28, 1967. The obsequies arising from the death were confined to the mundane and understandable grumblings of 11 men, who, having been thrashed 5-1 on the pitch at Dumbarton, were to crush themselves into a mini-bus and head back, ostensibly to the south side of Glasgow, little realising that the club were being re-routed to oblivion. For the last Third Lanark team to wear the scarlet jerseys, while accustomed to a sequence of events stretching back well over a decade which saw the club survive as miraculously as a drunk man at the controls of a 747, had no inkling that this would be the final fall. Thus, in early June, the affairs of the club were officially wound up. Since the end of the Second World War though, the Scottish public had intermittently been intrigued by the fate of a venerable institution whose affairs sometimes resembled sketches from Monty Python or skulduggery of a kind you might associate with the Borgias. Few paid attention to their demise amid the euphoria which Scottish football was then enjoying. For only three days before that barely reported game at Dumbarton, Celtic had qualified for the European Cup final. Rangers, the week before, had advanced towards the final of the Cup-Winners' Cup and Kilmarnock were about to take on Leeds United in the Fair Cities Cup semi-final. In arguably a golden age for Scottish club football, there was little chance of many mourners turning up to surround a pauper's grave. Shouldering arms though, rather than shouldering financial debt, was the first preoccupation of the founders of the club on December 12, 1872 who, having seen some military men represent Scotland in the match against England at Hamilton Crescent, felt it would be logical to form a regimental team to be called the Third Lanark Rifle Volunteers. They became founder members of the Scottish League. As Third Lanark, they were to win the Scottish Cup twice, in 1889 against Celtic and in 1905 against Rangers. From then to the beginning of the war in 1939 Thirds won every honour available to them including the league title in 1903/04, a couple of Second Division titles, the Glasgow Cup and Charity Cup and 34 of their players had been capped for Scotland. But even then they were struggling with debt. While Rangers and Celtic were posting profits of £7,082 and £4,415 respectively in 1938/39, Thirds were staring at a loss of £2,399 - a huge sum then. But in the post-war period few people paid much attention to balance sheets. Football was demob happy and "bliss was it that dawn to be alive" as crowds flocked back through the turnstiles around the country, including Cathkin. A crowd of 35,000 watched Thirds beat Rangers 2-1 in a league game on January 15, 1949 where the cry "Come away the Hi Hi" was a colourful counterpoint to the harsh sectarian chants more prevalent in the city. That was the constant problem, the proximity of the Old Firm. In their attempts to counter the great pull of the other two, income and expenditure simply did not add up without prudent housekeeping. They were to get instead voodoo accountancy. Ironically, Thirds' style of attractive, attacking football was the very antithesis of a club burdened by financial doubt. In 1960/61 they scored six in their last league game against Hibernian to reach their 100th goal of the season. That was 12 more than Rangers, and a staggering 36 more than Celtic. I have witnessed rooms converted to shrines to the club, plastered with posters, banners and photographs of their "greats". Jimmy Brownlie, Jimmy Carabine, Bobby Mitchell, Neilly Dewar, internationals all. And men who distilled effort, panache and idiosyncrasy in equal portions like Ally McLeod, Matt Balunas, Jocky Robertson, the pint-sized keeper, wee Joe McInnes, who always came to games with his car stacked with greyhounds, and the prolific goalscoring trio of the 1960s, Dave Hilley, Matt Gray and Alex Harley. And then there was debatably the greatest of them all, Jimmy Mason. My childhood memories of this diminutive inside-forward easily lends me the prejudice that the current age of Scottish football is an artistic wilderness by comparison. But all this was to be shamefully squandered. In December 1954, there entered, stage left, one of the most villainous characters ever to tread the boards of Scottish football. When Bill Hiddleston joined the board in that month, he was laughingly described as a "Glasgow business man with a great affection for Thirds". That was like describing the Boston Strangler as an aromatherapist. This smooth-tongued, wholesale glass merchant did not carry transparency with him into his role as manager when he was appointed that as well in 1956. In his first game in charge Morton crushed Thirds 6-1. In the aftermath Hiddleston cunningly represented himself as an honourable Thirds devotee thwarted by an obstructionist board. But he made a couple of statements which sent shivers up the spines of those most in love with the club. "Football is no longer a game, it is finance now," he told an interviewer. And, surveying spare ground behind the stadium, declared: "A well-known builder wants to erect houses there and maybe we'll let him", thus arousing the kind of suspicions which surround Tynecastle today. He lasted two years in that role, resigned and then came back in 1962, when he took command of the shareholding of the club, causing manager George Young, the former Rangers and Scotland captain, to walk out of the AGM with resigning director Robert Martin uttering the words: "Good luck to Thirds and God help them." Another nefarious character who joined Hiddleston was Baillie James Reilly, a Glasgow lawyer and Labour councillor who rode shotgun for Hiddleston. Between them they oversaw the final years of the club which, in its chronicling, is hard to believe was not scripted by John Cleese. As crises engulfed them, with Hiddleston fending off occasional shareholder rebellions, denying ulterior motives and building a firewall around the unseen accounts, the state of penury at Third Lanark was universally ridiculed and the stories surrounding it now have entered the folklore as they went through five managers under his tutelage. When the late Bobby Shearer was manager in April 1967 he had to pay players' wages from the sixpences and threepenny bits collected at the turnstiles. Former First Minister Henry McLeish remembers playing at Cathkin for East Fife, scoring a goal and an own goal in that game. He recalls that the visitors took light-bulbs from Methil with them, having heard tales of the unlit dungeon called the Cathkin dressing-room. To keep costs down Hiddleston would also turn off the floodlights during training, leaving the players to bumble about like a team of Clouseaus. The League insisted on a new ball per game and Hiddleston tried to get round that by having some painted. One rainy day, the said ball was headed by a Thirds player, leaving a white trade name stamped on his forehead and leading to the players insisting on having turps added to their bathwater. Another ploy was the instruction given to centre-half Doug Baillie to kick the painted ball over the stand as soon after kick-off as possible, just in case of the referee suspected, and replace it with an older one which the referee had to accept. One Friday night, when Hiddleston realised they were badly struck by injuries and didn't want the game played, he told the players to slosh buckets of water over the pitch as he had heard there was to be a hard frost overnight. When referee "Tiny" Wharton turned up the following morning, he discovered the pitch was only fit for Torvill and Dean and the match was cancelled. A witness to the increasingly bizarre events was Mike Jackson, the former Celtic player who went there in 1964. He took part, inadvertently, in hiding a scam. Hiddleston announced to them one day: "The Customs and Excise men are coming in today to examine us. Now there are some things they don't need to see. I want you lads to lift the fruit machines out of the pavilion lounge." In order to avoid a sighting of probably undeclared income, they were coerced into hauling the one-armed bandits behind the enclosure on the other side of the ground. This cost-saving fanaticism shocked Jackson to the core after he witnessed a young player sustaining a horrendous arm-break on a hard surface at Clydebank. "When you saw the arm you were frightened to touch it for fear of hurting him. Yet I can recall Hiddleston's very words to me. When you get to the hospital make sure to tell the doctors to lift the effing jersey over his head and not to cut the sleeves, for we'll need it next week'." When Hiddleston threatened to have Jackson "sorted out" and that he would have him "done in" for asking for a transfer, Jackson burst out laughing at this hapless figure trying to be a south-side Al Capone. But the fact that from April 1965 no proper accounts had been kept was no joke. With rumours increasing that with the valuation of the ground having risen from £6,000 an acre in 1962 to £25,000 in 1966 and that Hiddleston all along wanted to run the club into the ground and sell out, and in refusing to release his own shares to those loyalists who might have come to the rescue, all options for salvation ceased. Disgracefully, the rest of Scottish football had lost its taste for Thirds. The Samaritan ethic was brutally absent, nor was there a legal process like administration in existence then to provide an alternative route. Thirds went out of business only £40,000 in debt. On July 1, 1968 four former directors, including Baillie Reilly, were found guilty of contravening the Companies Act 1948 and fined £100 each. An investigation by the Board of Trade later that year accused Hiddleston of blatant corruption and that "the circumstances merit police inquiry". He had not lived to hear that. He died of a heart attack in Blackpool in November 1967. Cathkin Park was sold to a property developer and then to Glasgow Corporation where, after being comprehensively vandalised, it has now been gentrified into a public park, still bearing the configuration of the seductive bowl it used to be. Mothers push their prams around the perimeter where once passions surged to and fro. Fathers play with toddlers on the area where great goals were scored. Few would know the wonderful story of Thirds to tell to their bairns. Perhaps to the good, since the ending is truly too scary. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12764601.The_thirds_way/

brilliant thanks

No secret there Sir and no law against that of which I'm aware. However your research will have revealed that I have around 60 times more posts here than there.

At least I'm consistent and I do note many others coming to the same conclusion, some of whom are putting it in somewhat stronger terms. Surely most would agree that his actions in this case at least and his "disingenuous" evidence in the case brought by SDI do neither him nor the Club and favours.

I don't remember the guy's name who owned them at the end but it used to be said that they paid the refs in old threepenny bits (multi sided like the new pound coins but much heavier) rather than take them to the bank. It might have been Bill Huddleston or I could be hopelessly mistaken. EDIT Found it. BILL HIDDLESTON

He was a bit of a cricketer in his youth as well.

Perhaps because he's bought enough shares in concert with T3B to be in control and wants to save his hard earned dosh to invest in the Club? Or perhaps because he doesn't have quite as much dosh to invest as he would have us believe?

Goodfellow, Hilley, Harley, Gray, and McInnes the names still run off this old boy's tongue. A devastating forward line in the day when forwards were forwards and real men wore brilcream.

My very first Rangers game was vs The Third Lanark Volunteer Rifles at Ibrox and I think my first away game was at Cathkin with 45,000 packed inside. The boys gate was a very long snake line. I and some other boys were sat on the track and had to make way as a horseback policeman rode past temporarily coming between Alex Scott and taking a corner. In my days in Amateur Football I was the Secretary of King's Park FPFC for a short period. They played at Cathkin. It would be great to see the the "Thirds" back.

Another case of Plan B being more of Plan A perhaps with a similar outcome?

That should cut the bar takings in half but you can get a round in to help compensate. :cheers:

I agree it sounds unlikely but I verified the total from the statistics for Rangers for the individual seasons. Don't forget that in those days we played 6 sectional league cup games so perhaps that's where he bagged a few.

At least I don't resort to abuse and admit when I'm wrong.

Deary me, still can't bring yourself to admit you were wrong, so you have to resort to abuse; and a happy Easter to you too.

I can see where you get that impression from my AGM statement which indicates that the auditors confirmed the facts. I issued a fuller version on 26 September 2010, which IIRC was published here and from which I quote: "At a meeting with the auditors that I attended on 4 August 2010 along with the Treasurer, Christine Somerville and the Treasurer elect, Alison Mueller, Christine stated (in response to my question) that sometime between September and November 2008, two cheques were issued to RST by followfollow.com totalling £2,690. These cheques bounced. The monies were not fully repaid (bar £30 still outstanding at the financial year end) until March 2010. This means that followfollow.com had a free loan of Trust monies for the best part of 18 months...... In fact none of the debt had been paid off by 5 April 2009. (the end of the previous Financial Year)" (phrase in italics added now). I was not the Secretary at that time. Had I been the Secretary in April 2009 I would have sought the explanation at that time. For final clarification, the draft accounts that were presented in August 2010 (for the year ended in April 2010, showed a debtor of £2,690 but no explanation; I sought that explanation, which was given as stated above. The reason I had to seek the explanation was that as per my AGM Statement "That loan was outstanding in whole or in part during most of our last two financial years. This was known to the Chair, the Vice Chair and the Treasurer but the Board were never informed." Lastly (I hope) this all happened 7 years ago and I would agree that any link to the current situation is tenuous at best. I only referred to it because BD drew it to my attention, for which I am grateful; but I don't think it has much if anything, to do with Dave King defying the takeover panel.

I realise that you find it very difficult to admit when you're wrong let alone apologise; but I have given you two references clearly stating that the flag of the United Kingdom may properly be described as the "Union Jack"; so the least you could do is say you accept that, rather than equivocating. As you say, the depiction of the Hawai'ian flag that I chose has the Union Jack upside down, for which my humble apologies. I'll ask my friend Governor Ige, to deal with the culprits if they can be found. Meantime here's a nice one with a palm tree in the background with the Union Jack the correct way up. I hope you like it. And a couple of words in Hawai'ian. Mahalo and Aloha.

TBH I'm not. Wikipedia has him scoring 9 in 35 league games; I took the 20 in 54 from a thread on another site. I'm sure he would admit that wasn't the world's best football player but I think most would agree he did his best in a blue jersey and as has been said here scored twice against Celtic. Edit: Adding up his three seasons according to Wikipedia: 1973-74; Games 34 Goals 13 1974-75 Games 17 Goals 6 1975-76 Games 3 Goals 1 So it does tally as 54 games and 20 goals; a pretty decent ratio of a goal better than every 3 games or 4 every 10/11 games; not too shabby for someone that was not very highly rated at the time or since.

I have now reconfirmed with the restaurant so I can confirm that The Fifth (formerly Semi-Annual) Official Gersnet Dinner will be held at La Fiorentina Ristorante, 2 Paisley Rd W, Glasgow G51 1LE, following our last home league match vs Hearts on Saturday the 13th May 2017, 2.30pm for 3.00pm. There will be a 3-course Italian Menu. I am pleased to say that I have been able to restrict the price to £17.50 per head. It would be helpful if folk could pay in one lump sum; but if that causes anyone any difficulty I will be happy to accept a £10 deposit with the balance payable by Saturday 6th of May 2017. For those who have attended in the past, the bank details remain the same. Newbies please PM me for details. All confirmed payments will be posted here. Maximum seating is 36; first come first served.