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tm4tj has finally had a well earned day off with our league finished for the season. I remember when he worked a four day week, I bet he would like to do that again It will seem a bit strange with play offs and other football still going on tomorrow we will be thankfully looking from outside waiting to see what the setup will be for next season. With the weather we have had recently it brings a thought for summer football but it's not likely to happen in my lifetime. I will be busy in the garden and check the results later and no PotY or stats to do tomorrow Hope you all have a good day.

Following our May Board Meeting and last night's Special General Meeting, we have issued an update to members. A copy is in the Supporters Trust Board here: Update to Members: May 2025 - Supporters Trust - CaleyThistleOnline

This popped up 5 hours ago. apologies if posted already. Worth a view if anyone fancies it.

Too many professional teams in Scotland for the size of it. In England there's about 600,000 people for every pro team. In Scotland it's only about 130,000. That's one of the main reason the game here will never attract sufficient investment/sponsorship/fan numbers to make any real inroads into the financial situation.

Voted by CTO Online Keith Bray PotY Keith has had a great season picking up points for outstanding performances throughout the season, scoring 11 goals including a hat-trick away to Cove Rangers. He picked up two yellow cards in the season, and has been a tremendous all round player for the team on the ground or in the air. Keith also won the Official ICTFC Young Player of the Year Award x2, voted by the players and by the fans. What a season for the young man from the Western Isles! He signed a four year contract with Dunfermline in January and were lucky to keep the young man for the second half of the season to help us remain in this league avoiding the play-offs. Good luck for the next stage of your development, I'm sure with your commitment and focus you will go on to greater things. Player of the Year Winner with 70 points is Keith Bray Second with 64 points Luis Longstaff Third with 57 points Adam MacKinnon Fourth with 52 points Charlie Gilmour Fifth with 47 points Musa Dibaga Sixth with 35 points Remi Savage Monthly Winners July Keith Bray August Adam MacKinnon September Musa Dibaga October Adam MacKinnon November Luis Longstaff December Luis Longstaff January Alfie Bavidge February Luis Longstaff March Keith Bray April/May Joint 1st Bray - Gilmour - B Mckay Well done Keith and all the best for the future with Dunfermline and hopefully at a bigger club in the years beyond. Here's what we will be missing and what the Pars will be gaining... Here is the breakdown of Keith's PotY winning season:- Goals Scored Jul 20th, 2024 League Cup (H) vs. Bonnyrigg Rose 3 - 0 (17') Nov 9th, 2024 League (A) vs. Cove Rangers 2 - 1 (67') Jan 18th, 2025 League (A) vs. Annan Athletic 3 - 0 (49') Jan 21st, 2025 League (A) vs. Queen of the South 2 - 3 (74') Jan 25th, 2025 League (A) vs. Alloa 2 - 1 (21') Mar 1st, 2025 League (H) vs. Montrose 1 - 1 (80') Mar 11th, 2025 League (H) vs. Stenhousemuir 4 - 1 (47') Apr 5th, 2025 League (A) vs. Cove Rangers 3 - 0 (36') Apr 5th, 2025 League (A) vs. Cove Rangers 3 - 0 (13') Apr 5th, 2025 League (A) vs. Cove Rangers 3 - 0 (72') Apr 26th, 2025 League (H) vs. Arbroath 3 - 0 (9') Hat-Tricks Apr 5th, 2025 League (A) vs. Cove Rangers 3 - 0 (3 goals) Thank you again for all your votes throughout the season please continue for the next one Thanks to IBM for compiling the PotY stats throughout the season along with other background chores to help keep CTO up to date. View full article

Following our Board Meeting this week, and Special General Meeting last night, we have issued an update to members. The update covers the outcome of the Special General Meeting, updates on Trust activities and our plans for the close season: Update to Members: May 2025 If you are not already a member, we would welcome you joining us. It is only £5 (£1 for Under 16s) and you can join here: Join Us | ICT Supporters Trust If you do not know what the Trust is about, have a look around our website: Inverness Caledonian Thistle | ICT Supporters Trust

If it was a market value industry we wouldn't have huge amounts of money being poured into clubs by wealthy owners/directors/fans up and down the country every season. Those managing to break even, or even make anything are in a very small minority. Anyway, all of that is outwith ICTFCs control. We can argue the rights and wrongs of it all we want, but we have to find a way to function, and balance the books, within the system that exists.

Agreement on the bloated set up and too many clubs, but forcing clubs to merge when they have community focus is detrimental to those areas whether it serves a few hundred or tens of thousands. There is and always has been an issue and while an Angus FC (Brechin, Forfar, Montrose, Arbroath) on paper brings together 4 clubs who reside at the lower levels permanently, on paper it could be seen as 4 into 1 brings enough fanbase and revenue to be a stable Championship level club but as we all know merged clubs have issues, lose fans and politics rip it apart for years therefore is it worthwhile overall and will it work to solve anything? A bigger point is the size of the league structures - 42 is too many and now we have the lower access route we are seeing teams like Kelty, Cove and now EK (could have been Brora) either getting or fighting to join - what do they bring overall should be the question? Minimal fanbases, sugar daddy spending where the ceiling will ultimately be League 1 and is there really much community engagement (not in the Cove case anyways). The danger of creating an elitist structure is the whole scenario becomes a closed shop, however without that there is the heavy dilution of limited funds which is keeping clubs either afloat (just) or they live one death, financial issue, benefactor loss from going belly up. Not saying the L1 and L2 clubs dont have a place but if you cant get more than a few hundred fans through your gates for home games then perhaps its better to be in a regional league set up. And thats where the restructure needs to be 2 top leagues of 16 with a significant restructure below to bring HL/LL/juniors etc all together into 3 or 4 regional set ups with play-offs/finals resulting in with a 2 up/down into the top tier set up. Keep it simple, keep costs and travel local and allow opportunity for teams to have breathing space to develop talent.

There's a lot of money in football, but much of it ends up going out of football far too soon. If you are on the National Living wage for your entire working life, you can expect to earn just over £1m in that time. Top footballers earn more than that in less than a month. It is absurd. And over and above their salaries, they will be getting money from marketing deals. What on earth can anyone sensibly do with that kind of money? I know they have to pay tax and there is always the risk of an early career ending injury, but on a year's salary they can buy and furnish a luxury house and invest the rest to be able live comfortably without having to kick a ball or do a day's work ever again. Meanwhile, good players in the lower leagues are giving 100% week in, week out for minimum wages at clubs struggling to survive. It really is quite obscene. I appreciate the value of market forces in an economy, but surely there needs to be some kind of wage cap and mechanism to distribute more money to support football at lower levels. I know millions of people want to watch wonderful games like Tuesday's game between Inter Milan and Barcelona, but we need to remember that games like that would never happen if the foundations of the game at lower levels were not solid and able to attract young players into the game. Of course, none of that helps the difficulties at Inverness just now, but it does serve to highlight what has been said above about the need for some financial stability in the club if we are ever to be competitive at the higher levels of Scottish football again.

That would be 50,000 more copies than he wanted of "Milestones and Memories".