Brown's comments in the press today: "It's the most negative support I have come across".
Thanks Billy...lump us all together.
However even for someone like myself who goes to all the matches surely I can be forgiven for now and again venting my frustrations given that the team I love havent won since the beginning of the New Year?
Quite a statement by the way. God knows how Ally McCoist copes with 40,000 boos if you cant cope with a few from a crowd of 400!

Negativity??

I honestly wonder what planet you come from Billy. We've been fucking shocking for months. You clearly have no idea what it takes to be a manager. If were going to talk about negativity then explain your tactics?

No support is going to be positive after watching months of complete horse shit with no signs of improvement.

Darren Smith clearly understands the fans. As does Div Muir on twitter last night.

You've embarrassed yourself and the club. Time to go.

Edit to add: Fair enough we have our fair share of fuds in this support. But were a passionate lot and we deserve better than what were given. Would you of preferred a standing ovation?

Is anyone making the case that the net effect of our support isn't negative?

I'm happy to take that argument on if someone wants to make the case.

Thought re-posting this is appropriate on this thread. Might make some think why the 'Most negative support' comment was made!



Bill Brown will be hurting, there is no doubt about that. If I can make an analogy that some fans might want to consider, it is this -

If it were a boxer we were supporting and he was knocked down to the canvas, would we wade in and start booting him even more, while he is down?

Think about it boys.

If the boxer kept getting knocked down by the same punch and didnt learn from his mistakes then he wouldnt be a boxer with fans turning up to see him for much longer.

If Brown was the boxer on the canvas he would suffocate under the amount of towels thrown in to put him out of his misery.

Would a boxer have fans turning up with a record of 0 wins from 13 contests?

So there's two that would! Salt of the earth, so they are!

There are significantly more than two who reckon Brown is boxing's classic 'bum' who does not deserve support.

If Billy Brown was a boxer he would have the ring name of Frank Spencer

after tuesday nights game and 1st half yesterday what do u want from fans who turn up to watch football?? 135mins of route 1 punt football.
The 1 nil defeat from stranraer a few months back wasn't met with much criticism, i for one applauded the team off that night as they played the ball on the ground and were genuinely unlucky . i never once seen Brown instruct his players to get the ball down and play on tues.night or yesterday

The standard of football is shocking,if they try and play football then fans will see and appreciate what he and the team are trying to do.(well most fans will)

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that layed him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains

The Boxer - Simon & Garfunkel

so THATS what Billy was singing through the Mic.

The way I see it is, that if BB was a boxer, it could be argued that after a decent first couple of rounds he has allowed his opponent to come from behind and lick him in the ring!!!

None of you can give a straight answer, because you are ashamed to say it.

Ashamed to say what? You are the one who is trying to concoct an irrelevant analogy which involves people running into a boxing ring to inflict physical damage on someone who is already hurt. No one here wants to answer your silly point, probably because no-one thinks you have a point. No one is 'ashamed', more likely they are embarrassed by your continued defence of what has become a disaster for East Fife.

What matters most right now?

a) Someone's opinion has greater validity than someone else's, or
b) All supporters get behind the team, manager and football club to hopefully influence a positive outcome for the Fife

I know what one I will go for.

I refer to my post from yesterday under a different thread, however this thread like many others on this forum quickly deteriorates in to pure poison.

Re: east fife fc season ticket

I have to agree with reaction to some extent.

Some of the comments about players, the board, the manager and between people on this forum are extremely negative bordering on toxic. These comments do not reflect well on anyone and are not helping our situation at the moment.

For what it is worth I was at the game today. Was Brown wrong for saying what he did, yes probably given the statements attributed to him in the media, but I felt he was making a statement to his players by his actions and showed a little bit of passion. I thought the players reacted well to the "brown gate" and tried their best in the 2nd half although the result did not go our way.

I'm not a big fan of those who absent themselves from the games and then offer their negative opinions on this site, not sure of the value of these comments in our current predicament. If you don't have anything to say that is positive don't say anything.

Darren Smith was a class act today, respect.

East Fife do have a negative support, and have done for a number of years.
Possibly a fall out of the never to be repeated halcyon days of the 40s and early 50s.
I rember the late Danny Clarke often referring to the team as thrd rate shower of sh*t, and he wouldn't be back, after almost every defeat, this was during the Dave Clarke days as we were building a team, which would ultimately get within one game of taking us into the Premier Division.

Dave Marshall and Jim Kamaris, would regularly have run ins with players relatives, for voicing their opinions on the son's pass, or sot or performance. Dave undoubtadly mellowed after taking his place in the board room. At times I was as bad, particularly losing the plot with a torrent of abuse at Gavin Murray at Ochilview, for which I should apologise.

a couple of other incident's spring to mind. I remember a game at Boghead in the mid 80's were East Fife raced to a commanding 2-0 half time lead. I was expecting the home support to be giving the players dogs abuse as they trudged off the park, and surprised to see them politely clapped off. In the pie stall queue, I mentioned this to a Dumbarton supporter, who said "Don't worry son, they'll come good in the second half". Dumbarton went on to win 3-2.
At Bayview in April 96, East Fife were playing Forfar on the last game of the season, having secured promotion at Broadwood the week previous. Midway through the second half, with the scote still 0-0, and the old guy with the walking stick let blast "This is absolute garbage Archibald". Stevie could just shake his head in disbelief.

In his second spell at Bayview, Stewart Burgess referred to East Fife supporters as the worst in Scotland in a magazine interview, "God" Willie Broon was sent off for flicking the Vs to his own supporters when he was booed, after it was announced he had won EF Mail player of the year award and last sesson we had the situation where Bobby Linn decided he had to leave after comments from a supporter. Even yesterday both Stonie and Bobby Barr became involved in exchanges with folks in the stand.

None of the above makes what Billy Brown did yesterday right, but maybe we should be thankful that he has pointed out the error of our ways.
I have no doubt, that Billy is now finished, and hopefully we can now make a new start and all pull in the same direction.

We often fall into this trap of believing Bayview is worse than other grounds, and East Fife fans are always barracking players. This comes from being caught up in our own wee world. Try going to see other teams. The same criticism happens at other clubs week in week out. It's the nature of football fans to be critical when things go wrong. Billy Brown is lucky. If there was not such apathy, he would have been feeling the heat weeks ago. What other supporters would have tolerated three months without a win? Yesterday's meltdown happened because the board have allowed this failed appointment to go on far too long.
The problem this weekend is not the fans. The problem is Billy Brown's anger management issues. He is lashing out at people because he is angry that his career is failing.

“If I think it is justified then I don’t have a problem with it but I don’t think it was justified today but they pay their money, they are allowed to say what they like. I’ve got my opinions on it and sometimes I give them as well.

“I am not happy with the league form, it is my team at the end of the day so I take the responsibility for it. It’s not for the lack of trying to find the answers.” Neil Lennon after arguing with his own fans back in november.

difference here is "they pay their money,they are allowed to say what they like" and also "it is my team at the end of the day so i take responibility for it". now granted it may not be Browns assembled team but he's the manager so it is his team.
Brown keeps telling everyone about his experience in the game so he really should've known better than to react the way he did during the game and the way he conducted himself during the post match interview.

"but if he doesnt then he can basically fuck off"

Nice way of giving encouragement to someone to offer an apology!

Good post Ritchie. The negativity isn't a new thing at Bayview, even as far back as 2001-02 sections of the crowd made life a misery for certain players but the worst sufferer was Graham Robertson. He could be brilliant or downright awful but the personal abuse he took was nothing short of shameful! And his biggest crime? His girlfriend came from Leven! Some of the stuff about her that was shouted at him was so poisonous how he didn't react is to his eternal credit!
Unfortunately I had a part to play in Jim Kamaris not coming back to games.
We were playing QOS in a cup tie & were trailing 1-0. In the last minute we had them pinned in but they broke away & Jay Stein tacked back 90 yards to make a brilliant tackle to save a certain goal & the ball went out for a throw in. Jim went ballistic that putting the ball out of play wasn't any good & I reacted by screaming back at him! Jim snapped that he wasn't coming back as he was fed up with people telling him what he could & couldn't say. Not proud of it & even less proud that a life long supporter stopped going because of something I said.
What BB said & did on Saturday was the wrong thing at the wrong time & unfortunately aimed at the wrong people but was accurate.
The atmosphere at Bayview is poisonous & not a good place to be even we win (yes I can remember that far back!)

Liam you are right of course. i felt the poison at old Bayview was much worse though, the vitriol being downright nasty (and personal) this to both players and managers, Gavin Murray in particular. I don't recall Murray though throwing his toys out of the pram in the way Brown did. Maybe he would have done had he access to a microphone though, who knows. It's much easier now for people's comments to spread far and wide these days (as far as Augusta, Georgia even) but honestly I just couldn't see the likes of Clarke, Archibald, Quinn etc behaving in the manner that Billy Brown did on Saturday.

He really should leave the club for the sake of everyone, himself in particular.

were you at the game son???

i'll make my own opinion clear..i'd keep Billy Brown if he does the decent thing and says sorry, i'll back him to clear out the dross and re-build East Fife, and hopefully some fans can also have a look at themselves and try and be more tolerant.

so thats me..what about you? were you at the game??

Glad to hear you say that kenwit. I am not convinced if Billy Brown should stay or not to be honest. I just think that he has been under immense pressure and I do not like it when certain 'fans', the same ones that do it every time with whoever they decide to target, are kicking him where it hurts, when he needs the support most.

Surely you can understand human nature and that if backed into a corner, most people with a grain of passion, will fight back! That is what Billy did and in my book, he had every right to do that. Unfortunately, as i said before, he didn't make it clear that he was fighting back at the bams. I think any right-minded person must realise though, that they were who he was really targetting.

They go on about how he should not rise to it, but look at the response they give, when anyone dares to disagree with them? Check it out.

One of yesterday's newspapers said that Pat Fenlon needed extra security beside his dug-out on Saturday when Hibs were three nil down, because of the "ugly anger" of his own club's fans.
It is an example of why it is mistaken to think that our fans are any worse than fans elsewhere.
And if Hibs had wanted to keep Billy Brown as Fenlon's No2 instead of ditching him, he would have been in that dug-out too, shielded from the mob by hired heavies.

The best thing for BB is to win the play offs in May if he has a chance to win over the Fife fans now since there isn't any news from the club and he is most likely to be still incharge alongside malco and blyth in the dugout this weekend again.

Alloa - home
QOS - away
Brechin - home

Albion will be relegated either tonight against Brechin or Saturday so leaves us finishing in the play offs or we start winning to catch stranrear with two home games that could get us points from.

Up to BB now to win us back

If Broon is still in place on Sat then Bayview is gonna be a horrible place. Are we to witness a repeat of the scenes from Saturday? If anything the chances are it will probably be worse. Broon will get hammered by a lot of the supporters and he is going to respond isnt he because he cant help it, just look at him.
In the interests of safety are the club bringing in more stewards etc - and by the way this is a serious question,because I for one am not looking forward to being in that environment

One option is not to get on the players' backs. Theyu no they are no good, Brown has said so and so have the fans. What is the point of giving them more shite?

Brown has made his point and probaably in the cold light of day realises what a twat he has made of himself.

I can't make the game but how about just cheering them on? You never know, it might just work

I'll always cheer the players. I dont think they are as bad as everyone makes out.

However I will not suport Brown.

Perhaps if he makes a full apology something along the lines of this I would think more of him:

"I'm sorry I went overboard. I was just frustrated. You fans pay your money and have the right to complain especially with some of performances and results you have had to witness. However I know the players would appreciate it of you could really get behind them because we are determined not to get relegated from this division and we believe that we can do this. Thanks for sticking with us by continuing to come along."