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Just trying to gauge a little interest from Forum goers as to if they'd be willing to have a CaleyThistleOnline / CaleyJagsTogether football session on a Sunday afternoon. Currently, CTJ are looking to get the Fans Versus Legends match re-scheduled (again) after the weather caused us to postpone the previous two dates. Some of the fans team have expressed a desire to get in extra training sessions and give the Legends a real contest. In the past, some forum goers have also expressed their interest in a CTO kick about (to which some people did just that last summer prior to the County V ICT fans match in Glasgow). If there is plenty of interest, we can look into booking a pitch on a regular basis. Cost per head is yet to be decided (we need interested people first), but I can't see it being more than £2-£3 per person if we book an hour session at Millburn or Bught Park. (Any monies over the cost of the pitch could be set aside and donated to CJT) Like I said, this thread is to gauge interest from forum users. (I'd appreciate it if mods would keep it on the main ICT page)

A brilliantly drafted analogy - but the flaw is that marriage is expected to be for life whereas football management clearly isn't. Reverting back to analogy mode, your wife has only agreed to stick with you for another 16 months, at which point you are both free to part company. Or, if at any time you put in a string of sub-standard Saturday performances with her, you are likely to be dumped without hesitation and replaced by a younger man who can give her more satisfactory results. She's probably already got her eye on somebody. Possible even a list of them. And in the interim, Grassa could step in to cover your marital duties - it wouldn't be the first time. She might actually be a little disappointed that you didn't decide to go off with that Yorkshire floozy. She'd get hundreds of thousands of pounds out of it and would have dozens of men queueing at her door, enthusiastically offering their services and desperate to fill her......vacancy.

This sounds good I wanna help!

Has this model been tried before? The system was tried in Austria 20 years ago but lasted only eight seasons and was not considered to be a success. Switzerland also adopted a similar model, running from 1988. Falling attendances and a drop-off in TV money and sponsorship led to it being abandoned in 2003.

They're trying to push this through for next season. Alex.

No team has any guarantees of any derbies at all. You will get a derby if your local rivals just happen to be in the same division as you. You are more likely to get derbies the more teams there are in the league but if you have fewer teams in the league and play other sides more than twice, when you do get derbies you get more of them. Assuming that two different league set ups result in the same total number of matches then things will average out that you have the same number of derbies. I appreciate that this mathematical fact gets distorted in that some derbies will occur more often than others according to which structure you have. In the current set up, for instance, you can expect Hibs and Hearts ubsually to both be in the top flight and therefore get a lot of derbies, but on the other hand East Stirling never get a derby against their Falkirk rivals. What the proposed new set up would do is to increase the movement between the divisions to allow derbies between sides that rarely get them at the moment. The other side of that is that there may be some years when there is not a derby that almost always occurs with the current set up. So if Hearts end the first half of the season in the bottom 4 and end up getting relegated then it would mean no derby the next season. All that does is make the next derby when it does occur that much more tasty. The greater variety of derby fixtures can only be good for the game IMHO. If you want more derbies, the only way you can guarantee that is to have a regionalised structure and that is a no brainer for the top flight. But, as CaleyD says, it makes real sense as an alternative to the proposed 18 club 3rd tier. (Rangers playing in the 3rd Division West next season has a nice ring to it!) I also don't buy the argument about season tickets. I appreciate that folk would be buying into a bit of an unknown package but aren't they now? At the moment you don't know how many home games you are paying for, you have no idea which clubs you may see twice or only once and you have no idea whether you will see end of season matches which will see the club fighting for a European place or relegation or whether they are relatively meaningless middle of the table matches. I'm not hearing anything peruasive to suggest this proposal is not worth exploring further.

http://sport.stv.tv/football/clubs/aberdeen/209239-explained-how-the-scottish-football-league-reconstruction-model-would-work/ Prizes In theory, there would be six distinct competitive groups to be won. There would be the ultimate prize, the league championship, which the winners of the Title Group would be awarded. The winner of the Premiership's first phase, which ends after 22 games, may also be rewarded, as may the winners of the Championship first phase, the team finishing top in the Play-off Group and the team which is in first place in the Relegation Group. The winners of the National League would also win a trophy. It is understood the SPL and SFL are keen to incentivise each element of the season in order to give teams the sense of playing for something, even if they are in Relegation Group in the second phase. Has this model been tried before? The system was tried in Austria 20 years ago but lasted only eight seasons and was not considered to be a success. Switzerland also adopted a similar model, running from 1988. Falling attendances and a drop-off in TV money and sponsorship led to it being abandoned in 2003. More recently, Georgia introduced the 8-8 split. However, below the top-flight Umaslegi Liga the second tier is in two groups, so the top two from each entered the promotion/relegation group. This year, Georgia has modified the set-up, keeping a top flight of 12 but now introducing a 6-10 split after two rounds.

What happens if someone in row 11 wants to sit? If it's the top ten rows then anyone wanting to sit behind would be doing so in the car park.

What happens if someone in row 11 wants to sit? Precisely! Thats why there needs to be a clear standing SECTION so everyone knows that this particular section (sectionE for example) is standing only whilst all the rest are sitting! I've said it before the west stand should become a prototype for rail-seats! Even if we just had 50 or 100 to start with, it would be a great guide to see if it works and can be managed (which i totally believe it can). Not only that it would create alot of good publicity for the club ie. The FSF are currently running a campaign through Westminster trying to gather support from football league clubs to bring in rail-seats in England. If we were able to get rail-seats and show Britain it can be managed properly and safely we would be doing alot for our fellow football supporters! Ps. Like jamie, i would happily buy my own railseat!

This system just totally does not work. Absolutely horrific suggestion. For example if we take this season's SPL table, almost half the clubs are at the 22 game mark where the leagues would be split leading to the top 8 being: Celtic, ICT, Motherwell, Hibs, Aberdeen, St Johnstone, Kilmarnock and Dundee Utd. In that group you have no Highland derby, no Edinburgh derby, no Dundee derby and still no Celtic v Sevco that the broadcasters/Neill Doncaster want. Then take the middle 8 teams which would consist of: Hearts, St Mirren, County, Dundee, Morton, Dunfermline, Partick Thistle and Livingston. Again a worrying lack of derby matches to keep the broadcasters interested. Also how would fans of the 4 clubs from the SPL for example feel about having shelled out for an SPL price season ticket expecting games against Celtic and Hibs but instead playing half the season against Livingston and Partick. The only option there would be for clubs to sell a ST for the first half of the season and one for the second half but this would lead to an incredible drop in revenue if you did not make the top 8. Also in this middle 8 could anybody realistically see much of a change in the top 4 spots after the second half of matches is complete. County and Dundee this season in the SPL are the bottom 2 clubs, they were better than Morton, Partick Thistle and Livingston last season so should finish above them again over 14 games. Worst idea ever.

I think I'll take a minority viewpoint here and say that I'm actually quite taken with the proposals. Previously I've been in favour of a league of more than 12 but I think there are sufficient positives here to overcome that. In no particular order, advantages include:- Meaningful games for nearly all teams for most of the season. The opportunity for half the teams in the top two leagues of 12 to play against a total of 15 different sides in the year. Potential for up to 4 sides to get promoted each year. This is likely to provide far more movement of clubs through the structure so it won't be a constant round of playing the same clubs year after year. A real incentive for clubs to maintain standards or else they will find themselves dropping down the structure. The introduction of a pyramid structure which will bring fresh blood in and get rid of the dross at the bottom. The re-introduction of standing at matches in the top flight. Amalgamation of the SPL and SFL management structures into a single body. Rangers will remain in the bottom flight again next season. It's not perfect but few things are. The problem we have in Scotland is that we are a small country and simply don't have the population to support sufficient big clubs necessary to make a really competitive top tier league. In my view there are some real advantages here, most important of which is the way it will freshen things up and provide real opportunity for smaller clubs to move quickly through the leagues. This will force other clubs to make sure they maintain their standards. There have been a lot of comments about teams resting players late in the first half of the season when it is obvious which group of 8 they will be in. That will probably happen but then it happens now! For instance,within the current set up as soon as it is clear that County are not going to be top 6 then they will have nothing to play for. With Dundee being cast adrift they are likely to have the last third of the season planning for next season and experimenting in matches which could have a major significance for other teams. In any case, why would clubs rest many players around the mid point of the season? Players need to be match fit and to play together as a team to be best prepared for the crucial end of season games. One of the reasons we are doing so well this season is that we have a generally settled team. Keeping the team playing together might be the smart move. To be honest, I don't know how similar this structure is to those which have failed elsewhere and I would be interested to learn why similar systems have been scrapped elsewhere. But for the moment, these proposals look to me to be the best that have been proposed for years and there is an opportunity to revitalise football in Scotland. In the absence of any alternatives offering significant change, I think these should be seriously considered but we really do need to see a bit more detail and get a better understanding of the implications before we can come to any firm views.

Ah, so the top teams will get a few years to minimise losses, declare it isn't working, then move back to 12 teams just in time for 4 Old Firm matches to get back on the agenda. Is that the method in the madness?

What is so complicated? Basically, if you are in the top league, then at halfway, you are either in the top league with the rest of the top league or you are in the second league, without getting relegated, with teams from the top league and the second league. If you finish at the top then you are in the top league. But if you are at the bottom, you get relegated from the second league into the second league. Unless, of course, you were in the second league, whereupon you play teams from the top and second league in the second league, where you might be promoted into the top league or finish at the bottom of the second league, whereupon you will play in the second league next season. Therefore, if you win the second league, you either get promoted in the top league or you stay in the top league from the second league, depending if you were in the top league prior to the second league - although of course, as your team was never relegated from the first league into the second league, that means no promotion from the second to first, as you were already in it, unless you weren't.

From the above article..... Great gesture by our Chairman don't you think!!!

This thread has moved on a bit since my last post. The reason I haven't posted on this thread for a couple of days is that I've been in Yorkshire. I was phoned by a brassy Barnsley divorcée who was looking for a new "companion" . She said that if I took up her offer I would get double portions of roast potatoes with my roast beef. Despite being a happily married man I must admit that it sounded like an attractive proposition. In any case, I felt it would be rude not to at least listen to what she had to say. So I flew down South and spent a couple of days in "discussions" during which she made very clear exactly what she had to offer. Wow! You should have seen the size of her Yorkshire puddings! I have to say I was really tempted. It was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make. But at the end of the day I decided that there's a lot of good things happening up here and in truth I'm happy enough with my wife's Scotch Pancakes (even if I only ever get "Flora Light" on them). So I thanked my brassy Barnsley belle and came home. And what a welcome I got! Unbelievable! Everyone was saying what a wonderful chap I was. What a gentleman I had been in having the courtesy to go and listen to what the nice lady had to say about her kind offer, and what a wonderful loyal man I was in turning down the offer and staying in the bosom of my loving wife and family. Mind you, there was some odd quine from up the road who gave me dog's abuse and questioned my integrity - but there's always one, isn't there? As for my wife, she said very little. When I first told her I had received the offer she shrugged and said that if I thought I could do better elsewhere she wouldn't stand in my way. She didn't say much when I came back either. Whilst everyone else was slapping me on the back and saying what a great guy I was, she simply issued a statement which said she was glad I was back and that I had intimated I would be honouring our marriage contract (don't know where she got that from!). Some have interpreted that statement as a "hands off" warning to other admiring ladies - but I know better. It's a "stay boy" warning! Naturally after this episode I've been careful to say all the right things. I've been talking to everyone who will listen about how wonderful my wife is and how many things we want to do and achieve together and .... Sorry to cut this short but I'm going to have to dash. Another plane down to Yorkshire, would you believe! I've just had a phone call from a dusky Doncaster doll who was whispering something about toad in the hole in the most sultry of tones! Of course, I'm really happy here, but I guess I'd better go and check out how the Doncaster gravy compares with that in Barnsley - after all, it's the honourable thing to do.

Sitting in the stand at Telford Street and cheering for the home team....only my new team could have got me to do that ;-)

The joy of walking through Norwich city centre wearing my red n blue striped shirt whenever they were at home to Crystal Palace

When this was our stadium TCS as was.bmp

The confederate flag Having to explain to people who Caledonian Thistle were and where we were from (no Inverness in the name back then). First season when every game was a "big" game. Thinking that losing under 3 goals against an SPL team in cups was a fantastic result. Not being made to feel like a criminal when calling C*unty fans Gypsies.