RAY BRADSHAW knows a thing or two about timing. And the Glaswegian stand-up comedian, a lifelong Partick Thistle supporter, can’t help noticing the apt moment at which recent events have unfolded at Firhill.
“It’s good that it all came to an end during panto season,” he observed. “It seemed like a fitting end.”
Thistle are a club seemingly entrenched in a permanent state of instability, where tremendous highs and soul-sapping lows are simply par for the course for the team’s supporters. But even by the Jags’ own chaotic standards, the past few weeks have been fairly remarkable.
It all started at last month’s AGM, held against a backdrop of ever-increasing supporter unrest. Banners were held aloft and songs were sung at matches calling for the board’s removal, and a boycott was organised for the Kelty Hearts Scottish Cup tie at Firhill a few days later.
The PTFC Trust, the fans’ group that now holds a majority stake in the Glasgow club, backed the resolution to reappoint the club’s board at the AGM. The Trust itself has faced criticism for the manner in which it acquired Colin Weir’s stake in Thistle – fans weren’t meaningfully consulted at any stage and the deal was negotiated in secret – and has tended to pull up the drawbridge when the going gets tough.
“There was a period where the Trust would tweet after every game and they’d put up a league table but they would use the font from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia so it seemed like a parody,” Bradshaw recalled. “And then we lost six games in a row and they didn’t tweet for six weeks. That’s not what being a fan is about.”
But by the very next week, a new conciliatory tone was struck. The Trust announced that they would now be working alongside The Jags Foundation, the organisation originally set up to receive Weir’s shares before talks broke down earlier this year, as they invited the nearly 1000-strong members’ organisation back to the table after months of being left out in the cold. The Trust admitted that its model of fan ownership needed to be reviewed, and the entire club board – bar one director, Duncan Smillie – resigned from their posts and were replaced by fan representatives.
The past few months have been full of twists and turns as the saga has rumbled on but it now appears to have reached a conclusion of sorts. Whisper it quietly, but the newfound sense of cooperation between the Trust and the Foundation – coupled with the ousting of the previous board – has led to a feeling of cautious optimism breaking out in Maryhill.
Bradshaw, though – a TJF member – insists that despite it all, he never felt disheartened by events off the park.
“I don’t think the fans ever felt powerless,” he explained. “I think we felt like we had a strong hand. When you have got a members’ organisation of 950, and you look at the people involved in the Foundation… They are always on the right side of everything.
“Everything has dovetailed. People like [TJF directors] Andrew Holloway, people like Ian Mackinnon – we would have had season tickets for decades. These are people you have grown up seeing. I remember seeing the picture of the five from the Trust and you didn’t recognise them.
“The Foundation is a good mix of people that you might not know but you would nod to in [local pub] the Woody, but they are also diverse enough that they have a different skill-set. It has big characters and people who are accountants for a living; I think the combination of the two is really exciting.
“I think with a lot of the stuff coming out of the club over the last two, three months was… I’m trying to think of the nicest way of saying it. Derisory? I mean, the tone! For someone who is a PR expert, some of the statements were just…”
Bradshaw is referring to the comms coming out of Firhill in recent weeks and from Jacqui Low, in particular. The now-former Thistle chairman served as one of two directors of Three Black Cats (Weir’s company that held the shares) and comes from a PR background but you could be forgiven for not realising.
When the share transfer was pushed through and Thistle officially became fan-owned, there was barely a peep from the club or 3BC, even though this was supposedly one of the most momentous days in the history of a 146-year-old institution. In response to the boycott of the Kelty game, non-executive director Alan Rough appeared on PLZ soccer and poked fun at the protestors, pointing out they were staging their protest on a nearby canal bank where it was dark. When the club board did eventually resign, the statement had the feel of a jilted partner castigating their other half.
“I didn’t think it was going to happen and when it did, I just thought it was a big sham,” Bradshaw said of the Trust receiving the shares. “Why hadn’t they done anything? Why was it just one tweet that was three sentences long? You are aware of the optics of this and you have still pushed it through behind everyone’s back.
“That protest was organised by younger Jags fans, probably in their twenties. I supported it because these are the guys that spend their hard-earned money going everywhere – and I mean everywhere. They will go to Cove, they will go all over the place. So I believe they have good intentions.
“It was organised so well but it was also the fact that it wasn’t just the Foundation. It was another group of supporters entirely. It allowed the Foundation to take a step back. It’s like when you play in a cup game and one of your players gets booked. You still want to smash the other team so each one of you just takes a booking. It’s a bit like that where everyone tried something a little different to make people go. It was staggering how quickly it fell.
“I opened it [the previous board’s final statement] and I was like f***ing hell, man. It was the biggest parody, it was totally toys out the pram. I thought the Alan Rough comments were blown slightly out of proportion – I thought it was funny! It just showed someone who was very out of touch.”
THE in-fighting and finger-pointing over the past few months could leave many feeling depressed but this dour period at Firhill has also highlighted the best that football has to offer. Jags For Good was set up by Thistle fan Neil Cowan and the group has organised food bank collections, raised money for local charities (an energy fund is sitting at over £15,000 at the last count) and distributed £8,500 worth of season tickets to asylum seekers, amongst other notable good deeds. Bradshaw is in no doubt that they have been a ray of light in an otherwise dark chapter of Thistle’s history.
“Jags For Good has kept this from getting toxic, in my opinion,” he said. “When I first saw it, I phoned Neil within a week and said ‘let’s do a gig’. It is a really easy thing to set up but also I felt there was a need for positivity – because there was so much of a s***-show everywhere else.”
Bradshaw hosted a Jags For Good comedy show at The Stand in the city’s west end back in October, where stand-ups such as Fred MacAuley and Frankie Boyle performed for free. It was a welcome morale boost at a time when the fan ownership dispute threatened to boil over, and Cowan believes it was vital to give supporters something positive to be able to rally behind.
“We have tried to keep it separate from all the fan ownership stuff,” Cowan explains.
“Obviously we all have our opinions on it. People at the club have been really supportive of it and the players have been amazing. It’s been really affirming. Through what has been quite a poisonous period, it has been good to have something positive to focus on.
“Thistle are a club with so much potential to do things a little differently. Things like Jags For Good have shown that people will get behind things that bring people together and help build the Thistle community.”
Bradshaw concurs with Cowan’s appraisal. The sense of community that lies at the heart of Jags For Good is the very same one that binds all Thistle fans together, and such strength of feeling operates as the very lifeblood of clubs of its size. Things might not always go well on the park – this is Partick Thistle, after all – but away from it, the future finally appears to be bright.
“I really feel people like Neil have played a big part in keeping people from going f***ng tonto,” he said. “Without it, there is no outlet and I think that is something that people need.
“If you look at [Thistle legend Kris] Doolan’s testimonial year, it makes supporting the team more personal and real. There was a comedy night and there was a testimonial dinner where you could just sit at the bar and get p***** with Stevie Lawless or chat to Scott Fox about something. It just made it feel like it’s your club and I think over the last three years that stopped happening.
“It’s getting back to that way now. Whether it’s getting season tickets to asylum seekers to bring in new fans, or that we were one of the first clubs in the UK to let under-16s in for free. Ironically, it shot them in the foot because they were the guys staging that protest. But we need to keep building that fanbase because the more interaction you have between the club and the fans, the stronger the bond becomes.
“You go through the good and the bad and I think the good and the bad on the football pitch is part of life. The good and the bad surrounding the future of the club – for it to come back after Save The Jags and all that – it just feels like a new dawn. We’ll probably get relegated again in the next three years but we might have some good times before then.”
