The9

I don't want to p155 on your chips here, but I actually have just done that. The Cortese interview (March 2010), when asked about the stadium, says [i'll put Cortese's bits in italics] : They are restructuring areas to be more user friendly - getting beer into people's hands more quickly. The bigger picture, it is much too early to be talking about redevelopment. There is some immediate action being taken to improve stadium by having an activity centre and business centre - that was in the planning phase. When asked about the feasibility of a stadium "not here" Cortese said it was never too early to talk about it, but was clearly placating the interviewer. He mentioned that traffic problems (eg Portsmouth game) means that the stadium could be seen as being not in the right location - UNLESS the area around the ground could develop as well. There was a workshop with city council coming up. So basically he was saying "the council can help solve the traffic problems by discussing this with us". I should think all the "Northam Rd is a Public Highway" stuff came out of that. Regarding the location, Cortese then says regarding the workshop coming up about development, "if they make us comfortable" he (and this is a hell of an ambiguous key sentence) he "wouldn't see a reason, if we have any plans to develop, to increase the capacity by not doing it here", but also that this wouldn't exclude the possibility of building a new stadium somewhere else. All very vague and non-committal. And as for the fan dinner, barely anything about development, in response to your direct questions 1) How far along are they? What timescale are we looking at? 2) Is a relocation still an option if it isn't possible to develop St Mary's? 3) They think the club "could" average 45,000 in the Premier League, but how big would they make the stadium? 48k? 50k? 4) What in terms of development do they want to do around the stadium along with the railway station?: "We didn't go into those kind of details" and "It sounded to me like there were plans to extend St Mary's, but until we actually get back to the premiership it's all speculation and ideas. There was also talk about development of the waterfront and potential for a ferry terminal, but again, the development to the area as a whole is in the hands of the council rather than Saints." And of course, the training ground / academy development is entirely unlinked to the development of the ground.

Which ones ? The one mentioning the 1966 England kit question ? I can't see anything else referring to the kit at all - the England away from 2010 is in that style but it's a bit dated, they're rolling it out to random Russia sides now...

So, just to clarify, plain equidistant mid-sized, red central striped shirt with red collars and cuffs, red trim on the black shorts, plain white socks... because otherwise, you're just saying "it's the same sort of look as the majority of Saints kits in the last 40 years". And definitely, definitely no New York Cosmos style collar...

First I've heard of it...

So we haven't achieved any of the new plan then.

You clearly haven't looked at the pic then...

I'd rate him joint third at best alongside Butterfield and behind Fonte and Jaidi. And that's being harsh on Dickson, Martin and Richardson. I'm mostly staying out of the Seaborne debate altogether although I don't think there's much in it there either. Harding's certainly replaceable.

http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/page/Membership/0,,10280,00.html It's on the Saints website if you look hard enough. Though it's of no help at all, and I'm not sure they updated it last year either. On the bright side, I'm in that photo, with the camera in front of my face behind the blonde girl.

Good use of "pendant", to be encouraged, and I do, usually. I stayed away from it this time due to the implicit use of irony, as I suspect you should have with the video.

Anyone currently involved in kids' and youth football who can give an overview of how the age groups and different pitch sizes break down ?

Seeing as MLG has promised to wind in the more pedantic of his posts, allow me to step in and clarify that you mean "pedantry". I'm not so sure there's been a survey, or what it says, but the long and short of it is that a regularly successful side at the top of English football with competitively priced tickets for big games could probably sell out a 60k stadium in Southampton for the big matches maybe once a year, but a mid-table side with £40 tickets playing the likes of Wigan isn't going to get much interest. Pricing and relative success are the keys, and they're pretty vague concepts to be basing a big cost like building a bigger stadium on. It's not like we've got a waiting list for STs like we had at the Dell - the numbers are guesswork at best and the pricing factor could make all the difference. To show the effect of pricing on casual fans, Wales sold out the Milennium Stadium numerous times in 2000-2002 when they were charging £10 a ticket and were relatively successful, but as soon as the price went up to £15 with a booking fee (and the team went back to being average at best) the crowds went through the floor.

I'm not outing anyone, let's just say "Steve" knows him through football and is being slightly facetious.

Agreed.

Cheers, not being local at the time I had no idea about this. Having reflected on it for about 5 minutes, I'm sure they could design something so that the Itchen was suspended by an extended Kingsland across the pitch where the foundations woudn't be an issue, more complex things have been achieved.

We're not, we're not in the Premier League either. It's logical to assume getting into the Championship first was the plan (in fact it's impossible not to do that first), but we have no idea what the timescale is for that element, and if the only detail we do know is the end goal, then that's all we can judge against.

Nice idea, but BS is by far my favourite Saints fanzine already.

I'd like to see a list of lagers, beers and ales people like here as opposed to anyone trying to answer the question about the contracts too.

That must have been one of the times when I saw him - but the Pulis comparison is extremely unfair, Hatch made Pulis look bad too. Weirdly, I just Googled him and this came up http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/players/jamie-hatch/profile-46 He's at Weymouth at the mo, having left Tiverton in January.

Sometimes he winds me up doing it, sometimes he provides useful perspective or debunks some of the more ill-advised posts. Pays your money, takes your choice.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Beautiful-South/132974926781057 HTH NB 140 likes before this link.

I'm pretty sure those wouldn't be the figures now anyway, and lets face it, extending to anything under the 40k which would make the stadium eligible for hosting a Euros if England got one would be pretty pointless. You'll note I'm not suggesting a World Cup. As for "you can't extend the Itchen", I'm sure Man U and Villa fans thought they couldn't extend their "office" stands with roads behind them at one point too. It's not near enough to the river (yet) for that to be a problem either, and Britannia Road isn't much of a thoroughfare anyway.

No more obviously than at Withdean.

Of course the problem with THIS, is that the Football Association - the protectors of the game, the founders of the cash-drowning Premier League - think that the clubs themselves should be providing the equipment and paying huge sums to rent pitches in the first place. It's insane that clubs wanting to set up in some parts of the country have to buy their own nets and put them up themselves (another disincentive to teams) - or sometimes even supply the posts. The facility isn't going anywhere, fund the facility AND the cost of running it, and make sure it's administered on match days, rather than leaving it to councils who don't care or can't afford it.

Tell me about it, we had a Sunday afternoon side last season, because of my previous experience and refusal to play ringers we had 40-ish players registered. What happened? We got to February/March and folded due to lack of players - and we were at the top of the league winning most of our matches for most of that. The killer blow was having to play double-headers for 3 successive weeks to get the fixtures completed - who in their right mind wants to slog through 180 minutes against the same opposition ? It's just bloody tedious, and was entirely down to the League's intransigence regarding fixtures - we had played more matches than anyone, and had 2 months left to complete the season, but we played one week in a quagmire (it ended 6-6 with basically every attack in the last 20 minutes ending in a goal), then had back to back games for a few weeks when there was still 2 months of the season to go. We folded with 4 matches left to play, and 2 months to do it in. People had the fun sucked out of it, and then just could not be bothered. So it's not just at kids' level the FA / Leagues are failing - and though I think the allowance for up to 2 players to be signed on the day is an improvement on what I was used to, I think there should be a multi-year renewable photocard player licence system to help with disciplinary issues.

As I've not been involved in English kids' football, what are the sizes of pitch which are used for different age groups - in fact what are the different age groups ? I don't need dimensions, just estimates (eg half pitch played across, etc). I'm not talking about Academies, I just mean "normal" kids' football, assuming that still exists ? The reason I've not been involved in English kids' football is because I grew up under the auspices of the FA of Wales. Until the early 90s all kids' football was on full-size pitches (albeit 40 minute matches), but they made a series of moves in kids' and youth football to ensure kids below secondary school age could only play small-sided 7-a-sides on pitches which were under half size. There were also some changes to teen football, some of which were VERY ill-advised (an experimental tweak to the offside law to allow players to be onside from passes from their own half was by far the worst one, every team had a meathead on the half-way line and teams passed it back to him to launch into the box); but others were quite good - changing the U-12 / U-14 / U-16 structure to an one-year one, so you didn't spend one season thrashing "B" teams a year below you and then one season getting thrashed as you moved up an age group, and attempting to get managers onto training courses. Having said all that, this is a fairly typical example of my experience of U-14s football in the 1980s : Enormous meathead U-14 hoofs ball up park as my team get thrashed by big kids. Of course nowadays there's some OTT stuff too like compulsory CRB checking and Respect barriers which are an indictment of the times, but I'm just interested to hear what changes and rules there are from someone who has kids and takes them to Tyro League or whatever it is...