Gutted Cammy hasn't stuck around as I believe he would've been first choice with Ridgers moving on. Then again maybe big Dunc didn't rate him as GK is the only position he hasn't brought in his own player.

It’s such a pity Cammy’s not getting his opportunity to make the no1 shirt his own in the new season. Kelty no doubt a major factor in his thinking.

It’s looking like a central belter in goals

Ridgers is out of contract and rumoured to be joining County. MacKay rumoured to be joining Brora.

Well here’s one local player who won’t be going to Kelty. Anyone know what Rodgers’ contract status is?

Annan Athletic is definitely on my horizon, I can get the West Coast mainline train from London to Carlisle and then its half an hour from Carlisle, probably an overnighter in Carlisle. Dumbarton is also an possibilty, obvs will still try to get to home games. I felt once we ended up in the relegation play-offs, we were unlikely to beat Hamilton. Annoyingly we missed out on safety by small margins, as we did promotion play-offs the year before. I see quite a few blaming the players for having no fight, I'm not sure thats true, tactic's seem more to blame, and as I said several times lack of a proper winger. [Shaw and Longstaff could probably have done the job, but Shaw was used as a centralised player-maker before his injuries, I thought Longstaff showed promise but was out injured too long too] We had some injuries, but I still think a team that included Devine, Savage, Boyes, Harper, Kerr, McKay, Alex Samuel, Duffy, Gilmour, Laval, Ujdur and Anderson should have been good enough...I never really understood why Bray was allowd out on loan either, he seemed to be the stand out player at the start of the season. Ferguson managed a new manager bounce, but seemed to run out of ideas quite quickly. Still we got rid of Doddsball.... I wonder how people who wanted him out feel now, was that the right decision with the wrong replacement? I kind of understand the reasoning behind using Kelty as a training base, but obviously also understand why that rankles, it might ease one problem, but what happens to the youth team? Frankly the size of our home crowd, is always going to be an issue from the financial point of view, I just wish I could win the Euromillions, but until then, it seems hand-to-mouth stuff Anyway hopefully ICT can keep going, it might be a slow process to get back to the better times, but hopefully we will come back stronger...eventually

I don’t think you’re too far wrong there! The vital component is Tullochs. The debt in 1999 before they came in was said to be £2.3M; that disappeared as a result of a deal over the stadium which was subsequently donated back to the club, Tulloch’s £729K in shares - the biggest single holding - was later donated to the ICT Charitable Trust and Tullochs built the North and South stands on less than 7 weeks to ensure that the team came back from Aberdeen early in 2005. For several years Tullochs controlled the Board and there were even a couple of very modest profits in there. The Tulloch interest had departed by the mid-2010s and it’s since then that financial decline has set in again. I’m not arguing a 100% cause and effect here because there will have been other factors but there’s a strong link between financial and playing success and the Tulloch involvement.

Spent yesterday at The Gathering. It was at the Bucht due to the work at the Northern Meeting Park, and used a surprisingly small section, albeit there must have been upwards of 5000 there. The bar and catering worked well though. Highlights were Torridon (despite being Staggies), Trail West and headliners Skerryvore. The weather was amazing.

I would have to argue that the CC and the BF were pursued as means of attracting the large amount of money needed to bail a seriously financially challenged club out of a big hole, but they have only realised pennies in comparison. As a result, more than two years have been wasted on a wild goose chase instead of something far more useful, and as a result the club appears to be on the brink of insolvency. That to me is a financial disaster a bit like someone getting into a million pound debt but letting it run because they think they’ve won a pools jackpot - and then discovering it’s only a thousand quid.

You seem to be working on the premise that the club had no costs relating to the concert and battery farm projects. You also can't ignore the associated financial implications. Concentrating on these projects instead of the bread and butter activities meant the club had no income from things like hospitality, player/match sponsorship etc.

There definitely some good years in the middle but from memory I think they were mainly our years in the top flight, where incomes are so much higher, and as an added bonus players can be sold for significantly higher amounts (£1m between Christie and Niculae being our best ones)

My first phrase was that the projects failed miserably, and I’m not disputing how damaging they have been in various respects. Just pointing out that they have made significant financial contributions to help te club’s finances. So you could say they were catastrophic and I would agree, but they were absolutely not financially catastrophic. Let’s not be in denial that they actually made us a lot of money, which is simple fact.

If you take out the losses from the first few years and the last few years then that would suggest that during the middle 20ish year period the club was actually living within it's means and achieving success on the park.

Kelty is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

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.