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I listened to the coverage of The Rangers first ever visit to Pittodrie on Sportsound on Saturday afternoon and was struck by two things. Firstly; I could clearly hear vile sectarian singing almost from start to finish including 'The Billy Boys' with it's most offensive lyric. By all accounts the away section was awash with the body fluid of Irish Catholics and the Pontiff was being frequently sexually abused. Such conduct, apart from being grossly offensive, is in breach of UEFA rules, in breach of the SFA's rules, against the rules of the SPFL and contrary to the criminal law. The old club inhabiting Ibrox came to be regularly sanctioned by UEFA for such conduct during European fixtures with the supine SFA and then SPL never taking any significant action. Our supporters have been warned off relatively harmless and non malicious banter with our local rivals in the form of 'The Wheels On Your House' yet this disgraceful conduct on the part of a five year old club who's predecessors brought shame and financial pain to the whole of Scottish football not just for their bigotry but financial impropriety which may yet be established to be criminal seems to be turned a blind eye to. Secondly; I note that the BBC have yet again been excluded from Ibrox presumably on the basis of yet another paranoid petulant huff. The BBC have a contract with the SPFL which provides valuable income to all clubs which, I suspect, stipulates the right to broadcast from all stadia and to pre and post match interviews with players and management. The Rangers are putting the organisation at risk of being in breach of that contract with the potential, if not for damages for breach of the current contract, for any future contract to be negotiated on reduced terms. Rangers caused their own demise and, in the process, caused great harm to the reputation and finances of Scottish football by their conduct in their previous incarnation. Surely The Rangers can't be permitted special treatment to be allowed to do the same again. Scottish football is potentially a great product and could and should enjoy a much higher and more positive profile furth of these shores but until the game is administered and regulated for the benefit of all rather than two large Glasgow clubs, one of which is in it's first season in the top tier, they will always drag us down. The latest manifestation of this bias is the scheduling and venues for the two League Cup Semi finals obliging Aberdeen fans to engage in a 300+ mile round trip for a lunch time kick off whereas Celtic and The Rangers get to play in their own back yard kicking off two hours later no doubt affording two hours additional drinking time to fuel the vitriol on both sides. Time now for the other clubs to put aside petulant threats of boycotts and get together to put an end to the Weegie tail wagging the Scottish football dog.

big sam epitomises the systemic issues that exist in football today: money and greed! #againstmodernfootball

I'm genuinely curious about what RiG means about people knowing there's a game on if it's in Aberdeen or Edinburgh but not in Inverness? DD is correct in saying that Inverness had 3-4 clubs for over 100 years, and he is also probably right in saying that the "new" club needs to energise people more. However the comparison between the 100+ years in the Highland League and what has transpired since isn't a completely valid one for two reasons. Firstly, habits have changed in a world which has gone from watching football in a ground being one of a very limited number of leisure activities to it having a huge number of counter attractions, not the least of which is watching football on a TV. Then there's football's economics of the madhouse where players are paid way above their realistic market value which forces ticket prices way up which further contributes to these changes in habit. At ICT you can add a cold, not very accessible stadium (which was still the best site on offer at the time) as a further contributor to the current Perfect Storm scenario. Then secondly there's the fact that, compared with the last days of Thistle and Caley in the Highland League, around five times as many people come to the Caledonian Stadium than collectively attended Kingsmills and Telford Street. Highland League revisionists with rose coloured spectacles will of course tell you that these grounds used to be regularly stowed out but the reality is that, by the early 90s, this most certainly wasn't the case. I would therefore suggest that Inverness is possibly MORE of a football place now than it previously was, certainly during its latter, mundane Highland League days. Look also at Grant Street now, which is lucky to get 200 if that. I think that one component of the "crowds" issue is that, against all these factors such as TV, ticket prices etc etc, the population and economy of the inner Moray Firth simply isn't big enough to sustain comfortably two Premiership clubs and the kind of crowds you would realistically need to make them good going concerns. And I don't actually see a solution to this because there is NO WAY that any combination of forces between ICT and Ross County is ever going to take place. However this also is a problem right across Scottish football. For instance they are mob handed in the Angus area with Forfar, Brechin, Montrose, Arbroath etc. Meanwhile Dundee, even with the Thompson millions on one side, clearly struggles to sustain two Premiership clubs and indeed has barely done so for the last decade. But again, that's not very likely to change as Scottish demographics continueto be unable to support the number of clubs competing for resources - especially when two of them, artificially inflated by West Central Scotland's religious, political and social problems, suck in such a disproportionate slice of these said resources.

You are assuming extra numbers are paying when I clearly stated that those extra numbers aren't always paying...and gave an example. Free tickets issued by ICTFC tend to be for kids (and all U12s now go free in the North Stand at all games). As some of these would have previously been paying, then there is an immediate cost to the club with changing their policy as that income is no longer coming in. The hope is that it encourages more U12s/Families to attend....and you then get income from the parents paying....then in the long term those U12s move up to paying categories and help generate additional revenue. As I said before, some clubs have owners (and I'll name no names) who (allegedly) had a policy of dishing out hundreds of free season tickets to staff and then including those numbers in their attendance figures. They have since changed that policy and now (allegedly) just print hundreds of free kids tickets and count them whether they are used or not. There's so many different "initiatives" going on at different clubs who all operate in their own way that, as I said, you really can't garner too much meaningful information from an attendance figure and certainly not an income figure.....aside from all of the above, there's also no breakdown of what category of tickets make up the attendance. Average attendances over a season also have to be looked at with some caution. Having additional home matches against teams who bring larger supports (or not) can swing figures from one season to the next....so you need to keep that in mind when looking at figures year on year as well. So yes....whilst you can make a general statement that increased attendances are good thing, you shouldn't automatically assume that there's any correlating financial benefit....certainly not in the short term. The last time I looked at it, ICTFC's attendances as a percentage of population were a lot better than the majority of others in the league.....so that kinda knocks the "not a football city" argument on the head, along with a few of the other points being made. That's not to say that I don't think attendances could be better and I do believe that there isn't as much of a connect between the city and the club as we might have had if the stadium was set up to be more of a hub which was used more regularly by the community for stuff other than football....it's that kind of activity that makes people feel a part of something and they then tend to take more ownership of, and pride in, it. How you achieve that without any money and without threatening the finely balanced setup we have at present? I don't know. Many people have had many ideas over the years, but I'm yet to see one which could realistically be implemented. I have faith that opportunity will present itself at some point, we just have to be ready to jump on it when it does.

I can't find any sympathy for Sam after his ignominious exit from the England role last night, after only a couple of months. A mixture of greed, ego, power seem to have been his undoing, combined with a staggering amount of naivety and gullibility. What I don't understand is why the Telegraph would have put this 'sting' into operation so quickly. I can only assume they were on the brink of exposing the whole issue of player ownership, managers taking bungs etc in any case, and saw big Sam as an easy target to get it moving. I am sure there are other managers waiting anxiously for the next development. Anyway, big Sam won't have to worry, I'm sure Sunderland will soon come calling, if they haven't already, to replace Moyes.

As a devoted Caley fan who followed Celtic in the old days I confess that I sang a lot of that Republican / Secretarian shitt (without really having a feckin clue what I was singing about). I suspect that you have may have done likewise in your own favoured list of ditties. I also suspect that you still hold a pretty strong loyalty to the team that used to be called Glasgow Rangers. When we talk about the scum from clubs other than the Old Firm we are talking about the minority. With the Old Firm it is more like a majority. Hail, Hail

What are we doing about a watering hole. Hamilton has to be the absolute worst venue as most hostelries frown on letting any type of away supporter in.

And the players are still supporting the merged club.

Above picture fairly contradicts Charles' assurances that only 2-300 would attend the HL games....

27 Sep 2016 Eng Championship S Winnall (Barnsley 1 - Aston Villa 1) EL 1 F Morais (Bradford 2 - Fleetwood 1) I Black (Shrewsbury 1 - Peterborough 1)

I don't think simply expressing a view that it would be good to know what the numbers going through the away turnstiles are is obsessing. Knowing what the numbers are would simply allow for rather more informed comments on crowd numbers which surely must be better than people making comments when they have the facts wrong. I just fail to see what the club has to lose by making the figures public.

Excellent post, Kingsmills. Couldn't agree more. It really is pathetic how various bodies do nothing about the conduct of this odious club and their equally obnoxious followers. As well as the SFA and SPFL, the police take no meaningful action either despite the law being openly flouted. However, it wouldn't surprise me if the BBC's contract did not have the kind of clauses in it which it ought to have. Rather than requiring teams to provide access, interviews etc, it maybe details payments for such access which The Rangers would simply forgo. I can well imagine the SPFL agreeing to such an unsatisfactory contract under pressure from Ibrox. If The Rangers are contractually obliged to provide access to the BBC then the BBC is probably unwilling to take action for breach of contract on the basis that they probably wouldn't then have the contract renewed next time round. The other clubs pussyfoot around the issues because they are worried that meaningful action against the big two would seriously affect revenues. If action is to be taken it will have to be from outside and it would be good to see MSPs do some serious campaigning on this issue. If I am suitably offended when we offer a warm Highland welcome to The Rangers on their first visit here, I just might write to local MSPs to ask them to take up the issue with suitable bodies.

They had a chance at the time when the other erse cheek caused the referee strike. If all the clubs had showed some cojones and resigned from the league and formed their own, the ugly sisters would have to play each other every week. That would have put the cat among the pigeons

That Dunfermline game was a highly organised concerted effort by Dunfermline to get a big support behind their team in the fight against the drop. The crowd was 6464 and the South stand was chocka. In recent years folks disposable finances have taken a bit hit and the spare money just isnt there for many. Personally I still support the club with player sponsorship but I have to be very selective as to what home games I attend. Train fares continue to rise as do costs of food and beverage for a day out + entry cost. Three or four years ago I'd think nothing of blowing £100 - £150 on a day trip to Sneck for a match. Sometimes I'd add cost of overnight stay if midweek game. Now circummstances have changed I have to be more frugal. Many folk are in similar financial positions and are not following their teams to away games. My guesstimate from TV was that maybe 150 - 200 Dundee fans travelled on saturday whereas in the past that would have been 400-500 at least. The cost of the day out has gone up but wages have stayed stagnant so travelling fans are choosing to stay at home.

That is nonsense, the town supported 3-4 clubs for over a hundred years, it is just that, for various reasons, the new club has never managed to energize people sufficiently, indeed it attracts hostility and indifference as much as enthusiasm and dedication.

Pretty certain I didn't mention CJT.....but thank you for the confirmation that you continue to operate contrary to the organisations own rules.

A red dot for this????????????

News flash kingsmills wants to talk about Rangers! In other news water is wet . Think its pretty obvious where your allegiances lie with your consistent spouting of about all things sevco,the rangers ,zombies or watever name is flavour of the month. You dont deal in facts you go by watever blogger or faceless twitterati yahoo says, for starters the BBC are not banned from ibrox they have chosen not to cover any games from there in support of bbc journalist who had his press pass removed because of unbalanced reporting.Also you state bigotry nd sectarianism but you fail to mention the sickening chants mocking the Ibrox disaster one of the greatest tragedies in Scottish history( did ur old trannie lose its reception at that point? )or the defacing of the Rangers team bus.Yes the billy boys is a disgrace but chants mocking an 8 year old boy who never returned from a football match offend much more or because its The Rangers or sevco is it ok to mock there dead? Next time you want to listen to Rangers play how about you turn the radio off nd go to the glenalbyn bar where im sure you will enjoy watching the other half of the old firm with your friends nd maybe u will join in with the songs nd chants that frequently get overlooked by the press nd people like you only hearing what u want to here.