Thoughts of Chairman John Yorkston

"It is the intention of the management and the Board to give Stephen as good a squad as we can.

Speaking at Sunday's Open Day Chairman John Yorkston gave his thoughts to the website:-

"I was proud that we got there especially since we had to go the difficult route beating the two Edinburgh sides and the two Glasgow sides and then face the league champions in the final itself. I was very, very proud of the performance that the boys put in. It was there for the taking but it just didn't happen for us on the day.

"It is very disappointing that we didn't win but you can't be too disappointed with the effort the boys put in. We put up an excellent show, I thought the first half we were the better side. I was delighted for Darren Young that he got Man of the Match. His opposite number was Neil Lennon and he got substituted. Yes it is remembered for Neil Lennon's final but for other reasons.

"Getting to the final is great for morale, it is also great financially. It helps when we have a dip in the budget next year. You get a parachute payment which isn't an awful lot so obviously the extra revenue from that will help, and also qualifying for the UEFA Cup. We may or may not make money in the UEFA Cup depending on the teams we play, the costs of getting there and the crowd we get here. If you do win your first two ties then you are into the group stage and big TV money often comes then.

"It is in our interests to do as well as we can, not only in the league but I think the fans will come out if they see a winning side. It has happened before, it has happened to other clubs. Especially with a European run I think it would encourage the fans back in bigger numbers.

"You get a payment from the SPL at the start of the season but obviously you get a parachute payment spread over a couple of payments but it doesn't offset it. It helps and the parachute payment won't be there the following year.

"It is the intention of the management and the Board to give Stephen as good a squad as we can. We said often that we wanted five players in January and Tam McManus came in March. That took us up from 23 - 24 players up to thirty senior players. Even if we had stayed in the SPL we wouldn't have wanted to run with a squad that size.

"Obviously there are ones who are out of contract that Stephen wants to keep that we have spoken to; Gary Mason, Dorus de Vries, Tam McManus, Jamie McCunnie and I have probably missed somebody, unintentionally! Everybody who is in Stephen's plans we want to keep.

"We are looking forward to the European draw at the beginning of August. There will only be about a fortnight until the first game and the next is a fortnight later. We are making plans, we had a travel agent at the United Pars. The company that are dealing with it came along and explained what they were going to do so we hope that within 24 hours of the draw we will have packages available.

"Last time we used a company that had done it before but it didn't work. We have to make sure that it does work."