Charles Bannerman

Go on... tease us with the names of these capitalist multinational corporations which are queueing up to pour their resources into a Caley Thistle run by a People's Soviet of Fans' Deputies.

That sounds to me suspiciously like what Board has already done with Tullochs!

The fans already have a 12% stake in the shape of the Supporters' Trust. It would require of the order of millions to add a large stake to that, or at least rather more than could be raised through car boot sales or whatever. So are we to understand that some fans, in addition to those who appear to be convinced that they can run the team better than the manager, also believe that they can run the business side better than the Board? PS - could you perhaps give us some insight into the basis of your conclusion that a "sizeable majority have voiced concern"?

Sorry but Paul Sheerin already has it booked to take him to the Legends' Night.

I am reliably informed (to use a Johndoism) that there is in fact a large quantity of shares still available for sale which means that someone could in principle acquire a sizeable stake. However it would still take a great deal of money to acquire 50% and three times that to acquire the 75% needed for complete control.

So THAT'S what Midge55 and Smee... Charlie Christie's biggest knockers... look like then?!

This is a complete non starter but to answer Latviaman's question, literally it would actually not take all that much to take over the directors' interest. I believe that, apart from Sandy Catto, none of the directors' is a particularly significant shareholder in the club... certainly not in comparison with Tullochs/ David Sutherland and David is not currently a director. I have a feeling that the Tullochs/ Sutherland holding is around 42% so they are not, as Yngwie suggested, actually the "owners" of the club, nor even the majority shareholders - just the "biggest" shareholders. Tullochs also have control of the Board until the 5 year agreement expires next month. Remember also that the Supporters' Trust have a holding of around 12% and this makes them one of the bigger players. Caley Thistle have always been a club where the directors have been there because it has been believed they were good for the club, not because of their financial input, although as it happens David Sutherland provided both finance and expertise. I don't know what the club's entire equity amounts to and it's complicated because the Supporters' Trust figure (which reflects the input of the original merger partners) is one which is fixed by the Articles of Association. However I could guess that the total amount paid for the purchase of equity since shares began to be sold in 1996 is a small number of millions. In terms of launching a takeover bid for Caley Thistle - forget it - it's a non starter. To have real control (change of Articles of Association) you would need 75% of the equity. I can't imagine the people concerned selling and the only other way to achieve that would be to snap up all of a further share issue (which the current shareholders would have to agree to) and that, I'd guess, would cost something above ?5 million, perhaps knocking on ?10 million. And, as Yngwie says, you would not even get the Stadium for that since it's owned, along with ?2M of debt, by the ICT Trust, with whom I suspect the backers of a hostile takeover would find it rather difficult to achieve a working relationship.

I seem to have read somewhere that Alex MacLeod is, or is on the verge of, the same decade as I am!

Kencar... to be fair to the BBC, that was last night's (Tue) programme. We did have an extended (around 10 minutes) slot on Monday evening's Sportsound with Jim Spence, two guests in the Glasgow studio, myself in Inverness and clips of Graeme Bennett from the press conference. It got a very extensive airing and at that time Craig Brewster was the only candidate on the radar. That would appear to have changed since yesterday.

OCG.... I have to say I was never aware of the problem of Clach not being able to sell the merger to their supporters. After all, they alone of the three were the club which didn't have to sell it to their supporters. Clach was (and still is) a limited company owned by its directors who could do what they liked on a vote at a board meeting. Thistle and Caley, on the other hand, were members' clubs and therefore very much under the influence of their season ticket holders to whom they were accountable at general meetings - as happened on a number of memorable occasions during 1993 and 1994 - and it was this which certainly held things back on the Caley side and took Jags so close to pulling out of the merger. PS - if your first attendance at Telford Street was as recently as 1975, you're not really entitled to call yourself "old" by the standards of some of the people who frequent this part of the forum in particular! :015:

So are you suggesting that Smee and Midge are Charlie's two biggest knockers?

Smee... no it was definitely a grant to bridge the funding gap in the stadium and even at that the original stadium plans had to be cut back. The grant very nearly came unstuck too.... on no more than a legal opinion of the meaning of the word "payable" in a resolution scribbled on a piece of paper in the heat of a debate. Funnily enough when I was heading for the resignation press conference today, I noticed that Morrisons are now reclaiming even more land off the road which is a direct result of the stadium going there. ymip... if I had to put numbers on it I would say that the merger was around 70% Caley, 30% Jags and I think the settlement reflects that. Some Jaggies wanted 50/50 but that's as unrealistic as the Caley people who wanted 100/0. I'm very pleased that you look on this as the continuation of a heritage. That's important although we obviously disagree as to which heritage. I prefer to look on it as the continuation of the Inverness football heritage, with the added bonus that the original Clach still lives on. Ironically sad, though, to be talking about this on the day of the resignation of the club's first Invernessian manager and a veteran and major figure in the merger days to boot.

Smee... that's what's been so good about this debate so far... it has been extremely civilised and I am fascinated by the viewpoints with which I don't agree because I found the whole issue of merger scepticism within both clubs absolutely intriguing, even though it was not my private standpoint. The official line from Clach was indeed the difficulty of joining a limited company owned by its directors who had just put a lot of their own money into saving it with two members' clubs which were in effect owned by largish numbers of season ticket holders. However I do think that there was another factor there in that the Clach directors, who could run their own club as they liked, saw a lot of potential future grief coming from the other two. ymip... your last post... Para 1 - Look at it this way - after all the furious recruiting that went on (on both sides) in advance of the First Battle of Rose Street in December 1993, the Rebels were only able to field something over 200. I would suggest that it is unlikely that anyone so rabidly anti merger as to refuse to attend CT games would have failed to join that group. And I am in addition quite sure that a very large proportion, of even that 200 odd relented and have attended. The Thistle refusenik contingent was, I believe, an even smaller proportion of an even smaller fan base, so we are really talking about a drop in the ocean in relation to current regular attendances. I would also suggest that the numbers not attending for that reason are in fact smaller than the fan base that would have been lost in the absence of Thistle (ie Caley only) Para 2 - it is not representative to take the 5000 people who turned out for one of the most famous events in Inverness football history and attempt to make a generalisation out of that, or even a substantial fraction of them. The vast majority of them were simply the one- or two-game Glory Hunters who would only very seldom be seen among the few hundred which was far more the norm at Telford Street. We still see such Glory Hunters among the 7700 (5200 home fans) we now get under similar circumstances when the OF visit, but one suspects very seldom otherwise. As far as County are concerned... let's look at why they did "reasonably well". Most importantly, the perception has been that a number of very wealthy directors have aided their finances hugely and have probably kept them above the water to a far greater extent than at Inverness with David Sutherland (who, by the way, was a Jaggie!) They also did not have the liability of finding a new stadium (although they did upgrade theirs considerably) and also for some reason a bigger proportion of Ross shire folk turn out than in Inverness - and that would be even smaller if it was Caley Only. Para 3 - absolutely agreed. The merger is history, but by God, it's an intriguing history. "Merger rather than takeover". Come off it ymip! I could understand the Jaggies claiming that since they (albeit quite rightly) became the lesser partners. But Caley! This was an unequal merger and the controversial issue after it became reality was the precise degree of inequality. Impossible to work out scientifically but my gut feeling is that the balance is just about right with a significant balance towards the Caley side. A further point. Even as a merged entity, en route to the SPL, ICT still managed to run up a ?2M plus debt and were only miraculously baled out by the mysterious Trust and the generosity of the said former Jaggie. Would Caley on their own have been able to survive such a crisis? Apologies again to those who don't like my long posts (not as long as some of Scotty's though!) but this is a really fascinating issue which has intrigued me for years.

We seem to have grown a parallel debate here.... "was Elgin City more or less successful as a Highland League club than Caley/ Inverness clubs in general?" It's a fascinating topic but different from the original thread. Smee... yes, I am saying just that. Caley on their own would not have had as much backing from the local community as ICT because Caley was one of three football factions in the town and a lot of potential backers would have preferred not to nail their colours to that one mast. I don't know how much you experienced of the politics around merger time but the strong indications were that a merged bid was going to be far more acceptable to just about everybody (apart from the Rebels of course!) I found this strongly confirmed when I was researching my book. On the subject of the "refuseniks", I'll just repeat what I said on another thread recently.... the people who still decline to attend are a smallish proportion of the 600 or so who were the combined core support of Thistle and Caley. They now amount to no more than a few dozen in the face of the current ICT core support of 3000. A drop in the ocean. This one is a complete myth, fondly espoused by those of the anti merger persuasion. LadyC... I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that you were one of the said Rebels! "Some local enterprise funding" amounted to over half a million which INE categorically said they would only give to a merged bid. But the biggest part of a total of ?1.8M of public funding which went into CT was the ?900,000 Common Good grant which so very nearly didn't happen in any case and would have had absolutely no chance at all with Caley alone. Then add the ?486,000 which Kingsmills Park realised, in addition to whatever they got for the Thistle club, and you have a "merger bonus" of approaching ?2.5 Million. In comparison, remember that all Caley had to offer was the 1 million obtained for Telford Street. But look, we're in danger of departing from the original hypothetical question of how viable Caley might have been on its own and turning to a rerun of the old merger debate of 93/94 which has been had already and we are now looking at the product of that process in the SPL.

You're right Smee, it was Thistle in 1974 and they lost by one vote to an Edinburgh works team called Ferranti Thistle... which became Meadowbank.... which became Livingston. I actually think that, although it was totally unjust, in the longer term that was to the good of Inverness football because I firmly believe that neither Caley nor Thistle would have made it so successfully on their own and the merger was well worth waiting for. In 1993/94 the concept of a solo Caley bid was chewed around at great length and for several reasons I believe that, EVEN IF THEY HAD GOT IN, they would not have been nearly as successful as the present set up. These reasons include:- 1) In the early days they would not have been all that much bigger than Thistle and Clach and without having effectively the whole town behind them, they would have found the early steps up very difficult indeed. 2) As one of three rival clubs in town, Caley would not have had the backing from local businesses that a "whole Inverness" bid got (and although Clach withdrew from the merger talks in August 93 the neat manner in which that was done allowed the other two to proceed as "Inverness".) 3) I do not believe that Caley alone would have received the vital backing of public money which eventually played such an important part. 4) It is essential to understand the sequence of extremely narrow margins by which SPL status has been achieved, from the very first merger votes right up to taking SPL football to Inverness. I just cannot believe that Caley on their own would have crossed all these hurdles. I hope this is not too long for the people who apparently find my "long" posts hard to bear!

Latterly I became a supporter of all three Inverness HL teams because I am a great believer in Inverness football and still attend Clach when I can. Brought up in Dalneigh, I was originally a Caley Kid and supported them to the extent that I used to joop in over the gate at the Howden End without paying and then collect old MacKintosh's lemonade bottles in the ground to get the 3d deposits. One Mike "Gemmell" Shewan used to do the same. On another issue raised in this thread, I'm in no doubt that any single club entry to the SFL would very likely have created at best another Brechin or Queen of the South and would most definitely not have led to the SPL. However the number of words required to justify this would probably irritate certain other site users (if rermarks in another thread are to be believed!) so I won't!

Caley, I'm fairly sure, was 1950, Clach was around 1988 and Thistle was definitely late July 1995.

Spoken like a true disciple of Fritz, SP!

C4L if you can get a hold of a copy of Against All Odds there's a picture of Kingsmills, literally as it disappeared! Ken MacPherson happened to be on hand that Sunday afternoon when the stand burned down and took a great photo. There may be one or two other photos of the old grounds in there which may interest you too. Kingsmills! You've just budged a long dormant brain cell of mine! I now remember as a kid being at a match at Grant Street with a huge crowd (Inverness Select v one or other of the OF?). I was on the far side of the pitch and I do recollect a lot more depth behind it than there is now. Presumably a strip of that was sold in order to build Kilmuir Road..... the houses which I now reckon have the highest density of satellite dishes in Western Europe - TWELVE between the two penalty boxes!

Smee... you've now got me wondering if I have a distant recollection of an old Clacher once telling me that the original wine shed was the one to the right of the old stand and the current one at the end of the pitch inherited the title when the first one was knocked down.

Smee, you're right. Clach Park is the biggest capacity ground there's ever been in Inverness (10K plus standing). In the good old days before Clach had to sell a chunk of the park in 1990 to cover debts, there was the main stand (which "spontaneously combusted" under still unestablished circumstances around 1988), then to the left of it looking out, the wineshed which is still there and on the other side another covered enclosure which disappeared on sale of that section of land.

There was certainly a corrugated iron roof there in the 60s. I started attending Telford Street regularly again in the 80s and it was gone by then. On the subject of "caught on film" I've been wading through TV footage of stuff for the Legends' Night and it includes some wonderful material from Telford Street. I even came across a closeup sequence of my then 8 year old son at the Arbroath game in 1994 and he was wearing his MacRae and **** Caley strip. Dad maybe deserves some criticism from ex Jaggies for allowing him to wear a Caledonian strip at a CT match... but in reality, it wasn't all that different from what the CT team wore in that first season!

"Nowhere close to three figures"... agreed. On the subject of ticket prices, as someone who doesn't have to pay to get into matches (because it's in line of work) I'm a bit reluctant to comment. However the cost of maintaining a squad of 24 plus a number of other backup staff is high againt only one earning opportunity per fortnight so prices will as a result also be high. If income were to be maintained in an environment where prices were reduced, demand for tickets would have to be sufficiently elastic for attendances to increase enough to compensate for the reduced unit price.

The problem is that "a bus", even a double decker with perhaps 90 people, would only be a drop in the ocean. Even 20 buses would not shift the 2000 which might constitute a major upward hike in attendance.

Forget the "large number" of ex Caley and Thistle refuseniks.... they are a drop in the ocean and, 13 years on, of negligible significance in this debate. Towards the end of their existences, Thistle's and Caley's combined core support was around 600. Only a small minority became refuseniks and I suspect that a number of these have slipped back into the fold. Of the hard liners, a fair number will have moved away from Inverness or indeed in 13 years have passed away. I really think that the number of people currently within travelling distance of the Caledonian Stadium who used to be regular Howden Enders/ Jaggies and who could attend but don't because they still disapprove of the merger is very small indeed. I think a far, FAR bigger limiting factor on ICT attendances is the number of people who go to watch the Old Firm instead. It was inevitable that, when there was no national league side in Inverness, local fans would support other leading teams... especially the OF. As a result there has always been a substantial OF support which will take a number of years to whittle down and will never entirely do so because of the significant Glory Hunter factor. When ICT got into the lower leagues, it was still perfectly straightforward to have an OF club as your Big Team and ICT as your Wee Team. But when ICT got into the SPL this posed a dilemma for a few people... some jumped one way, some the other. ICT's best hope is that, over time, "new" support - ie the younger generation - will go to them to a greater and greater extent. As far as the location of the stadium is concerned, I do agree it's not particularly accessible, but having studied the original 1993 document examining the long list of 13 sites, it did really come down to East Longman and Stratton Farm. There were major objections to the other 11 sites - for instance the cost of land at Inshes was prohibitive. I don't intend to go into the relative economic cases for these two sites, that's not under discussion here, but I could argue that Stratton Farm is even less accessible than East Longman. As for classes in schools to educate kids in the direction of the local club, I have to say I have had a "Supercaleygoballisitccelticareatrocious" poster on my classroom wall since February 9th 2000, but of course it is the function of the education system to help youngsters to make decisions for themselves. Don't forget, though, that Team ICT has a significant input to local schools.