Last time out, I explained why my single-minded fanaticism for the Dons had cooled somewhat. A fitba fan, however, still needs that weekly 90 minute fix.
So, what to do with all those Saturday afternoons? It’s simple really – I’ve gone back to my roots.
Article by Dave Innes
If you’d said to me 15 years ago that in the future, my Saturday afternoons would be spent only infrequently at Pittodrie, that I’d stop rearranging or postponing work responsibilities and family commitments to ensure I would be able to go to that vital midweek away league game at Love St, I’d have laughed in your face. Such was my commitment to the Dons since sometime in the early 1960s, that any hint of dilution of this devotion would have seemed crazy. Yet, I can count on the fingers of both hands the number of times I slid 22 quid across the turnstile counter last season to take part in what used to be the highlight of my week and the best community experience going.
Here is a list of ten better uses for the 50 million quid. Please let me know what you think or if any amendments should be made or whatever. I’ve got an artist drawing a few of them up for added funniness!!
1. Buy enough rocket fuel to send a certain executive board into deep space and, if that is not enough money, raise business rates to pay for the rest!
2. Give £1000 to each household in Aberdeen so we can all party our way out of recession.
3. Invest in research to resurrect Scotty from Star Trek back from the dead and get him to beam undesirable councillors up! Would make a change from beams of sunlight supposedly shining out of their backsides!
4. Pay for the new Aberdeen Football Club stadium and use the change to pay Cristiano Ronaldo to play the second half against Rangers.
5. Spend it on a fleet of tanks with huge water cannons loaded with vast quantities of quick setting soundproofing foam to spray on vehicles pumping out excessively load boomf-boomf music.
6. Add an extra 50p to the budget and pay for the Lord Provost’s winter clothes collection!
7. Build a time machine on the cheap and go back to the 1800’s where we could pay for 1000 city squares with the leftover cash!
8. Buy every person in Aberdeen with a disability a new souped-up electric wheelchair, decked out with performance tyres, race car seats and leather trim as an apology for closing down day-centres!
9. Demolish the Bon Accord centre and replace it with a huge fountain flanked by gold statues of Willie Miller, Joe Harper, Denis Law, Jim Leighton and Alex Ferguson, each mounted on a giant rowie held in the beak of an even bigger seagull! An artist’s impression would be good. Maybe we should put aside £25m for the consultation, and run a design contest?
10. And finally…Pay for a tenth of the CSP shambles!
…. So what do you think? Do you have a better ( or sillier ) way to spend £50? Write to us with your ideas
Article by Ross Cunningham
Illustrations by Anita Inverarity
It would appear things are not too happy down Pittodrie way at the moment.
On the back of a dreadful season, the Club has lost key players and there seems to be mounting apathy among fans with season ticket sales numbers not expected to break records. There is also a feeling of torpor as the Club finds itself caught in limbo with a large debt, the real chance of a significant drop in income and in the midst of all this, the need to find the finance to move to the proposed community stadium at Loirston.
Yes, there have been happier times, and the fledgling AFC Heritage Trust is doing its best to preserve those memories whilst at the same time keeping fingers crossed that the Dons can emerge from the current apparent gloom and begin challenging for honours again.