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Clach in administration


Heilandee

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According to the Inv Courier..

" Clach have never at any point abdicated responsilbility for what is due to Highland Council " a director stated

" Recent monthly payments, none of which have been missed, have seen the overall debt to the council drop, Clach have also been active in promoting an all weather pitch at Grant st and a ground share with Inverness City FC "

The directors are also saying they are writing to Alex Salmond to investigate the authority's conduct.

Somebody is telling porky's eh?

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Hope somebody saves them. I'd hate to see them go under.

That statement is very representative of the feelings of a great number of people in and from Inverness but also highlights the paradox which is Clachnacuddin FC.

There seems to be huge public interest in and sympathy for Clach but all the same the club has been financially non viable for decades now. Any time Clach is in danger of folding (and there have been three such instances in the last 19 years) there is despondency... outrage even... throughout Inverness and especially in the Merkinch. But all the same the money doesn't come in to convert the company into a long term viable concern.

Since the late 1980s there has been a clealy identifiable debt cycle with Clach. The club all but disappeared in the summer of 1990 (the sheriff had actually signed the winding up order) and it was only saved by the intervention of the consortium which included, among various others, David Dowling the current chairman, Charlie Forbes, late father of another current director Chris Forbes and Colin Morgan.

Significantly, the land where the old stand used to be was sold off to help pay of large debts.

After a few relatively prosperous years, serious debts began to reappear in the mid 90s and, having come very close to a move to Dingwall (which provoked near riots in the Merkinch), the playing surface was then sold to ICT Properties for ?280,000 to buy a few more years of solvency. That pitch was then sold on to the Inverness Common Good Fund which is due the ?46,000 rent arrears which are the root of this latest problem.

So a decade or so, and a Highland League title, later Clach's ongoing non viability (remember we are talking here about a business in the economically deprived Merkinch which depended on a pub to gain revenue) the debt cycle has gone significantly negative again. Plans are in place to sell much of the remaining land to William Gray but it looks as if the timescale here is incompatible with Highland Council's repayment requirements.

Clach's recent existence has been positively Fuastian in that they have had to keep selling off assets for a few more years of life. There are not many assets left now, nor, apparently, the time to dispose of them.

However the mystifying thing is that is Clach means that much to Inverness, why has its viability been so consistently challenged by lack of income?

My fear now must be that the necessary evil of the Administrator's fee will simply become an additional burden on already crumbling finances and will further decrease the chances of the club being sold as a going concern.

It would now appear that there is no more than a 50-50 chance of Highland League football surviving in the city in which the League was founded all those 116 years ago.

Edited by Charles Bannerman
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I have just heard that David Dowling will be interviewed live on Sports Report on Radio Scotland at 1245. If you are in the Highlands and Islands or any other area with a BBC local bulletins service and want to listen, perhaps best tune into 810MW rather than FM since I can't be sure if the interview will be before or after FM opts out to go to local news bulletins. Otherwise it doesn't matter where you tune in.

Edited by Charles Bannerman
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It was Caledonian Thistle Properties Ltd (50% owned by the club) that purchased the land Charles. Inverness Caledonian Thistle Properties Ltd and Inverness Caledonian Thistle Properties (2004) Ltd are entirely different companies and have no connection to ICT other than them being the names of companies owned by Sutherland used to hold the assets he's "acquired" from the club.

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It was Caledonian Thistle Properties Ltd (50% owned by the club) that purchased the land Charles. Inverness Caledonian Thistle Properties Ltd and Inverness Caledonian Thistle Properties (2004) Ltd are entirely different companies and have no connection to ICT other than them being the names of companies owned by Sutherland used to hold the assets he's "acquired" from the club.

"Acquired"....?

:024:

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Sutherland will pop in and save it, ground share with us on away days and look at scope for flats in grant street..... or we ground share with them and TCS becomes Asda... hummm corrupt, I will be sad to see clach go, Inverness needs a Highland leauge team......

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Charlie Bannerman is correct. A lot of gnashing of gums, but no hard cash when it mattered, by the community for the community.

A few years back I was doing research on Inverness during the First World War, looking at the Courier, and what was on the front page? "Clach in Financial Crisis". That is 95 years ago.

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Charlie Bannerman is correct. A lot of gnashing of gums, but no hard cash when it mattered, by the community for the community.

A few years back I was doing research on Inverness during the First World War, looking at the Courier, and what was on the front page? "Clach in Financial Crisis". That is 95 years ago.

Gordy... I'd like to speak to you about that at some point. If it was The Courier I doubt if it would have been the front page though since that was ads only until about 1988.

CaleyD..... before I made that post, I put money on you getting back on the subject of which of the various companies this was. :024:

Edited by Charles Bannerman
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Very sad, would be very interesting to see what happened to the proposed bids from Savage and Sutherland when they were meant to happen.

Was it another power battle between them?

Was it Dowling refusing to sell unless he was kept as Chairman so he could keep his SFA position?

Whatever very strange that both were interested then both dropped out, think the writing was on the wall for the club at this stage.

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CaleyD..... before I made that post, I put money on you getting back on the subject of which of the various companies this was. :024:

if the avatar fits ....... :lol:

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itmakes me laugh how the highland council are being made out to be the bad ones here, they have been owed the debt for yonks(years in fact0 why shouldnt thye call it in,enoughs enough,iam sure with dowlings buisness intrests he could afford to pay most of it off if he was that bothered,there getting whats coming to them

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itmakes me laugh how the highland council are being made out to be the bad ones here, they have been owed the debt for yonks(years in fact0 why shouldnt thye call it in,enoughs enough,iam sure with dowlings buisness intrests he could afford to pay most of it off if he was that bothered,there getting whats coming to them

The rent is owed to the common good fund which is administered by the council. Is it in the interests of the people of Inverness to evict a football club and build more tinky tower blocks?

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itmakes me laugh how the highland council are being made out to be the bad ones here, they have been owed the debt for yonks(years in fact0 why shouldnt thye call it in,enoughs enough,iam sure with dowlings buisness intrests he could afford to pay most of it off if he was that bothered,there getting whats coming to them

The rent is owed to the common good fund which is administered by the council. Is it in the interests of the people of Inverness to evict a football club and build more tinky tower blocks?

Just what i was thinking. Thats all that will happen. They will build poor quality houses and they wont be sold as people wont have the money and they fact that part of town isnt the most glamoures.

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itmakes me laugh how the highland council are being made out to be the bad ones here, they have been owed the debt for yonks(years in fact0 why shouldnt thye call it in,enoughs enough,iam sure with dowlings buisness intrests he could afford to pay most of it off if he was that bothered,there getting whats coming to them

The rent is owed to the common good fund which is administered by the council. Is it in the interests of the people of Inverness to evict a football club and build more tinky tower blocks?

true but why should dowlings arrogance get away with being blind to the debt yet again

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itmakes me laugh how the highland council are being made out to be the bad ones here, they have been owed the debt for yonks(years in fact0 why shouldnt thye call it in,enoughs enough,iam sure with dowlings buisness intrests he could afford to pay most of it off if he was that bothered,there getting whats coming to them

The rent is owed to the common good fund which is administered by the council. Is it in the interests of the people of Inverness to evict a football club and build more tinky tower blocks?

true but why should dowlings arrogance get away with being blind to the debt yet again

What arrogance is that? The council have given them the runaround for years, not making a decision on the ground rent. Why do you single out Dowling?

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What arrogance is that? The council have given them the runaround for years, not making a decision on the ground rent. Why do you single out Dowling?

so you trying to tell me dowling knew nothing about the clubs rent going un payed for 3 years? i bet he was the 1st to know and didnt let on in the hope the council would write it of and forget it

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What arrogance is that? The council have given them the runaround for years, not making a decision on the ground rent. Why do you single out Dowling?

so you trying to tell me dowling knew nothing about the clubs rent going un payed for 3 years? i bet he was the 1st to know and didnt let on in the hope the council would write it of and forget it

How could they pay the rent when they didn't know how much was due or when?

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I suppose it is sad in a way. It always is when a long established club or business goes under and it was always amusing to listen to English newsreaders struggling to pronounce "Clachnacuddin" when they reached the Scottish Cup rounds. But there was an inevitability about this. When there is a bigger team in town, the smaller team will only survive if there is 1) sufficient fan base, 2) there is a very well run social club to subsidise it or 3) there are people prepared to put lots of money into the club for the fun of it. Clach has none of these.

In my opinion, the mistake was not merging with Caledonian and Thistle when ICT were formed. Had they done that then the new team would have been seen much more as a united Inverness side and less of a Caledonian takeover of Thistle. The new club would have been stronger for that and the Clach Board of the day could have been proud to have been a part of that. In fact, we'd probably still be in the SPL now. B*****ds!

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