Charles Bannerman

You know, I've taken half an hour to reflect - by no means for the first time in recent months, but today through the medium of this individual thread - on where CTO seems to be going, in particular since relegation. The unfortunate conclusion is that it simply isn't the same vibrant and constructive medium that it was when I first joined in the early 2000s, and in particular the feeling that everybody was in this journey together seems to have gone. This isn't a sudden observation on my part, but more a "next step" in an ongoing process. Consequently, and this is a conclusion come to at considerable length, not just this morning, I think I'm going to give contributing to CTO a miss from now on. Quite frankly, it's lost its allure for me and I'm sure I can find some other means of engaging with ICTFC.

What seems to be going largely unremarked here is that many of the posts I am highlighting appear themselves to be personal in nature, in that they are consistently critical of just about every conceivable aspect of how the club is being run. I therefore feel obliged to respond to this constant undermining of the club’s governance - which was quite sudden in onset - by placing it in context.

What is far more relevant is your clear view that - "Current Board (who no longer employ Caley D)... baaad.... previous board (who did employ Caley D).. perfect (as you told us for years... before relegation)".... after an even earlier period when they didn't employ Caley D during which they were absolutely deplorable. Let's be up front Donald. It really looks to me as if you are putting yourself right in there to become some kind of Hero of the Caley Thistle Workers' Conglomerate. Maybe one of the first things you need to do is to convince the people you need to vote for you in the forthcoming CJT Board election, that you are aren't simply in there in a personal attempt to throw the rattle out of the pram against the Board which no longer employs you - and that you hence become far more of a liability to this club than you ever were an asset. On the other hand, maybe we should welcome the fact that you have sufficiently extricated yourself from Kenny Cameron's backside to be able even to issue the lame inanities against the current board that you have managed to create.

That is an assertion which is woefully short of rigour and alarmingly full of nebulous, wishful thinking. And all of that before you even consider that the game has somewhat moved on in 14 years. Smell the coffee, Donald, and maybe waken up to the reality that what looks like your latest objective - an influential role within CJT (if it perpetuates) - is less likely to materialise if you expose yourself as being hellbent on talking down and denigrating the board running the club of whose interests you claim to be Chief Cheerleader.

Yes it does fit. The budget is being cut - end of. In order to run a squad of viable size under these circumstances, the decision has been taken to dispense with the services of a high earner given a long and well-remunerated contract by the previous regime which can no longer be afforded. What would you be proposing on the basis of your "quantity over quality" argument? James Forrest or similar, the ten young lads given contracts the other week, plus nobody on the bench? That is its ultimate extrapolation. It rather strikes me that this is another attempt to portray the current board as worse than the previous one - ironically by using a decision by the current board to dispense with a lengthy and expensive contract handed out under the previous board, but now no longer affordable as a result of the relegation also arrived at on the watch of that previous board.

Mike is the fourth of five Crook brothers who lived over the road from me in Dalneigh when we were kids. In descending order - Ralph, Philip, Willie, Mike and Chris.

I really don’t see the problem here. The bottom line is that if his contract needs to be honoured, it will be. But as part of a process of urgently necessary cost cutting, an alternative option is being sought. The financial reality is that each and every means of cutting costs has to be pursued. There is, unfortunately, no room for sentiment when the future of the club is at stake. I don’t know the intimate details of Gary’s current contract but would guess that it was, a la Foran, a fairly long one given under the previous boardroom and managerial regimes in the Premiership. We need to thank Gary for his huge contribution (for which he has been remunerated) and regret the earlier failure which has made it necessary to try to terminate his engagement.

You have the second sight, my man! Wonderful entertainment. Highlight of the draw! All they need to do now is to get the same ref back.

I tend to be sceptical about SFA type schemes as well. That’s partly motivated by many years’ experience of similarly half-baked national “initiatives” in education - which seem to be continuing with the Curriculum for Excellence. I found, along with many others, that the best way to get round the crap was to seem to go along with it , but in reality go your own way. Disturbingly, I see one or two parallels - with alarming woolliness to the fore - between Project Brave and the CFE. With any luck, much of the crap Caleyboy rightly hints at can be avoided and at least a team that’s significantly local can be developed. Applogies if I have further dragged off course a thread about the appointment of what we hope will be a successful CEO.

Presumably, as was popular in the 70s, you can save up "stamps" towards acquiring a supply?

I'm taking that as a rhetorical question caleyboy! However, the "answer may ultimately actually be "yes" if a few more Ryan Christies emerge. I wasn't all that convinced by the SFA's central belt-focused overall approach to it (sorry if that is decreed to offend people in the central belt ?) but this could be very different at ICT level and any costs involved to the club could well be more than recouped if, apart from generating marketable commodities, it also creates a lower cost, local route toward putting together a first team.

I gather that it emerged a few months ago that SPFL rules prevented Danny from being in charge of Project Brave and associated footballing matters whilst also being COO. At roughly that point, Danny ceased his COO activities, Jim Oliver became Commercial Manager and Yvonne Crook took on marketing and related responsibilities on a consultancy basis. Now it appears that the COO function has been upgraded to this CEO post and Danny continues in his football development related post, with Jim as Commercial Manager. I would imagine that one answer to inevitable questions as to why the club has this number of "high ups" might well be that this now gives the potential for many of the things some fans historically complained weren't being done..... to be done.

The new strip most definitely sticks closely to the club colours. It certainly gets a general thumbs up from me.

....unless by "new Craig's" Alan means the flat his mate Craig moved into the other day? (Or is that offensive to people who have difficulties with apostrophes and proper nouns?)

Now that would be a classic!!!

She obviously retained her missionary position for a long time, then!

The Hills Are Alive.......and which one nicked the distributor cap?

There was certainly a convent - La Sagesse - in Inverness until a few decades ago. I think it was in what is now the accountants' office on the corner of Southside Road. Next door used to be Hill Park Roman Catholic girls' hostel, until it burned down dramatically in 1959. What's now St Ninian's Catholic Church was then built on that site. There does rtherefore seem to have been a presence of nuns in Inverness for quite some time, although I don't know how many were local. The Highlands does have the odd fairly strong Catholic enclave. I believe Beauly is one such example, possibly due to the influence of the Chiefs of the Clan Fraser who seem to have retained their Catholicism. I'm not sure if the Fort William area is another stronghold but there are Catholic churches all over the area. There would therefore appear to be the means and possibly one motivation in the period in question might have been the loss of a boyfriend in WWI? On the other hand, the scenario I've described isn't maybe all that different from more or less anywhere. Blair makes reference to St Columba who certainly made his presence felt in the North of Scotland in the 6th century, but in the South West of Scotland, St Ninian is believed to have spread Christianity as early as the late 4th/early 5th centuries. Of course, until the Reformation in the 16th century, everyone was a Catholic and the consequences of that split still rumble on. I could therefore guess that, in the staunchly Presbyterian parts of the Highlands, conversion to Catholicism, never mind becoming a nun, would not have been without its controversy!

I managed to do a "Likely Lads" and contrived to avoid it all day - except that I the end, this match wasn't postponed.

Didn't even manage to hear much of it on the radio since I was driving home from Manchester and outwith even Radio Scotland AM range until the last five minutes. (The main reason I even got into signal for the last five minutes was that earlier on I saw a sign that said "Chorley" and put the foot down to get the hell past it as quickly as I could! ?)

Of course you can, because you know quite well I'm not a CYJ member but, just as I'm not a member of any political party whilst still commenting and usually criticising the performamce of them all because of their effect on the country, I similarly feel perfectly entitled to comment on CJT and its effect on the club.

No.

I spoke to them once but I think I got away with it. But see those bloody Vikings and Romans?! ?

Oh well, after the first leg of the Premiership Playoff Final, it's advantage Livingston, tipping the current balance in favour of top flight Scottish Football being played next season at premises known as "The Tony Macaroni Arena". Even by Livingston's supremely tacky history of stadium naming, this one (apologies in advance for the dreadful pun!) is a lot cheesier than most. So which of these two would you prefer to come out on top in this contest to achieve a status which now eludes the entire Highlands? Personally, I would go for "neither of the above". Firstly Livingston. It's difficult in Inverness to forget that Livingston owes its place in the National Leagues to one of the most disgraceful stitch-ups in the history of Scottish football. In 1973, an Edinburgh works/welfare team called Ferranti Thistle got into the SFL by a single vote ahead of Inverness Thistle in a poll which reeked of central belt protectionism. Ferranti then morphed into Meadowbank Thistle which moved out to Livingston. Now, TWO administrations later, so at the cost of other people's money, Livingston are pressing to get back into the top league. No thank you. Then there's Partick Thistle - a club which, in 2004, finished eight points adrift at the bottom of the SPL with 26 points - a total which historically is well below average for the bottom club. However that mediocrity didn't prevent them from dragging their relegation issue, kicking and screaming, through much of the Scottish legal system. It got to the stage where you half expected them to turn up with a QC in the dugout to challenge each and every refereeing decision. Eventually they lost and justice was done - ICT got into the SPL and the ultra-litigious Partick were correctly relegated. So no thank you again.

You could probably add "toil" in there as well. These 108 shares and 10% voting rights are an important legacy of the partner clubs which put the current one there in the first place, and also the net £1.23M of combined assets which went into the construction of the Caledonian Stadium.