BOGOF

This season’s kit is produced by multinational Adidas, the same people who produce the Liverpool strip amongst others. There the similarities end. I presume that the deal Stenhousemuir have struck for the provision for our 2008/09 strip is not quite as lucrative as the one the Reds negotiated. Which got me thinking. Where is the cut off? At what point do the leading football strip manufacturers stop approaching clubs to become their exclusive leisure wear provider? I presume, but perhaps with a misplaced sense of importance, that all the SPL clubs are an attractive proposition to the likes of Adidas, but where is the cut off? And when you hit that point, I guess the clubs have to pay the kit manufacturer to supply the kit, in much the same way as the local boys U10 team do. I suppose the one difference will be that there will be some sort of deal to be struck regarding who keeps the cash from replica strip sales, but otherwise I presume it is pretty straightforward for Stenhousemuir, as it is for most other football teams i.e. two sets of strips, one home, one away, a few tracksuits = £2,000 or £3,000 I presume. But does it need to be that way? I recall from the dim and distant past that the French Division 1 clubs struck a deal with a kit manufacturer (Adidas I think) to produce the strips for every club in the league. It meant that each team had the same design of strip but it also meant that the league was able to negotiate a deal for each of the clubs which meant that they paid £2,000, minus a little bit. Not quite “Buy One Get One Free” but every little helps, as they say. Could the Scottish Football League do something similar? If not why not? Why can’t the SFL negotiate a deal for all clubs which would result in some sort of bulk buy discount. Hey, they could even throw in the referees strips for free. I guess it needn’t stop at strips. There must be all sorts of expenses clubs incur where if they got together surely their collective bargaining power would net some sort of saving – insurance, goals posts, balls, pies. If having the SFL operating on behalf of its member clubs (a ludicrous thought, I know) doesn’t happen, then why not have Stenhousemuir and The Shire, or Berwick, or any other club for that matter getting together and sharing costs? On the pitch, Stenny continue to set the pace. The league is so open that everyone else is cutting one anothers throats. Every week when we win it seems that we add another point to the gap between ourselves and the chasing pack. While we keep winning of course. Saturday brings Forfar to Ochilview who by all accounts are a bit of an enigma. Their home record is bad and their away record is good. An away record that includes a victory against our tenants earlier in the season. If we avoid defeat then we will have played everyone once and avoided defeat. A fantastic base upon which to build a promotion challenge.