Ian Broadfoot, who has acted as club statistician and historian more or less since ICT was founded, has announced that he is standing down. Ian moved from Inverness to Perth a few years ago which made this demanding job no easier.

Those on his mailing list - and I believe that also includes some of the Mods on CTOL - will be more than aware of the incredible detail and scrupulous accuracy of the statistics he has issued after every game. One of his specialities was the identification of "milestone" appearances etc. For instance, without his input, Terry and Maurice's 100th earlier this season would have gone completely unnoticed but this actually made a big media splash both locally and nationally.

Ian has done a great service to Caley Thistle and on a personal level I relied considerably on his match reports from the first two seasons whilst writing Against All Odds, which he also proof read for me.

I was able to return the favour for the manuscript of Going Ballistic when Ian recorded the first decade a few years later.

Make no mistake, Ian's contributions will be greatly missed and he will be a very hard act to to follow.

His knowledge was encyclopaedic, whatever your statistical query.

On that subject, my last query to him was just last night when I wanted to find out about winning home runs in the SPL.

(And by the way Ian's final response to me was that the longest run of straight home SPL wins was FIVE between 24.11.07. and 5.1.08. which would have been during Craig Brewster's second spell in charge.)

Caley Thistle owes Ian a great debt.

Indeed - A very hard act to follow, but an essential job. Let's hope we have someone out there who can do it even half as well as Ian did. I've also spoken to him a number of times and his knowledge and record keeping is amazing

Top Man! All the best Ian you will be sorely missed. By the way is Bryan Munro still involved with the club?

Yes, top bloke, whose clairvoyant gifts saw that following ICT had more potential than following Queen's Park :biggrin:

The dedication that goes in to producing statistics to such a level is phenomenal and his retirement from the roll will certainly be missed.

CTO are on his mailing list and his stats are regularly referred to for information when it comes to producing previews/reports and making sure the sites stats are accurate...in fact, the stats that we make available in the sites stats section have in large part been built from the information he provides.

He'd be the man to have on your team for any ICT round in the pub quiz, that's for sure.

Top Man! All the best Ian you will be sorely missed. By the way is Bryan Munro still involved with the club?

When I went to purchase his book in Aberdeen way back then I made the error of calling him Charles. He was not impressed.

Bryan still edits the match programme.

Yup, will be sending him a private email with my own comments but I echo what everyone else has said ....

We have stats, and we can look them up, and most of them are based on Ian's hard work over the years but with Ian, he doesnt just have the stats he knows them and can point out milestones or know they are coming up just as i he has his own spidey sense !

Absolute gentleman with an incredible knowledge of the club.

Hard act to follow...

Fantastic stats produced by Ian are used by many, and portrayed as our own. Like many, I am indebted to his dedication and impeccable information.

Thanks Mr Broadfoot.