I actually think the move has been dreamt up by Gardiner because he knows how so deeply unpopular he is in Inverness now, that moving the football operations to Kelty means he no longer has to be present in Inverness and run the gauntlet of the coming into contact with the locals! I wouldn't be surprised if he's manipulated the figures to show the board a much greater saving than will actually be achieved in order to push the deal through. It's a win win for him!

Has anyone considered that this Kelty move is probably a tempoprary thing to give the club some breathng space. I totally understand the level of anger but if it came down to it i would take Gardiner out over the Kelty move. His presence is clearly damaging relations.

Considering that we were told that the Battery Farm was going to take in £3.4M, I think that what has actually transpired must surely be classified as a failure alongside the scale of the club’s problems. And don’t start me on the Concert Company. I still cringe at the thought that what was talked up as a financial panacea failed miserably and left a lot of honest traders out of pocket whilst hammering the last nail into the coffin of the club’s credibility with the local business community. Meanwhile, Scot Gardiner presented the fact that the club had ring fenced stadium rent for itself before the CC went bust- hence increasing these traders’ losses - as some kind of achievement at the AGM. I suspect that there will be people in the very local business community that the club needs to get on board now shouting “Karma!!” and laughing their arses off at what is now happening.

Thanks Cif - I hadn’t been familiar with the term “retained earnings”!

I understand that was the first payment for renting the car park out to the hydro facility, but it’s been delayed (rumoured to be as the Council want the club to apply for planning permission to have it used as a car park for that rather than just for events at the stadium).

Thanks for the detailed response, Charles. The accumulated losses from the very start to date is something shown in every set of ICT company accounts submitted. It's a figure in plain sight near the bottom of the balance sheet. (So there's no need to trawl through every set of accounts to add all the years' losses together. It's done for you, so to speak).

Both project failed miserably in terms of meeting their targets, but I’m not sure you are right that they were actually catastrophic financial failures. I know it’s not what anyone wants to hear, but these Gardiner projects seem to have made significant non-footballing contributions to ICT. RM stated last week that the club’s interest in the battery farm was recently sold for £250,000, and in the previous year or two there were statements that the club rented the stadium and provided other services to the concert company for sums that would surely have been well into 5 figures. So it seems to be the case that these crazy, failed schemes have actually generated more income than a year’s worth of season tickets.

Thanks for the clarification, Stephen. That's helpful. OK, these will be factors affecting the current as well then, but I suspect the core financial issues run deeper still. By the way, I heard years ago (before Morrison) that sponsors hadn't been contacted for renewal of advertising boards. It's difficult to know what's rumour/gossip and truth when you're an outsider but I heard stuff like that from different sources.

This club has never been able to come especially close to generating income to match its football expenditure and I can’t see how anyone could conceivably think otherwise. For several years after the near financial collapse of 1999, £5M from Tullochs kept it going but more recently that has given way to raising extra share capital (significantly almost £1M from Muirfield Mills) and cadging loans such as from Ross Morrison. Unfortunately, two attempts to raise income by non-football means - the Concert Company and the Battery Farm - have been catastrophic financial failures and the former (or possibly arguably both) also brought severe reputational damage. Thank you for revealing that all-time losses come to £6.7M. I had only got as far as establishing £3.5M (more than half of that) within only the last six years, so it’s clear that the funding gulf is accelerating. I’ve made the ballpark estimate that, additional to initial stadium funding, ICT has cumulatively needed £10M of other people’s money to get to where it is today. But if you think that’s a lot, I would also estimate that the corresponding figure for Ross County is around £20M and in the last 10 years alone £11.4M in loans from its parent company have been written off, so loss making seems to be accelerating there as well. The difference between the two clubs is that Roy MacGregor has been a far larger, more reliable and longer term source of “bailout cash” than ICT’s. In fact the scale and longevity of Roy’s support have been quite remarkable - although what happens when that eventually dries up is another matter. As far as ICT is concerned, I’m struggling to see a sustainable way out of this…. but as sure as hell, decanting the first team to Fife sure isn’t among the options. On that particular subject, judging by what random people I’ve had casual conversation with over the last week, I have been absolutely dismayed at the laughing stock that the club has now become in the public eye.

I was that fan who spoke on Sportsound today and if you don’t think that part of the problem is those ventures you are way off the mark! The concert fiasco destroyed relationships with local businesses and some are still owed money! Those broken relationships have led to less money coming through the tills! Hospitality is nearly non existent now! Sponsor’s haven’t been contacted to renew deals and some have had free advertisement for over 3 years due to the club not picking up the phone. Yes it’s been going on for a long time and Ross is a fan but the club isn’t being ran properly! We just want a football team to support and be proud off! We have had more communication around battery farms than we have had about any football matters last season!

ICT's financial runaway train started long before the current incumbents. Up to 31 May 2022 (per company accounts on public record at Companies House which anyone can access/view free of charge), the accumulated losses incurred by ICT since formation total an eye-watering £6.7million. We have been a financial basketcase, living beyond our means for years, and years and years. The only reason we have stayed alive this long is a series of benefactors (Morrison being the latest) ploughing huge amounts of their own money knowing they'll never see it again. I couldn't believe it when I heard an ICT fan-contributor on Sportsound today blame battery farms and concerts for our financial woes and saying that we had not lost money from football operations ... Off the scale inaccurate.

5 days a week 52 weeks a year for multiple years. If that is the £300k and it's full payment in advance then maybe not that great especially when you factor in cost of maintenance etc for that volume of use. If it's the annual payment then great so long as we actually get it. We don't have a great record with commercial contracts and agreements.

Might be that, no idea, but £300,000 rent for a car park? SG is CEO of the century if he’s negotiated even a small fraction of that amount for us for renting out a bit of wasteland!

I totally agree Fraz. This is a complete disaster and all because our directors have been led up the garden path by one man

I find it a little suspicious that the creditor and debtor figures are the same. It feels like just another lack of accountability statement 'we're £300k in the hole and can't pay our debts but it's someone elses fault'. If this is money due in from the hydro place renting carparks then is this just another grand scheme set to go wrong? That was a deal done with our sponsor but they have since sold the hydro to another company. Have we hacked off our sponsor by not getting the battery scheme over the line? Were all these agreements dependent on each other? Lots of questions and still not many answers.

And for those looking to peruse the Accounts, guess what?

So if Dodds is on the payroll so is Bazza ? Are they offski on June 7th with Robbo ? How much adding on Ferguson's wage has that cost?

We will be in Gran Canaria from 8-15 June, in a hotel which we've been to before. That means our last night will be in front of a telly, watching the opening game. This hotel is very popular with Germans

This is, while I appreciate what Morrison is put financially into the club I have zero sympathy. He's created this situation or at the very least allowed it to come about through the business genius of Gardiner. We are moving to Kelty because it's the ONLY way we can survive apparently. Yet we've probably spent the best part of £500k on Gardiner since he came, and for what exactly? He's here to develop partnerships and further the club and has done the polar opposite. We've kept on Robertson as some kind of weird Sporting Director when he couldn't cope with continuing as manager. Thereafter he did the grand total of fk all other than cut the grass at the IRA - and we're still paying him! We give Dodds a contract extension on the basis that he got the SC Final, even though we only made it due to a clerical fk up. We then sacked him 6 games later - and are still paying him to this day. We bring in a 'big name' manager out of left field with next to no Scottish Football knowledge or experience and a history of failure and relegation. Allegedly on £4k a WEEK (OVER £200K A YEAR!) Confirmed by Morrison not to be covered by a Director but paid by the club. This big name then seems to be totally stubborn re his tactics and player selection, never learns from his mistakes and gets us relegated. Even if he takes a significant pay cut he'll still not be on less than £100k a year. Absolutely astonishing array of terrible decisions time after time. Nobody has more blame for your lost million plus quid than you Ross and regardless it sure as fk isn't the fans. We must be among the least demanding fans in the country. All we wanted was to be listened to, paid some respect and appreciation. Failed on all counts.

As an employee, the longest notice period that I had was 3 months. Sometimes it was a month. Maybe it's different in football? Perhaps the cash flow is so bad that they can't afford to pay anyone a lump sum, but have to keep them on the payroll for all of their notice period. See also Robbo.

Do we not have the capability to negotiate a contract with a reasonable termination clause? If we have to constantly pay people for another 6, 12, or 18 months after agreeing to part ways then it would appear not. In real life I deal with very large contracts for software and services and when we get round the table with vendors, discounts for bulk purchase or multi-year deals where things go well, along with get out clauses for scenarios where it doesn’t, are discussed from the off…

Billy Dodds chipping in too, and confirming that he is still on our payroll.

Mike Edwards and Stevie Riley on radio Scotland right now.

Yeah, was going to say this. I disagreed with him on twitter when he posted this and he is one of those I referred to when I said I had only heard of a couple of ICT supporters who had thought this a good idea. Mike has an impeccable track record of supporting ICT and Caley before that, sits in with the proletariat when our paths have crossed and in his younger days was a High School boy and began career at local press (Courier/P&J) as well as MFR before moving onwards and upwards. The rest can be got from Wikipedia! Regardless of what you think of his ‘with strings’ offer from a few years ago, the bigger issue is no-one replied. There is a pattern here of looking gift horses in the mouth and not bothering to contact folks who may be interested in helping in one way or another.

Proceeds from the club selling its soul? The buyer is certainly not someone who can be trusted to pay promptly!