Turnbull Hutton, who resigned as Raith Rovers chairman in November, died last night after a short illness. When Scottish Football League chairmen were presented with an Armageddon scenario in 2012 his voice of dissent was first to be heard. Those at the top of Scottish football tried to convince SFL clubs it was in THEIR interests to grant newco Rangers access to the second tier of Scottish football. Hutton saw through this and called-out the presentation by Stewart Regan, Neil Doncaster and David Longmuir, chief execs of the SFA, SPL and SFL respectfully, for what it was.
Craig Whyte bought Rangers in 2011. Within months his team crashed out Europe and he had devised a plan to liquidate, phoenix with a newco and present the SPL with a fait accompli – give me a place in the top flight and I’ll save your league programme and commercial deals.
Once Duff and Phelps were installed as administrators Craig lost control. Had he been able to force through a quick liquidation there is a very good chance the SPL would have voted to allow newco access to the top flight. Newco would have been debt free and able to strengthen their team in 2012.
It would have destroyed Celtic, who had no choice but to resist. As the weeks passed, one by one, SPL clubs said ‘No’. By May the baton passed to the Scottish Football League, who would not only be asked to vote newco as a new member, which the rules permitted them to do, but to elevate this club to the Championship.
The cost of liquidation and becoming a phoenix newco was established by Turnbull Hutton. The rules permitted the applicant club would ask to be voted into the bottom tier of the professional league structure. Hutton insisted the rules be followed, nothing more. For this, Scottish football is in his debt.
You have three days left to bid on the fabulous hospitality for four people one day at this summer’s Open Golf Championship at St Andrews, which takes place from 16-19 July.
The auction is in aid of the Celtic Quick News appeal to build a fourth school kitchen in Malawi for Mary’s Meals. Shuttle transport for the five minute journey to and from the golf course as needed, with beer, Gin and Whisky tastings throughout the day with the master distiller.
You also have the chance to create a unique CQN single malt whisky cask worth potentially £5000 for future CQN charities, and you will receive a bottle of this very special single malt whisky to commemorate the great day when it is bottled in several years.
Eden Mill is Scotland’s newest and most innovative distillery and brewery incorporated in February 2012! Located just 2 miles from the famous Old Course itself it provides a perfect base for hospitality for yourself and 3 friends on a day of your choosing at the forthcoming open golf championship on July 16th to 19th.
But this is so much more than just a day’s hospitality at the home of golf. Before taking to the course to watch, you will enjoy a breakfast roll or two and discuss your perfect single malt whisky with the master distiller.
Whilst you and your friends are enjoying the golf he will seek to surpass your favourite whisky by using the best barley to create the right wash and recommending the right type of barrels for our very own unique CQN 1/4 cask of single malt. A cask which will mature and provide over £5000 of future funding for our charities in a few years’ time.
You will return to the distillery by shuttle bus for lunch and an optional beer tasting and then for afternoon tea with a tutored gin and whisky tasting with the owner capping off a memorable, unique and very special day for your group and for CQN.
My thanks to Eden Mill for their incredible support. You can bid on the auction here.
441 Comments- Pages:
- «
- 1
- ...
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- »
Happy Birthday Pog
HH
Just logged in to find out about Derbyshire bhoy.
One of our own.
May perpetual light shine upon him.
HH Derbyshire bhoy. Very sad.
My condolences to the family and friends of Debyshirebhoy, a wise contributor to CQN.
Parkheadcumsalford @ 8:54
The guy who sits in front of me know that girl ( if we are talking of the same person) . She is a very good friend of his Celic supporting daughter, and is a strong supporter of Partick Thistle. He has no idea why she said what, apparently she did and feels that it will, naturally, give a very wrong impression of her.
In defence, I suppose a lot of fans have called the fans of other Clubs effing scum in response to a particular and unsavoury incident. We are sometimes guilty of tarring all because of the behavior of some and also guilty of judging an individual based on insufficient knowledge.
I do not want to argue over the rights and wrongs of her comment but simply passing on some information.
JJ
Nomination sent
Reason
He spoke up when others around him didnt
Mostly the others are still silent
RIP to the big guy from Raith Turnball Hutton and to our very own derbyshirebhoy condolences to there family
Tony Fitzpatrick: A love never lost
Graham Spiers
Sports Columnist
.
Monday 30 March 2015
Tony Fitzpatrick’s life has been blighted by tragedy.
His brother, Paul, died at the age of 32 of dermatomyositis, a rare and ravaging disease which attacks the skin and muscles. His mother died at the age of 60 – and on her birthday – from lung-cancer. But his worst – and yet most inspiring – tragedy was the death of Fitzpatrick’s little boy, Tony junior, at the age of six.
Fitzpatrick, a former St Mirren captain and manager, has written a children’s book which is both a dreamy, colourful adventure as well as an elegiac love-letter to the son he lost 32 years ago. “The Promise – Together Again” is a mesmerising adventure telling the story of Saber, a sad bear, being re-united beyond a magical rainbow with Theo, his dead son. In the story the coming together is made possible by the irrepressible Babakoochi Bear.
“Virtually from the day he was born that was my nickname for my wee boy – ‘Babakoochi’,” says Fitzpatrick of Tony junior. “I don’t know where the name came from, it just sprang into my head. Tony was small and hairy – a bit like me – and so he became ‘Babakoochi Bear’. He loved the name.”
Father and son spent just six and half years together. Fitzpatrick had been building a football career of some promise, leaving St Mirren to sign for Bristol City in 1979, and being selected for Scotland squads under Jock Stein, when his life began to fracture. Tony junior turned four in 1981: the start of two years of pain and, ultimately, bereavement.
“When my son first took ill we didn’t know what it was,” says Fitzpatrick. “He would get very tired, very warm, and my wife, Elizabeth, and I knew that something was wrong. At first the doctors told us he had a virus, and that we should give him medicine, so we did.
“But then it got much worse. One day I came home from training and Elizabeth said to me, ‘I’m worried, he’s having a very bad time.’ Wee Tony started coming out in purple spots, and a doctor insisted we take him straight to the hospital. Once there he was found to have septicemia and meningitis and we were told it was life-threatening, it was very, very serious.”
Tony junior was finally diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, an uncommon cancer among children, and his parents were told that there was little hope.
“They said to us, ‘he’s got acute myeloid leukemia – there is nothing we can do.’ I was told my son might die very soon. In fact, by some miracle, there was two years between Tony first being diagnosed and dying, and of those two years, we had him at home for just three months. My wife and I took in turns to stay over at the hospital.”
Fitzpatrick well remembers those painful days when he tried to keep his football career on track – he was 24 – while coping with the slow, inexorable death of his little boy. And Tony junior, he says, even as a lad of six, had a sense of what might await him.
“He knew what was happening,” says Fitzpatrick. “He heard things all the time. He was surrounded by sick children and, one by one, many of them died. He’d hear nurses talking and he’d see things. There was a wee girl in the ward that he got friendly with, and one minute she was there, and the next she wasn’t. At one stage almost every child in that ward in Yorkhill died. So Tony, even at six, had that sense of what death and dying were about.
“One day, seeing another kid’s empty bed, he said to me, ‘Dad, I don’t want that to happen to me.’ I told him not to worry, that he was going to be okay. What else could I say to my son? But, to be honest, I think he knew. For two years his world was that ward, and he saw and heard everything.”
After two gruelling years of treatment, discomfort, fear and unknowing, Tony Fitzpatrick junior finally died on January 9 1983. His parents had been with him through the night before their final moments together.
“On that final evening he was very poorly. I’d gone downstairs for a cup of tea and the nurse came down and said to me, ‘you’d better come up’. When I got to Tony’s bed I just said to my son gently, ‘everything is okay…how are you feeling?’ He looked up at me, then closed his eyes, and slipped away in the hours ahead.”
When Fitzpatrick and his wife left Yorkhill Hospital that morning, something occurred which, even after a gestation period of 32 years, would inspire him to write his book.
“I’ll never forget that morning. Tony died at 6am and my wife and I had to get a lift down from the ward to the ground floor. Our son had just died, and people were coming in and out of that lift, laughing and joking and chatting away. It was very surreal. I wanted to say to them, ‘hey, d’you know what’s just happened?’
“We stepped out from the hospital, with the sun coming up. It had been raining and there was this incredible rainbow in the sky. I stopped and looked at it for ages and, while there was all this pain, I suddenly felt a peace from somewhere. I looked at that rainbow and thought: ‘That’s it. That’s Tony. He’s at peace now, he’s okay.'”
Life somehow moved on. Fitzpatrick was just 16 when he got married, and he and his wife went on to have three more children, and somehow found happiness again. But his football career didn’t blossom as it might have.
“My son dying took that hunger and desire away from me,” he says. “I just didn’t have the same appetite for football any more. I’d stayed many nights in a hospital and I’d lost my son. Looking back I now wonder how I ever managed to keep playing at all.
“Tony’s death taught me a lot of things – one of them being to stop being so selfish. I’m ashamed to say it now but, back when I was young, I put my football career ahead of my family and friends. But my son’s death changed all of that. I realised that family – and faith too – was far more important than football.”
With his book having been written, Fitzpatrick says he sometimes dreams of Tony junior, and of what his life might have been like. He would have been 39 years old today.
“My marriage to Elizabeth eventually failed after 20-plus years, but after Tony’s death, yes, we did find happiness again with our other children. You have to move on. I had to take on a responsibility I had never known before, and time does heal. But I’ve never, ever forgotten the little boy we lost.
“Tony junior would have been 39 now, and I often imagine what he’d be like today. I used to see kids who were eight or nine, or older kids at 15 or 16, and think, ‘maybe Tony would look like that kid over there.’ I’ve pictured him and imagined him at various stages of the life he might have had. I loved him so much.”
*The Promise – Together Again by Tony Fitzpatrick. Find it at http://www.babakoochibear.com. Book signings at Waterstones Braehead this Saturday, 2pm.
Tamrabam
An excellent reason. I simply put: Honesty Personified.
My thinking was along the lines of: Get him in the Hall of Fame then criticise the silent others.
JJ
Reading stories from Tony Fitzpatrick, I had a wee look at wee Oscars page today and count my blessings that my daughter turns 15 today
Happy birthday mini
There will be a minutes applause, everywhere.if it were a minutes silence.that would leave the guns,who plenty of their fans would not observe it.
We brought in the minutes applause because a tiny minority of our “people” didn’t have the decency to stay quiet for one minute. Chic young et all stuck the knife into us,they loved it.
No minutes applause it must be 1min silence they said.
For that reason they will turn it upside down and insist on a minutes applause to protect the hun
BT
Sad as some stories really are,they should, as that one has done for you, make us appreciate what we already have.
Being human, we will, of course, feel bad concerning relatively trivial matters but it is important to , at least occasionally, dwell on the excellence we have in our lives.
On that note, I am about to go out on the bike and instead of wishing I was not so fat when I am going up hills, I am going to take time to appreciate the positives.
Cheerio for now.
JJ
PS Looking forward to the Derby tomorrow . H.H.
jungle jim hot smoked
09:37 on 7 April, 2015
Parkheadcumsalford @ 8:54
The guy who sits in front of me know that girl ( if we are talking of the same person) . She is a very good friend of his Celic supporting daughter, and is a strong supporter of Partick Thistle. He has no idea why she said what, apparently she did and feels that it will, naturally, give a very wrong impression of her.
In defence, I suppose a lot of fans have called the fans of other Clubs effing scum in response to a particular and unsavoury incident. We are sometimes guilty of tarring all because of the behavior of some and also guilty of judging an individual based on insufficient knowledge.
I do not want to argue over the rights and wrongs of her comment but simply passing on some information.
JJ
—–/—–/—–
Jim
Hope you are back up on that bike?
We have all probably uttered similar about other teams. Then again, very few will be running for public office.
She is standing in our local constituency, and to my knowledge has not offered an explanation. Far less an apology, for her lapse of judgement.
Not smart.
A Straw poll at Easter dinner indicates the Green Party will pick up a few more X’s than they probably deserve.
HH
Plus on a happier note a Happy Birthday to our Beer expert over in Germany POG
coolmore mafia
That is one of the most touching things I have read on CQN – and there have been many. Never ceases to amaze me how people find the emotional strength to do something positive from terrible adversity. Very humbling.
Coolmore. Ta for posting that on Tony.
It’s a long time ago. But I think I remember hearing was always touted as going to sign for celtic. The boys illness was not really reported much.
What they had to endure. Humbling read.
If you don’t want people to get the wrong impression of you don’t refer to them as scum. Would never in a million years get my vote irrespective of my political allegiance.
I have a simple rule I don’t vote for anybody who refers to me (or anyone who shares a similar allegiance) as scum. Simples
Captain Beefheart – last night .
Thorne Smith -Night Life Of The Gods .
A welcome blast from the past .
I discovered him in my teens when I bought a tied up bundle of his books / comics from a second hand stall at the Barras. Loved them all. Cynical as hell mid teens me just loved the parody of a world populated by hypocritical ,self serving , duplicitous permamently sozzled chancers . Ran true in mid 60s Glasgow ..
Still have them . Live on the same shelf as James Thurber and PG Wodehouse. .
There are poor quality bootleg DVDs of the Hollywood versions of Topper / Night Life of the Gods .
I Married A Witch CSC -way down south.
Good morning all. Another four days off work and the weather is just brilliant. A mixture of daily chores, Spring cleaning and chillaxing beckons.
Coinnígí an creideamh
BT
Many happy returns to Mini! I am sure you will spoil her!
It’s what Daddies do! (And Mummies, of course)
My wee gorgeous was 15 last month.
They’re no wee for very long!
Enjoy!
RIP DerbyshireBhoy.
Happy birthday mini bt , hope you have a special day .
HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPY Birthday to Mini BT,
and Pog,who after reading Awe Naws post a long time ago I looked up the meaning of his name:)))))))
Humbled by the Tony Fitzpatrick story.
Mini BT
Breithla shona.
HAPPY HOOOOOOPY BIRTHDAYS
to
MiniBT!!!!!!!!!!
and to
POGMATHONYAHUN!!!!!!!!
This has possibilities –
Fiorentina v Rubentus – ( tonight ).
TIM Cup Semi Final . -Second Leg .
Fiorentina 2-1 up after winning in Torino. .Rube will have to chase the game. They are chasing a Double. Be interesting to see the Officiating.
Tony Fitzpatrick was on radio last week promoting his book,i think proceeds are going to charity,maybe WC could have it added to the CQN Bookstore at some point,might sell a few more copies…
Tony Fitzpatrick’s story is moving and is a reminder like many others of loss of being thankful for having the love of your family and friends.
Tony is a lovely guy who has overcome many hardships. I will buy his book for a friends child. Mine’s too old for these now.
BB great idea, are you reading WC? H H Hebcelt
R.I.P. DerbyshireBhoy and may perpetual light shine upon you.
Coolmore mafia
Great article regarding Tony Fitzpatricks son.
Met the man on many occasions,a fantastic guy and gentleman.HH
Kitalba
Brendan O’Neill seems like a smashing libertarian. Has he every had to cope with someone dieing of lung cancer or the curse of alcoholism in the family? Smoking and excessive alcohol consumption is needing serious address in Scotland and that should not be about party politics.
coolmore mafia
Thanks for that, a very moving post.
Condolences to Derbyshirebhoy’s family and friends
Zico-give me a phone in about half an hour if you can,not urgent mate HH
Bada Bing
Great idea regarding Tony Fitzpatricks book.I would be definitely buy one or two.
How are you and the family keeping.HH.
Jungle Jim .
Visited a Palermo bike shop last Saturday .
Promoting this ——–
Pinarello Dogma K8 -S.. This season’s bike for Bradley Wiggins. . A strange rear suspension thing ( going faster for longer is the claim. ) .
If you want one ——— cough up @ 12,000 euros. Lots and lots of people in Palermo would be delighted to earn 12 k euros in a year.
Condolences to the family and friends of Derbyshire Bhoy.
Sad news about Turnbull Hutton. I am part Hutton myself but I’m sure not related. Genuine man who did the right thing and also raised his head above the parapet to defend his fellow Raith Rovers Director.
favourite uncle
07:49 on 7 April, 2015
Jobo Baldie
celtic game v inverness. do you know POLLENSA PARK HOTEL.right hand side of road on way to hotel there is a small bar shows the game.
—–
Jobo, been a few years but I think the bar is called Fletchers. With burger king on your right on the main drag, turn right into the alley and its ahead on your left. It’s a wee Scottish bar and showed all Scottish games when I was there. Good Luck.