joewarkfanclub

There seems to be a lot of folk getting their knickers in a twist about what ultimately is the Safeguarding of Children in a football stadium. I get the fact that when we were younger we all had the opportunity to attend the football unaccompanied at a younger age, but times have moved on. As KMcAlpin quite rightly says, we live in a far more litigious society than ever these days. Clubs and organisations are held accountable to far higher standards than ever before, so rightly or wrongly, there has to be some sort of legislation or guidelines to cover these things. I do think that there should be a benchmark that all Scottish clubs should adhere to so that it is the same for everyone but as there isnt, the club has to pick a number and there will never be unanimous agreement on these kind of things. Motherwell have picked 14. Rangers have picked 13. Some clubs in England (I checked Sheffield United and West Ham) are 16 for goodbess sake! There are loads of things folk could quite rightly have a go at the club for. Im just not sure this is one of them.

Dont forget the couple of blatant dives trying to get our players into bother. Odious wee player.

Good move for the wee man. Signing for the manager that took him to Luton in the first place. Hopefully signifies more game time and potentially a move next year. Fingers crossed for him.

This is where the whole 'Well Society / Executive Board thing isnt working for me. And not just on this issue. The Society are the clubs majority shareholders. That being the case it should he having significant input into how the club is run (thats not to say it needs to be involved in the day to day running. Paud employess do that). Lets face it, if a club isnt run for the benefit of its majority owner / members / fans, then what is it for? We should never again have a situation where the Executive Board of the club can tell the Society what to do. If there are legal impedements to that, then they need addressing. Im hoping the new Society Board are well aware of these issues and plans are afoot to change them. Maybe then when issues like this arise we have a democratic way of influencing decision making for the better.

I posted this on P& B where a similar discussion is ongoing..... "Young fans will always be a bit "edgey" and want to push the boundaries of what is allowed. It's what makes it fun for them. Its also what allows for rules to be changed that are quite frankly ridiculous. If we all sat there and did as we were told by the authorities without challenging anything, then women wouldnt have the vote and you could still beat your wife with a stick no bigger than your thumb (extreme examples, I know). That said, there needs to be some acceptance and collective responsibility from Block E and The Bois, that when they get it wrong and push it too far, the club simply have to act. The club is also subject to the rule of law and also SPFL / SFA regulations. If they continued to flout them, ignore them, push the boundaries, they will eventually be fined/punished. Dialogue is the key. That way we can all get on with supporting Motherwell however we want to do it in a safe and enjoyable manner."

I think his problem is that everyone judged him on his Kilmarnock and Scotland performances and we have never really got to see that for us as he has played for a few managers whose style of football didnt really suit him. Obviously being ostracised by GA didnt help but we are finally getting to see the player we all anticipated we were getting 3 years ago! If he keeps his levels up, I dont imagine we will be seeing much of Marvellous Marvin!

Everyone played well, but the most complete performances were young Wilson and SOD. SOD gets my vote as he led by example all day, coached his team mates through the game and iced the cake with the important second goal. For a player who has been much maligned at Fir Park it was the complete performance and thoroughly deserved!

Really enjoyed that today! Thought we started slowly and Hearts dominated the ball to begin with, albeit we created the 2 best chances in the first 20 minutes. After that I thought we were the better team and throughly deserved to be in front at the break. Second have was great right up until we scored the second goal, then we seemed to take a step back teying ro protect the lead and invited Hearts back onto us. Thankfully their goal seemed to spur us on and the absolute desire feom the players to make sure we got the 3 points was a joy to watch, encapsulated by Sparrows efforts at the 3rd goal. Not the perfect performance today, still plenty of room for improvement, but that effort and will to win can go a long way. No failures today at all but big mentions for young Wilson who was superb and Andy Halliday who had his best game so far. MOTM for me was SOD though. His best performance in a Motherwell jersey by far. He seems to be flourishing having a manager who finally trusts him and has taken responsibility for his leadership position. Was so good to see him get his goal today. Thoroughly deserved.

Not sure what the stats split is for home and away fixtures, but it certainly feels as if our record at Tynecastle is relatively poor and our home record is decent. Hopefully it turns out that way today. Id take a point right now. But 3 would be sweet!

Is the food drive still going ahead today?

Cracking wet day for a game of fitba. Should ensure a slick pitch. Hopefully get a blood and snotters performance and maybe a victory by the odd goal! On the down side, the beer garden will be shut! Up The Well!

Some context would be good. Is it anything to do with the firecrackers at Hampden?

Until someone is actually signed, maybe we should just hang fire until we see what business is actually done? Given our standing in the market, I would have thought it was fairly obvious we would have multiple irons in the fire.

Not trying to play it down at all. Obviously it would be far better if all our members were fully engaged in Society matters all the time. Not just when we need to keep the wolf from the door. Im just not overly concerned right now as we have seen significant change in the Society in the last 12 months in the way it operates and its plan for the future. I have every faith that the right people are now in place and will be looking to address the many issues both it and the club have going forward.

Re the politics in football thing. If someone is posting stuff on an official club / society feed thats one thing. Using your own personal accounts to post stuff is fair game imho. Particularly if you are a volunteer of an organisation and not a paid employee where certain rules apply. The Society elections were open and democratic. If you dont like someone for whatever reason you dont need to vote for them. Coming on social media after the fact seems quite cheap.

Maybe they didnt view it as big given the number and quality of the candidates though? They voted in bigger numbers when it did matter, even though it maybe didnt in the end given Barmack pulled the plug, so I wouldnt get that animated about it. If people had been elected that were not in line with what the members view is and the Society Board were once again split, that would be a bigger problem.

I think its possible to do both. Part of the Our Club, Our Plan document is certainly to engage our current members and non members to become more involved. But pretty sure exploring "other markets" will be part of the outside investment strand of the plan.

More likely that there were too many suitably qualified candidates for people to try and whittle down, so many just didnt bother assuming whoever got in would do a good job. I only got 2/4 of my votes in but I cant say Im disappointed by the result as the other 2 were on my shortlist anyway. Regardless. We now have a strong Society Board. We now need a strong Executive Board and a far clearer constitution / standing orders or whatever you want to call it to ensure the Executive Board can be held accountable for decisions in the future!

Well done to those elected. Can only echo Steelboys comments re the others Lots of skill and experience there we should be trying to keep engaged. Now for the Executive positions......

Just checked. Definitely released in the summer. 6 month deal with the club holding the option to extend. Not sure Id be waiting too long before making that decision!

Not sure it is a loan. Didnt Leicester release him? He has been training with us for a few weeks.

Also unsure as to why Hearts wont rotate their squad for us. Our game with them is sandwiched right between both their Europa League qualifiers. If they get a decent result midweek, they will surely be resting players for the return, with the amount of money thats on offer for reaching the geoup stages?

Not wanting to and not being able to are 2 different things though. It maybe that he has tried and the players dont want to come, or we cant afford them. What I would say is that if we cant, we should look at a different way of playing. I mean, we didnt replace KVVs goals with one player. We spread them around.

Enjoyed the beer garden. Its obviously a very weather dependent feature though. Wonder if there is scope for rain shelters and patio heaters like the one we went to in Stuttgart for the Euros. Its definitely got potential!

Thought the defence were all pretty solid today (until right at the end). SOD had a very good game and the 3 CBs dealt with everything comfortably for the most part. Seddon looks like he has something about him and Wilson did well in a number of positions. Watt added something when he came on and worked hard enough, although he does look a little bit off it fitness wise. Miller was much better in the deeper role and continues to be a class act. MOTM for me though was Maswanhise. He lit the game up when he came on. I suspect the vultures will begin circling if he keeps up that level of performance!