Leaderboard

Plans are already underway to get the social and other media and online offerings back on track (without me having to dust off my editing prowess - or lack thereof) ..... The COO was pretty proactive on this one. I would give it a week or two to start seeing some results (hopefully) .,

I understand he was due severance, but it is a matter of months not years, so the worry over this can be put behind us. Anyway, whatever he gets is dwarfed by the £1m he cost us in relegation Time to move on.

Fans and referees ? It was always so. Anybody watching the Manchester City v Everton match on TV would see that matches at the top level with highly trained professional referees are not exempt from the wrath of spectators. The point is that fans and pundits are seeing games through the very rose coloured glasses . Remember the handball involving Meekings at Celtic , how the compensator would not shut up about it for at least an hour after the game. My point is that teams have their fate in their own hands if they play well and score goals, No need to worry about refs.

Personally, I think is IS acceptable (just..), given that it's the start of the season & that there have been so many personnel changes (both on & off the park). The club is going through some major changes (including rebuilding most of the 1st team). I would take some positives from the game, but things are very much a work in progress just now. If it was the 2nd half of the season, I would totally agree with you that a home draw with Morton wasn't acceptable, but, c'mon, we need to be realistic - Robbo made the point at the meeting that some of the players haven't played regular 1st team football before! I'm hoping for a gradual improvement & would be happy with mid-table by Dec/Jan, with a push for a playoff spot. If we are in contention for the title, brilliant - but I'd be pleasantly suprised....

Excellent meeting. So many things explained and the three main men, chairman, Robbo and Danny were all very positive and talking as one. It was good to hear that they are wanting to experience what the supporters experience on match days and try to improve the facilities. The way they were talking about some of the youth players being some of the most exciting talent that have come to ICT was very encouraging.

A very positive meeting and I was greatly impressed by the new chairman.

At last night's meeting, John Robertson gave some interesting comments around the signing of players and his attitude towards developing the youngsters. Firstly, on the negative side, he echoed the Chairman's earlier comments about the budget being around £1 million less than last year. That obviously makes recruitment difficult when current players are already on relatively high earnings. Location is also a major problem and he said that there had been several players who had turned down offers because they wanted to stay in the central belt where there would be numerous clubs in commuting distance of where they live. He mentioned one that signed for a Division 1 side rather than move. He says that he has been helped by a scouting network he has. He talked about the mental fragility of a lot of players. They are nervous about making mistakes and he used this to explain why the team seemed to lose a bit of their drive once we got into the the lead against Morton. It was far removed from complacency or sitting back and defending the lead; what I understood he was saying was that players get anxious when they get into the lead because they will be criticised more for not winning if the have gone into the lead first. This perhaps highlights both a nervousness about the expectations of results here and, on a personal level, the fact that for many of our players, they know they need to succeed here for their careers to develop. Related to that, he talked briefly about the difference between what he sees on the training ground and what happens on the park. I guess the unsaid message there was for the fans to go easy on some of the players because he knows what they are capable of, and having fans on their backs all the time just piles more pressure on them makes it more difficult for them to perform to the level they do in training. His attitude to youth follows on from that. "if they are good enough, they are old enough" is what he said. He explained why he was keen on getting the kids out on loan to HL clubs and supportive of the idea of getting a colts team in the HL. He is wanting to toughen the kids up and put them under pressure by playing with men in games that really matter. He said that a few of the new recruits (Calder, Elsdon, Chalmers - I think, and maybe others) had never played a first team match before they came here! Think about it! What a culture shock it must be to find yourself in front of a vocal crowd and see your name in the paper as making a mistake that cost your team the game. These new recruits need time to get used to these new pressures and he is confident that as they do, they will develop well. Similarly, getting that first team experience rather then playing in the development league will toughen the kids up and make them ready mentally for first team football when they are good enough to be picked. It all made a lot of sense to me. Danny spoke really enthusiastically about how good some of the young kids coming through are. There does seem to have been a bit of a disconnect in recent years and lads seemed to have moved on elsewhere, but he felt there were several lads who should be good enough to feature before too long. This was echoed by the manager who suggested that for a couple, this may be as soon as next match! It was all fascinating and largely encouraging stuff. But for me, the message to fans has to be that many of our young players (and by young I don't mean just the teenagers) are very nervous and seriously lacking in confidence. They desperately need our support and our patience.

Unbelievably harsh and negative, DD. Do you really think they are not signed up to the new Chairman's approach? Easy to pick holes and cast aspersions when there is, in your own words, no evidence for them. On a more positive note, did anyone ask about fan representation on the board? would seem like a good idea to me, and is a feature of many smaller, more progressive clubs.

Dont want to be grateful for highlights we know footage is taken and we need a team to edit. Can that team not come from here. I am sure a certain canadian supporter would like to watch the whole game and help trim it and with other people supporting i am sure we could produce something decent from it.

TBH, its also a sign of the sad state of Scottish football that for several seasons Sportscene showed highlights from Championship games as well as Premiership but strangely that all stopped when 'The Rangers' got promoted - almost as though the lower leagues and smaller clubs no longer matter any more to the BBC or to the SFA beaks. Sadly the limited viewing audience and funding/advertising revenue probably limits the opportunity for an independent lower league highlights show these days a-la Scotsport (who?) - which is sad but we should be grateful to any highlights posted online or anywhere due to the lack of mainstream media looking at this league now.

No, how can you possibly think scraping a home draw is acceptable and settle for mid table obscurity. We have been forced into making changes but the core of an experienced SPL side is still there OFW , Warren , Raven , Polworth , Vigurs , Tremarco, Mulraney etc . These guys have all played at the highest level, so with some astute additions and good management we should be aiming a lot higher than mid table.

I too have had first hand experience of this dreadful illness and have expressed sympathy for all victims and their families. I am all for much more understanding and sympathy for altzheimers and it's many victims both direct and indirect. I feel similarly strongly about other ailments impacting on mental as well as physical health which is precisely why, much as I have sympathy for him now, there is an irony in a man who showed little sympathy or understanding for a vulnerable subordinate suffering from depression now appealing for such understanding himself.

Fair point....but CC wasn't dismissed, he stepped down from the job & he did a decent job (from what I remember). Maybe RF will return, but now definetly isn't the time...think he'd be too divisive a figure.

If a have a concern about last night's meeting it was the failure of any of the other Board members to engage. The new Chairman spoke well and enthusiastically but he is just one member of the Board. Others on the panel were on the Board at the time when the decisions which got us into the mess we are now in were made. Even just a brief few words from one of them acknowledging that mistakes were made, that lessons have been learned and that the Board is fully behind the approach outlined by the Chairman would surely not have been difficult. As it was, the Chairman did the apologising on their behalf and he wasn't even on the Board when those decisions were made and when core activities were being neglected. There were issues raised and the Chairman responded that he couldn't really comment as he didn't know, but would look into and get back to the questioner. Other Board members have been here long enough to have had knowledge of the issues and should have been able to speak up and comment. What was the point of them being there if all they offered was a wall of silence? The way forward outlined by the Chairman was good, but it is not going to happen unless the whole Board are signed up to that approach. I saw no evidence that this was the case. It might have been good, for example to have individual Board members taking responsibility for overseeing some particular area of activity and taking the lead on the discussion related to that. We all know that despite his faults, Kenny Cameron lived and breathed this football club and worked tremendously hard for the club. One suspects that other Board members were happy to let him get on with it. Hopefully the new Chairman will insist on other Board members taking a bit more responsibility and showing a much more public face and public buy in to the more progressive agenda. In Graham Rae, Danny MacDonald and John Robertson we have a great team of leaders to see us pick up the pieces and move on. They need and deserve the support of the entire Board. That support may be there, but it was not in evidence last night.