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I found this article to be totally distasteful for two reasons. First, as already pointed out by the other posters, is that geographical location has made it more difficult for Inverness to tap into any networks being set up. Develop the local youngsters and blood them . . . how? Look at our youth teams and the leagues they play in. Are they not full of local youngsters? Why look solely at the first team? Second, why were we singled out? It even notes that we had a higher percentage than the previous cup holders. Surely it should be looking at the current League / League Cup holders as after all, are they not the standard we are all supposed to be striving for? The anti-Sneck lobby are making sure we know they haven't forgotten us. GOOD. In response to the report author - I continue to cheer on my team, the CURRENT Scottish Cup holders, as they compete on the unbalanced playing field of Scottish football by trying to stay within their budget and building the best teams they can with the resources to hand, be they home-grown or bought in. We should be being praised for the number of local lads we have developed over the years that have gone on to achieve - not be criticised. If anything, we are an exemplar. In short, get stuffed Alistair Gray. Go ask Celtic what they intend to do about it.

I firmly believe we can get close to 7,000 home fans for this. Wouldn't it be great if, having ended last season playing in front of the highest number of ICT fans ever to congregate together we started this season in front of the largest number of our own fans ever to attend a home match.... You would have thought but after being told that tickets might not even go to public sale they are selling so well a mate called the stadium and asked and was told South Stand will be away fans only!! Our club do well on many fronts but at times you have to dispair. If we do sell out the home end and leave the South Stand away fans only then it will be a total nonsense decision. Realistically they might only bring a handful of fans so giving them a 2,500 seat stand would be crazy. Accomodate them in the Main stand or even give them a section in the South Stand then leave a section for segregation if that is the worry, then sell the rest to our fans. An extra 2,000+ ICT fans and much more income would then be possible. At least they have time to re-think this.

When the national team start rewarding our players performances by picking them for the national team, I might start listening to this guff.

For someone linked to the sfa to call good professionals like ours "not the best people" and "journeyman" is incredibly disrespectful and shows an embarrassing lack of knowledge about Scottish football that he is trying to fix. Also asking clubs to play teams full of youths is a huge financial risk for clubs who could be relegated and risking relegation to help the national team is clearly not a viable business plan.

It's all well and good looking to criticise the club for not being a successful team full of Inverness kids. In an ideal world that would be the case. But they neglect the fact that we have none of the Performance schools anywhere near Inverness. ICT have to compete with bigger clubs for young talent in our area. When the talent is there we generally aren't too shy at giving them a go. I wouldn't say we're the best at it. Likes of Dun Utd, Hibs, Heart etc have fairly well funded systems we couldn't match. Some clubs have been reduced to using only kids. Killie, Well and such, at times. Nick Ross, Christie, Polworth, Shinnie all came through our youth system and were first team squad member last term. I would find it hard to class many of the rest of our players as journeymen. Most are young players from other clubs looking to relaunch their career. Meekings, Devine, Doran were all youngsters released by their clubs. And even the more established signings like Watkins, Mckay, Williams, and Tansey were all relatively young when signing and trying to relaunch their careers. It just seems like a bit of a ill informed statement without looking at the facts. Hey we won the cup. Are we that bothered?

To be fair to the Beeb at least a part of their article alludes to the fact that some of what Mr Gray is saying is nonsense. 'But, although that were more than the seven in St Johnstone's 2014 Cup-winning team, five of Caley Thistle's Scots came through their own youth ranks compared to one - Stevie May - in the Saints squad. ' The amount of misinformation from this tool Gray is quite staggering. He clearly doesn't understand football because 'journeymen of poorer quality' do not finish 3rd and win the Scottish cup. Young hungry players from England who have grasped their opportunity at a higher level finish 3rd and win the Scottish cup.

Given the position of Gray, I feel its picking on an easy target. We are a small club with 21 years existance, small fanbase and limited funds to invest in youth but easy to slate as we are provincial and the central belt biased media will always back this along with the majority of narrow minded fans. Where is the mention of Celtic & Rangers both clubs who have invested in multi million pound facilities for training and yoth development yet produce nothing in terms of proportion of success V's investment - preferring to fill their teams with overpaid journeymen or European imports of varying levels of quality. Even County for their facilities produce little first team youth players, so its not just ICT, although even compared to Killie, Hearts, Hibs, D Utd we are lagging behind. Perhaps the likes of Gray and the SFA should do more to help clubs invest and gather talent, put caps or limits stopping bigger clubs poaching local talent at the expense of the smaller teams, take the disproportionate wealth distribution and even it up so all clubs can have the same basis for youth investment. Instead they use clubs like ourselves as a platform to gain some publicity and become a talking point - as cup winners we become an easy target and he knew publicity would follow.

Affraid not. Priority sale is on just now but there is no limit as to how many you can buy. So one season ticket holder could be buying for a group of 10etc. Having a look online there is plenty of seats left in both North and Main stand so maybe the person at the club was just getting over excited. They must be selling well none the less.

Spot on. It's the fact that this has come from an SFA consultant that makes this do distasteful. To call our players journeymen and not very good is disgraceful imho.

It really bugs me why we've been singled out. There are three players in the current Celtic squad who came through their youth system. There are quite a few players from Scottish clubs who moved down south. Quality players are being developed. They are just not sticking around. Perhaps Mr Grey needs to look at the reasoning behind players not wanting to stay in Scotland. Perhaps Mr Grey also needs to ask the SFA why they trawl around England looking for players who's granny ate some porrige to make up a national squad rather than give the home grown talent a chance. The best left back in the country has continuously been overlooked in favour of has beens.

Would anyone doubt that Stuart Armstrong, Ian Vigurs, Graeme Shinnie, Nick Ross, and Ryan Christie are 5 of the best young players in the Scottish Premiership? Don't forget all the ICT youth products who are currently playing in the lower divisions of the Senior leagues. (Shane Sutherland, Michael Fraser, Gary Wood etc etc) It's a very odd criticism. Surely ICT, the most successful 'pound for pound' club in Scottish football, are a model of a how a small professional football club should be run. Mr Gray might have preferred that we signed a bunch of young Scottish duds and struggled to survive in the SPL. ICT's fortunes are of no interest to him. It makes no odds to the SFA what division we're playing in. I hope we continue to sign as many Warrens, Meekings, Drapers, Vincents, Tanseys, Dorans, McKays and Ravens as we can and challenge for honours.

Cheers Jagster. I've been to a few games in the past. This year I've been really lucky, the wife & daughter bought me the season ticket as a birthday/fathers day present. They're in my good books now !! No need to be on your best behaviour, forums are for good banter.

I firmly believe we can get close to 7,000 home fans for this. Wouldn't it be great if, having ended last season playing in front of the highest number of ICT fans ever to congregate together we started this season in front of the largest number of our own fans ever to attend a home match....

I wish the BBC article had stated this directly under his quote and it would just show exactly how much of **** this guy is. The same BBC who had an article stating that Ryan Christie had won Young Player of the Month award for Ross County back in March?

When you read what Yogi has actually said and ignore the "spin" attached by the reporters, then I don't see any problem....nor do I see him say he was unhappy. Yogi has a different way of working when it comes to recruitment and he thinks there's a better way of doing something at the club. So, he'll sit down with the Chairman to discuss it and look at alternative methods. Sounds like a perfectly rational way for a manager and chairman to go about things.

Priority goes to season ticket holders and shareholders. Those groups are also allowed to purchase more than one ticket so number sold does not equate to number of season tickets sold.

The club have a couple of temporary staff in assisting with ticket sales etc at the moment, so apologies if there was any misinformation given, or information not passed on correctly. The situation for our home leg is that the South Stand has initially been designated (as normal) for away support. However, should/when the Main and North Stands sell out then the South Stand will be made available (as much as possible) for home support. Allocation of tickets to visiting FC Astra fans is being done so as to allow us to maximise this, should it be needed.

Would that be the same Calum Ferguson, born and brought up in Inverness, and a product of our youth system, who Mr Grey and SFA sees as a non Scots product because he qualifies for Canada?

I'm sure the club will be aware of the numbers of home fans they'll get. I'm also sure they'll look at maximising. However, do we know how many Romanians there may be. Apparantly we need to make around 400 seats available for them but there could be a lot more. There is a big Romanian community in Scotland and some may want to come and watch a bit of home regardless of who their own team is. I'd also imagine that, knowing of behaviour of fans from East Europe, the police will have done intelligence gathering and will have a say in how segregation is addressed. Remember all this is very new to our club and the people running it must act on advice given regarding public safety.

Reading all this makes me so jealous that I won't be going on our first European adventure, particularly as it is to an interesting and accessible country that most of us would otherwise never visit. Sods law that the dates happen to clash with the family holiday which was booked last year. Had one of my many weird ICT dreams though. Whilst on holiday, I decided to sneak away to Romania to catch the game. But the missus had hidden my passport precisely to stop me going. So I hired a hot air balloon and a Ford Transit van which would replace the basket underneath, thus enabling me to be able to steer the balloon and have somewhere to sleep on the long journey. However, on lighting the burner, the balloon and van sailed up and away without me, as I had forgotten to rope it to the ground until I was ready to go. You know how you get books which analyse and explain dreams? Incredibly, this scenario is not covered by any of them.

This is very misguided criticism. The point is not how many Scottish players teams have, but how many youth development players have made it thorough the system. IIRC, we had 5 products of the ICT youth development system playing in the match against Celtic at the end of the season - I'm not sure any other team could match that (except perhaps DUFC?) To level the criticism at JH and Latapy is also totally unwarranted - I'm not surprised they refused to comment. The majority of the non-Scottish imports were brought in on TB's watch and have been very successful. What is JH supposed to do - turf them out overnight and replace them with home-grown talent? I have no doubt Charlie Christie is spitting feathers about this. I have witnessed first hand the youth development system at ICT and it is no better or worse than the majority of other clubs on a very meagre budget. The real story here is that the likes of Clyde have seen fit to entrely ditch their youth development system - now that really could have catastrophic effects!

Cheers Kingsmills, I'm looking forward to this season and many more.

Congratulations on being a first time season ticket holder. I hope and trust you are one of many..

They have no specific purpose and are put in there as extras/spares. One of the situations which may require them to be used would be if a match was abandoned after fans were in the ground. Those who bought tickets would have a stub, but season ticket holders would not....and the spare vouchers would be used to allow them entry to the rearranged fixture.

I am flabbergasted ! Who is the current Scotland's football writers young player of the year and also nominated for PFA young player of the year ? Just proves again that the SFA are not fit to run our national game. It is not a numbers game, it about producing the right talent through the youth system to benefit ICT and the Scottish game.

Can we have this bus please ?

Feck this is going to make history - I am seriously considering buying Betty Bay a feckin drink.

As a contributor pointed out on P&B, the ICT supporters will have ample time to contemplate this report on their flights to Romania. Not a lot to view here...moving along...

Strange that the guy who came up with the system seems to have totally ignored the fact that ICTFC do not have access to the performance schools they are ploughing all the money in to...!!! http://www.scottishfa.co.uk/scottish_football.cfm?page=2660

Even more lazy journalism. Just noticed on our bbc sports page that it says our next match is the league fixture against motherwell, not the europa game. Where as the other 3 teams involved in europe have their qualifier game as next fixture. Even more proof of central belt bias trying to erase our achievements me thinks???

That's a bold statement given that ground capacity is only 8,500 and we took 15,000 to our last away game!

The club don't do "numbers", but the Chairman did say in a statement the other week that sales were already outstripping previous seasons. Free U12 info is on all the advertising info, website and price tables....so I'd expect anyone looking in to buying season tickets would be aware of this.

In too good a mood to moan about narrow minded erseholes who cant be bothered giving extra media coverage. We won it in the hard way. We did 5 in a row knocking out 3 SPFL teams including our league bogey team, St Mirren, Celtic and 2 Championship teams. We didnt get lucky draws to make the final like Gretna. We didnt need to go millions of pounds in to debt to be there. We didnt need a wealthy billionaire to get us there either. We earned the right to be there, even with the resources that we have and we still won it, because of that Im Proud, very Proud. Now if the BBC Scotland cant be bothered covering it for local evening TV viewing and choose to cover a few thugs hitting each other instead and you don't need any special skills for that. Then perhaps the BBC has lost a bit of credibility.