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Charles, I think you are a wee bit out with some of the dates. The first time the Q Cup was split into North & South sections was 1931-32. Citadel won it that season, on 12 December 1931 - more about that below. Thistle won it in 32-33. Clach in 34-35 and 38-39 - if the final was played before the turn of the year then that would give you the 1934 and 1938 dates for Clach. The Lilywhites had been the first Highland League team to reach the final, in 24-25, but were beaten by Royal Albert. Citadel's road to victory is described in the booklet about them which was produced in 1990 (& revised in 1991), which some of you may have seen. I would hope that the Inverness library would have a copy. They beat Caley 2-0 at Telford Street in the first round, had a bye through the second, beat Ross County 3-1 at the Longman, and then had a bye in the fourth round. This put them into the semi-final, and it looks as though this is where North were drawn against South. Citadel played Lochgelly Amateurs at the Longman on the afternoon of Wednesday 4th November, and drew 0-0. Three days later, they won the replay at Lochgelly, 1-0. In the other semi, Murrayfield Amateurs beat Inverness Jags 4-1 at Kingsmills. The final was on November 28th, at Pittodrie, and attracted a crowd of 5,000. This ended in a 3-3 draw. Everyone reassembled - well, not quite, the crowd was only 3,000 - at Pittodrie a week later, Dec 5th, and this time the score was 2-2. The SFA scheduled the second replay for the next Saturday, the 12th. In a move which will sound very familiar, they set up this match between an Inverness team and an Edinburgh team, at... Easter Road! Citadel were not happy, and suggested Perth or even Glasgow, but the SFA were having none of it. This no doubt added an edge to the celebrations when Citadel outplayed Murrayfield and ran out as 4-1 winners, in front of a crowd of just over 3,000. They came home by train the next day, and despite the fact that it was the afternoon of the Sabbath, they were greeted at the station by a crowd of around 1,000. The team captain was carried shoulder-high as the Cup was paraded through the town behind a pipe band. Sources: "Highland Hundred": Bill McAllister's centenary history of the Highland League, and "Inverness Citadel Football Club": booklet by Geo Campbell.

Kingsmills I will be very gentle and suggest you wrote the above whilst not thinking. Listen, I loved watching the football played by Pele's teams and he had to rebuild several times during his tenure but he wasn't competing every week in the SPL nor in national cup finals and sadly he never won the Championship though I contend that JR won it with his team. As for Yogi being arrogant, I worked beside a lad who played out in the middle east, his son was captain of Falkirk's under 18's and he raved about Yogi as a person, a coach and a Manager, arrogance was never mentioned as one of his traits. We all have a bit of ego, it's what protects us from the world but arrogant? not in my book. As you can see from my numerous posts I have too much time on my hands at the moment, please excuse my fulminations.

Without being pendant in residence boom boom my response to your points are as follows: Butcher left, we did not finish second nor did we win a cup and we lost Andrew Shinnie who was a stand out for us. I'm glad you accept that losing your best players and injuries can have a deleterious effect on the team, which relates to point 3. With no out ball (Watkins had left and Doran was injured) an aimless hoof up the park would have achieved little so yes, the players at the back had difficulties as a direct result of losing your quickest forward and having another quick player injured. The reason why JH left was over the very issue you raise, trying to clarify the budget. I accept your point about Hughes recruitment but remember it wasn't Butcher who identified the bargains brought to the club from down south. The fact is we have never had enough money to buy established front men, they cost too much, which is why we have always gone for players from the lower leagues or strikers who have had injury problems or fallen out of favour or guys who can't find another club we were soooo fortunate to get Marley Watkins who could convert from being a winger to a very effective centre. I do not expect in my lifetime to experience the highs of JH's reign, he turned us into a proper football team and the board turned us into a laughing stock in one season, quite an achievement. You can continue to have a downer on JH if you like but he will remain our most successful Manager long after we have departed this life.

Makes the season more interesting that we`re trying to get into both play-offs!

Who cares who was responsible. The fact is that Butcher had a system that worked well with a limited budget and signed some cracking players for us. Even when they moved on we still got some excellent replacements which were supplemented with cheap loan or short term signings. Hughes, with a bigger budget, completely failed to replace the good players when they left, signed about ten central midfielders and didn't address our shortcomings up front for the vast majority of his tenure. Your never ending romanticism with Hughes is, to a point, merited. I don't disagree that we will probably never hit those highs again. That said, you are also pretty deluded regarding other parts of his tenure, namely player recruitment, that, whilst an obstacle for previous managers, had still previously been accomplished with much greater success, and with less money to boot, than what Hughes had at his disposal. That failure to recruit well was the start of a slippery slope. Foran though was the catalyst for the resultant downfall.

Caley squad okay but without a real scorer to me playoff this season is impossible to say, for example, we had someone who could score often like Billy Mckay we would probably be in top place now or second and I am not saying Billy would come back since I doubt Caley could afford him . Whenever I used to do a goal prediction for Caley when Billy played I will be honest I was wrong a lot of the times I would think he would score 1 then he did 2 . Even in the last match Caley played if they had real scorer they would had won. Ridgers the Goalkeeper I will be fair to me he's doing a incredible job overall.