Quite apart from the fact that average crowds in the Premiership continue to edge up for most clubs including our own, yesterday's victory by County means that the seven major cup finals since Scottish football was apparently placed on life support will, by the time the League Cup final comes around, have featured ten different clubs and there will have been six different winners of the two tournaments.

Highland clubs will have featured in three of these finals spread over the two competitions, cup final crowds have been healthy and largely sectarian bile free, ICT have featured in precisely as many finals as Celtic and no team has featured in more than two finals spreading exposure and finance much more widely than before.

This Armageddon is a gift that just keeps on giving. Can we please please have at least one more season of it.......

Sadly, yer Scottish fitba 'writers' are unanimously of the view that things are much more interesting when the same two teams win everything.

1 hour ago, KirkieRobRoy said:

Sadly, yer Scottish fitba 'writers' are unanimously of the view that things are much more interesting when the same two teams win everything.

I thought today's back pages were as appalling as on the morning after ICT hiked Celtic out of the Scottish Cup last season. Everything is seen from an Old Firm perspective so on both occasions it was a case of "Celtic lose/robbed" rather than "Ross County/ICT reach first League/Scottish Cup final".

I'll say it again. The central belt media are so solidly up the Old Firm's collective backside that not even a bottle of strong laxative would budge them. So notwithstanding local rivalry, Ross County's Highland success yesterday is something that also needs to be celebrated by ICT fans. The real enemy is not on the far side of the Kessock Bridge but on the far side of Castlecary Arches.

Or, more specifically, Pacific Quay....

1 minute ago, Kingsmills said:

Or, more specifically, Pacific Quay....

Yeh, I know. Had it not been for BBC bias we would now be preparing for independence..... with oil at 2 Groats a barrel.

The print media has no public service obligations but instead are businesses which need to make a profit to survive.  They print what they think their target audience wants to hear.  More folk support the old filth than ICT or County and therefore to focus on celebrating Highlanders would not be good for sales.  It's not going to change.

The same can't be said for the BBC who should be rather more objective than they are these days.  Now that there are so many media options available to the public, I guess they feel they also need to give their audience what they want to hear as lower viewing figures will no doubt have a significant impact on their funding. 

9 hours ago, Kingsmills said:

This Armageddon is a gift that just keeps on giving. Can we please please have at least one more season of it.......

.... unless the master plan is that Billy King, on his rampant white charger, gallops out of the Louden Tavern to become saviour of the hour with a stoppage time winner against the Hibernian Fenians in a last day of the season Battle of the Boyne.

On the other hand, if we follow that particular historical analogy to its ultimate conclusion, maybe Billy's rampant white charger will instead trip over a molehill.....

As a born and bred Highlander, whos perspective has somewhat changed (and softened) a lot this past few years...i kinda find myself hoping County win the final and take the Cup back up north with them. BUT, i aslo happen to fully understand Old Caley Girl and others view, about County being a rival when it comes to being a hound for the locals pound. But...at the end of the day.....when it all boils down....its a sport..and really not worth investing any ill will towards anyone. Enough of that and worse, going on elsewhere. 

At the end of the day there are only two daily's that are not based in Glasgow or Edinburgh. Dundee Courier did have some favourable comments for County. Never saw the Depressing Journal. It stands to reason that the writers are generally from either city and have leanings towards the big clubs so I expect nothing less than bias

4 hours ago, SMEE said:

As a born and bred Highlander, whos perspective has somewhat changed (and softened) a lot this past few years...i kinda find myself hoping County win the final and take the Cup back up north with them. BUT, i aslo happen to fully understand Old Caley Girl and others view, about County being a rival when it comes to being a hound for the locals pound. But...at the end of the day.....when it all boils down....its a sport..and really not worth investing any ill will towards anyone. Enough of that and worse, going on elsewhere. 

To be honest I think it's too late to worry about the County marketing machine the damage to an extent is already done 

Next derby through in a Dingwall check out all the advertisement boarding you will see the majority are Inverness based investors,companies and businesses 

You got to ask the question why this is???

Dougal

4 hours ago, Alex MacLeod said:

It stands to reason that the writers are generally from either city and have leanings towards the big clubs so I expect nothing less than bias

But on the other hand, there will be not a few non-Glaswegian journalists showing equal bias - and how many non-journalistic Glaswegians are biased towards both Rangers AND Celtic?

There is no Glasgow bias. It's Old Firm bias. People in the Greater Glasgow area who support Thistle, St Mirren, Morton, Motherwell, Albion Rovers, Pollok, and, er, Kirkie Rob Roy detest the Old Firm as much as anyone in the Highlands.

 

Ah, the Highlands - I remember when we played Rangers at TCS the big banner among the visiting hordes was from 'Lewis RSC'. There are probably more Old Firm supporters (albeit many of them watching all their fitba on the telly) in Inverness than support ICT. Whether you're an ICT supporter, Ross county, St Johnstone, Montrose, Raith, Hamilton Accies, Ayr United, whatever, you'll see local folk wandering about in rangers and Celtic jerseys, or buses piling off to Parkhead or Aye Broke on match days.

 

I don't think most journos are necessarily from Glasgow. Deffo many of them don't live there. But they love the Old Firm. Not because they are based in Glasgow. But because they're so BIIIIIIG.

22 minutes ago, KirkieRobRoy said:

There is no Glasgow bias. It's Old Firm bias. People in the Greater Glasgow area who support Thistle, St Mirren, Morton, Motherwell, Albion Rovers, Pollok, and, er, Kirkie Rob Roy detest the Old Firm as much as anyone in the Highlands.

 

Ah, the Highlands - I remember when we played Rangers at TCS the big banner among the visiting hordes was from 'Lewis RSC'. There are probably more Old Firm supporters (albeit many of them watching all their fitba on the telly) in Inverness than support ICT. Whether you're an ICT supporter, Ross county, St Johnstone, Montrose, Raith, Hamilton Accies, Ayr United, whatever, you'll see local folk wandering about in rangers and Celtic jerseys, or buses piling off to Parkhead or Aye Broke on match days.

 

I don't think most journos are necessarily from Glasgow. Deffo many of them don't live there. But they love the Old Firm. Not because they are based in Glasgow. But because they're so BIIIIIIG.

I probably shouldn't have tried to reply to Alex' earlier post from my phone, because the imposed brevity meant that what I said was a bit ambiguous. So thanks to KRR for doing a much better job than I have of largely saying what I meant.

The West Central belt press in particular just ooze Old Firm bias, not helped by the number of Billy () Bigtimes mentioned by KRR. The grovelling sycophancy I have seen at press conferences over the years is quite nauseating. There was one occasion when Neil Lennon emerged into the Inverness stand post match and prompted the most unseemly scramble as the best part of a dozen of these guys raced and elbowed each other to get to the front of the queue. I don't think where these guys come from matters all that much. I remember Gordon Smith in an after dinner speech hilariously referring to a particular individual as being "so far up Walter Smith's backside that he can see X's feet" - X being a certain well known member of the Glasgow football media. Once they get into their jobs these people - wherever they come from -  instantly succumb to that Daily Ranger/Sunday Liam mentality. A good point well made too that dislike of the Old Firm is by no means restricted to the Highlands.

But KRR does seem to have made one error in his post. Does he not really mean "Lewis LOYAL RSC"?

It may well have been, Charles. As I recall I tried to avoid looking at it.

19 hours ago, dougal said:

To be honest I think it's too late to worry about the County marketing machine the damage to an extent is already done 

Next derby through in a Dingwall check out all the advertisement boarding you will see the majority are Inverness based investors,companies and businesses 

You got to ask the question why this is???

Dougal

and the answer is that Dingwall is a very small town with very many fewer businesses able to purchasing advertising space than exist in the relatively large, by comparison, city of Inverness. Nothing more sinister than that.

Kingsmills you certainly ain't the brightest but I suppose you lot weren't called the fools from up the hill for nothing

The point is without naming certain businesses they exclusively plough money into County and ignore their local team (us!) completely

Over the years there are even some that have switched their allegiances totally from us to them, if that doesn't sound the alarm bells well I don't know what will

I'm no talking joe the plumber or bill the baker here I'm talking huge companies that put in serious money over the course of a season

The same goes with matchday hospitality speak to any business they much prefer the Dingwall experience, whether you like it or not our northern neighbours are doing something right off the park when it comes to attracting sponsorship

Dougal