Has our revered Charlie Bannerman revealed a secret plan or has he gone completely up Stephens Brae on his head and wearing a prefects blazer. Or has he used the Courier to bring back my premonition of many years ago. A futuristic stadium built at the Tore roundabout, to be named "The Toreodome" - a rerouted railway line joining Sneck and Tinkerville and a state of the art railway station and Retail Park - a new team named Highland United - to be known as The Highlanders - playing in strip colours of red, dark blue and white - the two ends to be named the Howden End and the Jail End - all bankrolled by Roy McGregor and the Global Energy boys who will build on the Dump.

For one I doff my schoolboy hat to Charlie B.

CB must be rustling up ideas for his next book. Courier article, combined with his recent resurfacing on here was just a bit of clickbait to generate interest. I guess he would have posted OTB as well if that site was still in existence. 

According to my neice (Jia) it is more likely to be a takeover rather than a partnership!!

1 hour ago, IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER said:

According to my neice (Jia) it is more likely to be a takeover rather than a partnership!!

That's exactly what I was going to say.

It's no more inconceivable than Caley & Thistle joining up in 1994. 

The difference is that then the prize was a place in the Scottish League, whereas now the "prize" would be survival.

Firstly I would emphasise that I did NOT advocate a merger between Ross County and ICT in that column. I actually dismissed it as “inconceivable” but unfortunately a headline was written implying that I had, and it appears that a great number of people who are not Courier online subscribers simply read headlines and guess the story from them without reading articles.

What I actually did was to evaluate the financial situation in terms similar to what I’ve been doing here and I then concluded with the following passage (please in particular note the sentence “An obvious…… inconceivable”)….

“I now believe that two biggish clubs in this local area aren’t sustainable without serious charity from the wealthy, and Ross County have far more stable, albeit not necessarily indefinite, benefactor arrangements. Currently County are grimly hanging on in the Premiership with Inverness not even doing that. An obvious business solution would be a merger into a single, much more substantial and viable entity, but this is football where tribalism and supporter resistance make such solutions (Inverness 1994 excepted) inconceivable. Football instead resorts to its own economics of the madhouse and 30 years of that have certainly contributed to, but don't totally explain, Caley Thistle's current predicament, despite decades of wellwishers bearing gifts.”

Edited March 10, 20233 yr by Charles Bannerman

In the not-too-distant future Mr. MacGregor might become aware of the folly of pouring millions of pounds into a wee village team for little or no return, and direct his wealth elsewhere.

Then where would Ross County be? Just another Gretna.

Perhaps the Staggies will be the ones looking for a merger, to prevent a humiliating return to the Highland League!

Great to have you back Charles, especially as you are still biting 😄

On 3/17/2023 at 6:57 PM, IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER said:

Great to have you back Charles, especially as you are still biting 😄

There was nothing to bite at. I was just availing myself of the opportunity to clarify that, although the headline suggested that I was calling for a merger, in the article I actually described one as “inconceivable”.

I for one am stunned that the Inverness Courier is going down the clickbait route.