How far does your loyalty stretch?

[DarrenW]

I hope this means the end of all the bickering. All football forums suffer from knee-jerk syndrome, and many fans have given up commenting because they fear the inevitable sarcastic replies from forum 'stirrers'. Let us leave Cloud Cuckoo Land, and go back to SUPPORTING the lads on the pitch. Rant over.

I want an end to is also because this reflects badly on the club with potential supporters looking in.

I do however resent the word stirrer. Im not a stirrer I simply want to protect the good name of the club from those that wish to use the club for there own agenda's.

After a decade I think the time has come when the powers that be will do something about it.

Everytime there is an argument on this forum the same person is involved. Fact.

[anthony.brown]

Certainly not thinking of Darren when mentioning sarcastic replies from stirrers. My mind went back to the days of the infiltrators from other Clubs, like, was it, True Blue, and that fake teenager that used to appear occasionally.

[MichaelD]

Seriously, how can the good name of the club be tainted by one or two supporters asking some questions. These are often questions that the management committee should be asking themselves on a regular basis. In a constantly changing world, many supporters probably gain comfort from the club being essential the same. But, things change, the ground has improved significantly. If questions over how the team might improve to the same degree are seen as unnecessary and divisive,then what will the next generation of board members inherit, apart from a museum piece of a club. Perhaps the realism is that the club is doing as well as it can, but to not even ask questions regarding a different future boarders
on neglect.

[MichaelD]

The problem for Hitchin is if you set the team and manager specific targets then there has to be consequences if the targets are not met. If the manager cannot genuinely recruit sufficient experienced players, partly because of not being able to pay enough in wages, the first target will always be to avoid relegation. The next target being a top 10 finish. A manager would probably expect the sack if the team is relegated, but, in the circumstances, should a manager be dismissed for a below top 10 finish? That is the difficulty of setting targets.

[DarrenW]

Been over this a few times before. Releasing minutes and financial position? The club has no moral or legal obligation to do this and this has been answered before.

Any financial income from the last 5 years has clearly been invested in the ground and Roy gave a breakdown for the total costs for this a few months ago. Cheap it certainly was not. That is being transparent.

[MichaelD]

I suggest those targets are already in place, even if informally. Last season was a 'successful" season using your criteria.

[CanaryHatter]

Hitchin go on a winless run... thread pops up on the forum about Mark out / loyalty to the Club.

Zzzzzzzz.

[MichaelD]

It is a forum people express opinions.

[Becca1980]

I got literally taken apart verbally on this forum last season for raising some very valid points

I think one of the reasons that you seem to attract criticism is because you sometimes sound like you are talking on behalf of other people and other people don't appreciate people speaking for them etc.

Recent examples:
Hitchin fans who attend away games seem almost scared to comment.
Freddie is on eggshells.
Mark Burke does not care about the FA Cup.


Are fans really scared to comment?
From a personal point of view, when we lose I turn my attention to the next game and hope we can bounce back, if I have seen that the players put in a shift and tried, then I don't have to much to grumble about. We don't have a big budget and we don't have 3 or 4 veteran football league players in the team like some clubs in this league, if you take those teams out of the mix it leaves a fairly even pond, I expect us to be competitive but I don't expect us to win every game, having off days is part of football.

If we had a bigger budget I would expect better results and with that of course I would be critical if we were falling short, at the current moment in time though, if we were to lose 4/5 games in a row and we could see that the players were not playing for Mark Burke, I wouldn't be afraid to say OK it's time for a change.


Does Mark Burke really not care about the FA Cup?
He has played for us in some of our FA Cup runs and as a manager took us on a cup run just a few years ago, he's more familiar with the magic of the FA Cup than most, every year we see giant killers in the FA Cup, you will even see a club who are almost bottom of their league go on a run beating clubs from 2 or 3 leagues above yet they will still struggle to win a league game all season.

It is crazy in the way that it makes players perform above and beyond what you would expect from them and the hard to beat mentality that it breads into them, keep in mind that to a team in a lower league than us, we are a scalp, Heybridge Swifts entered the competition 2 rounds earlier than us so they already had a winning momentum behind them when they came up against us and on the day it showed, we fell short, that doesn't mean the manager doesn't care about the FA Cup though, he put a team out that he thought was capable of getting a result, it's wrong to say 'he' lost the potential revenue because it's a team game, the responsibility is shared between the players and the manager.


By all means if you want to criticise people, go ahead but please remember the views you are expressing are purely your own, if anyone else wants to be critical they are capable of doing it themselves and just because they don't - does not mean they want to but are actually just too scared to do so.

[DarrenW]

Does Mark Burke really not care about the FA Cup?
He has played for us in some of our FA Cup runs and as a manager took us on a cup run just a few years ago, he's more familiar with the magic of the FA Cup than most, every year we see giant killers in the FA Cup, you will even see a club who are almost bottom of their league go on a run beating clubs from 2 or 3 leagues above yet they will still struggle to win a league game all season.

Great Post Becca but going to highlight this point. We reached the 2nd round of the FA Cup after beating Bristol Rovers in Nov 95 yet had not won a league game at that point is worth remembering. We also stayed up.

Really good post.