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Club Statement

As one major part of our planned strategic restructure of the club, ICTFC are delighted to announce an innovative agreement with League 1 side Kelty Hearts which will see the club move our training base to the Fife club’s New Central Park Stadium.

This creative partnership will mean that we will hire their excellent facilities which include a 3g pitch, onsite grass pitches and offices for our coaching staff, as our training base during the week starting from this coming pre-season in June.

The last few years have seen the geographic challenges in getting players to move to the Highlands become ever harder for a number of reasons.

Caledonian Stadium will always be our home, but other factors in Scottish football have changed and where we train should not be an impediment to the quality of the players we can attract to Caley Thistle, or to our potential to progress.

The commercial success of the city of Inverness – which will always be our home - both as a tourist destination and a place to live, has led to very high prices for the accommodation we require to house players. In addition to these high costs which our competitors do not carry, the extremely limited housing stock in Inverness continues to be both a challenge and a huge factor working against us.

Increased playing budgets in and around the central belt has meant that on many occasions, even when we have offered players more favourable terms than our competitors, sometimes even agreed deals, we have then been told that the player has changed his mind due to challenges relocating their families. Support structures in and around the families of players may all be in and around the central belt, partners will have jobs where they live and moving kids schools to the Highlands and moving home itself can just be seen as impractical for a one or two year contract.

It makes it particularly challenging for us to sign senior players, a category which through no fault of our budget, or of previous ICT Managers, we have struggled to attract in the last few seasons.

Similarly, our location means that we miss out on the opportunity of signing promising players from the larger clubs in Scotland, on loan or otherwise.

For the avoidance of any doubt we absolutely intend to continue to develop our own homegrown Highland boys and we will take the appropriate steps to make sure that by being creative, innovative and practical, they do not miss out on the chance to have a pathway to first team football with their team. We have a proud tradition of introducing local players in to our first team and this will absolutely continue.

We obviously never intended to be in the same division as Kelty when originally exploring this concept, but football throws strange things at you sometimes and having reassessed the proposition and judged that the pros still far outweigh the cons, we would like to thank the Board of Kelty Hearts and MD Stefan Winiarski and his management team for considering this unique to the SPFL partnership, and then seeing and agreeing on the possibilities and benefits for both clubs.

To reiterate, by moving our footballing department's training base to central Scotland, both the club's Board of Directors and the club's First Team Management feel we give ourselves the best possible chance to attract the highest quality players to the club, allowing some of the players we sign to also live in and around the central belt while playing for ICTFC.

We now look forward to taking further positive strides on and off the pitch to address the football and financial challenges we face we believe this exciting opportunity to help us attract players previously not available to us and build a better squad, is one of the first steps we can make and we hope to develop further innovative partnerships.

Inverness is and will always be our home.

The Caledonian Stadium will always be where we play our football. We hope this venture will help us achieve our goal in giving our supporters a team to be proud of.

Edited May 24, 20241 yr by The Mantis

Clach will be looking forward to selling a lot more tickets.

Lowest crowds ever at the Caledonian Stadium next season.

The beginning of the end.

Edited May 24, 20241 yr by snorbens_caleyman
More moaning.

3 minutes ago, Hiro said:

So what happens with our contracted young players? Do they train by themselves in Inverness thus splintering the group and not leaving enough players for proper training or are they forced to relocate?

What happens to the players already based in Inverness? Do they have to move?

Is the stadium going to be open during the week? Will there be a club shop?

Are we essentially funding a promotion charge for a rival? Imagine if Kelty go up because we've bosted their budget.

We cannot be a community club if we are not in the community.

What happens to all the school visits etc that players do?  If they're not in Inverness all of that work will cease driving yet another wedge between the club and city.

I'm actually in a state of shock over this. It's screams of a desperate CEO trying to save his job!

If a player doesn't want to commit to Inverness, then I don't want that player at the club anyway! I've had enough this season of players who aren't committed to the club and who didn't give a f##k about being relegated.

All this will do is entice half-arsed players, who can't get signed elsewhere, to turn out for Inverness and steal a wage because training at Kelty is convenient for them!!

 

 

TBH I think that's me decided - I'll not be renewing my ticket for next season! They've killed the club!

3 minutes ago, Yngwie said:

This season alone we lost Wetherspoon, Welsh and Carson with us being so far north a major factor. If they had stayed we would almost certainly have been the promotion playoffs, and would definitely not have been relegated.

If we move the entire club to Glasgow we might not get relegated ever again. Doesn't mean we should do it. Some things should simply be off the table. The literal point of a football club is to provide a focus for the community it resides in.

It's a helluva way of trying to improve form at the Caledonian stadium - turn it into an away game!😂

1 minute ago, Yngwie said:

This season alone we lost Wetherspoon, Welsh and Carson with us being so far north a major factor. If they had stayed we would have been the promotion playoffs, no doubt at all.

We lost Witherspoon because Dundee United could pay more money. 
Welsh was seemingly planning a move but was out injured so much but has made a miracle recovery!

Not sure what happened with Carson. 
 

This will finish the club!

Weird how all those years we spent working our way up the leagues, into the SPL, winning the Scottish Cup and finishing third we weren't affected by house prices in Inverness or geography. Yet now we need to do something you'd see in the NFL and move the team hundreds of miles away from their origin.

Utterly laughable.

Think the ICT Facebook site was hacked by IHE?  

Seriously feckin hope so!

1 minute ago, IBM said:

We lost Witherspoon because Dundee United could pay more money. 

Indeed but we tried to extend his contract before they came in and he was absolutely not interested because of geography. Dodds had also tried to sign him in the summer but he went to Dunfermline until that deal eventually fell through because they couldn’t come up with the money.

Really clutching at straws here, but is there any chance of intervention by an outside body, given that this is essentially taking away from development of the sport in the North?

This cannot be allowed to happen.  Time to empty the club of these clowns and start again.  If that means part-time in the Highland League then so be it. 

Sack the board. 

 

Yngwie - you're in a minority of one here - read the room FFS.

3 minutes ago, RiG said:

Weird how all those years we spent working our way up the leagues, into the SPL, winning the Scottish Cup and finishing third we weren't affected by house prices in Inverness or geography. Yet now we need to do something you'd see in the NFL and move the team hundreds of miles away from their origin.

True, but we had people bankrolling us for most of that time, pumping money in that enabled us to pay wage premiums and accommodation costs. Pretty sure the vast majority of our seasons have been loss making? Nobody seems willing to fund us any more so it seems we have to live within our means - which is what a lot of our fans are saying we should have been doing all along rather than being in debt to Morrison.

3 minutes ago, ymip said:

Yngwie - you're in a minority of one here - read the room FFS.

I’m not supporting it, I’m explaining it!

What a sickener. A truly diabolical decision by the board that will definitely make the news. ICT won’t just be pitied due relegation, but now be viewed as a complete laughing stock. 
 

I expect the ST to raise a motion of season ticket boycotting on the back of this, with a view to a total board clear out. 

Even if the board’s plan works and we were to win the league, I’d be watching with saddened eyes as journeymen players represent our highland club from the central belt.  

Young player development will be the next cut by the looks of it. 

Surely the last straw for every last ICT fan. 
 

Join the ST. 

At least they will get used to an artificial pitch.

Home games could be a problem though...

2 minutes ago, Northern_jaggie said:

What a sickener. A truly diabolical decision by the board that will definitely make the news.

Has just been on BBC TV news.

You have to ask about the board members who are signing this off.  What are they thinking?

Also, the club is owned in the main by David Sutherland.  Does he support this? 

Absolutely disgraceful decision. Truly the beginning of the end if this happens. 

16 minutes ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

At least they will get used to an artificial pitch.

Home games could be a problem though...

Home games will now be away games

This is so comprehensively absurd that I’ve only sufficiently recovered from the shock to comment on one aspect.

One of the biggest contributors to the mess the club has got itself into is its failure to relate to and inspire the local community. In fact it’s far worse than that because a multitude of issues - not the least the Concert Company collapsing leaving local traders out of pocket while the club trousered a generous ground rent - have resulted in public perception hitting rock bottom (or at least so I thought until this emerged). There are also strong messages that the local business community has become greatly disenchanted with Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Then consider that supporter morale has never in 30 years been as low as now and and that there is unprecedented dissatisfaction with certain individuals in the club’s employ. All of this makes for a clear, urgent and overwhelming need for the club to rebuild bridges with all layers of the local community adds also to restore internal morale.

So what do they do? They suddenly unplug the first team playing squad and management team from Inverness and send it 140 miles down the road to share facilities with a rival League One club - a direct competitor whose own promotion challenge will be greatly strengthened by the considerable rent…. from an arrangement that Inverness Caledonian Thistle tell us they are “delighted” (I did read that three times just to check) to announce.

In other words they have selected one of the club’s big weak points… and taken the single course of action that’s guaranteed to make it even worse.

Edited May 24, 20241 yr by Charles Bannerman

I get that money/relocation is a factor in attracting players, but I think part of the issue is that the shambles that has been ongoing here for the last 4/5 years has filtered through to the players who maybe don't see the golden opportunity that a move here used to be for their careers.

Maybe they don't fancy joining a basket case of a club as I'm sure one or two of their fellow professionals might have let them know what awaits them.

If we were run properly in a less toxic environment then perhaps opinions might be different but I think we are a long way from being a 'good move' for many.

Some fans making the point on P&B that many more remote clubs train far away from their home base - Queen of the South train in Hamilton, Stranraer train in Glasgow, the Angus clubs mainly train in Edinburgh.

Major difference here is the distance - Kelty is more than twice as far away from inverness as any of those clubs and the fact that this is a wholesale relocation of the football side of our club to a rival.  Also, and no disrepect to any of those places and clubs, but we haven't had to do this before because Inverness is a bigger city than those places and we have had more success than any of them.  We aspire to be in the top flight, we spent 15 years there.  

Edited May 24, 20241 yr by ictchris

I can’t get my head round this. I assume the youth academy is being abolished 

3 minutes ago, ictchris said:

Some fans making the point on P&B that many more remote clubs train far away from their home base - Queen of the South train in Hamilton, Stranraer train in Glasgow, the Angus clubs mainly train in Edinburgh.

Kilmarnock used to train in Glasgow as well (not sure if they still do).

I’m not saying I support this decision, but this isn’t as abnormal as some think.