The Mantis

Been away all weekend. Can't add much to what's been said. I've been a great supporter of Russell even when he was getting stick and was looking forward to him getting a testimonial. I hope TB knows what he's doing - he certainly ****ed it up for half a season by playing Strat and Eagle every week till he realised we already had better players. The test for TB is to keep us up next season. I have to agree that he carries the can so he makes the calls, not us. Gutted for Russeldinho though.

Wednesday night.... bummer!

You sure? There was a hovercraft trial in 2007 but I hadn't heard any more. Anyway it went from Portobello to Burntisland which is about 3 miles away.

Downhill as well I like Starks Bar. Cheap malts and decent measures and buxom barmaids.

I'll be there on my tod by the looks of things. Hunting Lodge again or what?

Don't like Partick much. All the patronising middle class fans coming on to lecture us in 2004 when we took their SPL place. Also the carp about being different from the OF, while their fans are still able to spit on you and abuse our ground staff while turning up late pished and helping their mates over the wall at TCS for free. Going out the cup to them twice were low points in ICT history. Never had much time for St Midden either. They've never quite got used to the idea that ICT are a big enough club to beat them regularly. Mind you I suppose they bring more to the SPL than Hamilton.

What Mannie said.

OFF TOPIC! Not really a contribution to the argument, just one or two examples of games from my era I was at, or at least just recall: Ayr v Rangers, 1969 - 25500 Rangers v Celtic SCF 1973, 122000 Scotland v England, several times, 134000 Celtic v Leeds, Hampden, 1970, 134000 officially, but supposedly 150000 Rangers v Hibs league match, c1970, 73000 Hibs v Hearts, c1970, 40000 Hibs v Aberdeen, cup 4th round, c1969, 44000 Rangers v Bayern 1972, 80000 and 75000 at Celtic v Inter the same night. Rangers v Celtic, any league match before 1971, 94000 Hearts v Rangers, midweek replay 1968, 44000

I disagree with that. Just for the record, I was part of the 'anti' campaign along with the fanzine guys. The fanzine tended to look down on the occasional Caley fans who didn't attend every game (in fact I only came up the road about 10 times a season anyway but I was excused as it's a long trip). Since coming to watch ICT I have met many more people who were Caley fans than I ever did before the merger. They can describe a lot of games from the past they were at, but they were obviously the kind of people labelled 'gloryhunters' by the fanzine because they didn't bother with Rothes away, etc. Because the fanzine guys were at a certain age they were passionate about Caley and despised people who had other interests in their life. If you ask around the Innes Bar on a big match day it's heaving with guys who followed Caley, not just a handful.

So have you made your mind up then

So a potential 'nobody south of perth' semi final line up then?

It does indeed..... what's obvious though is that Rory's already had a season to make an impact and Wood is new. No doubt you can find me some threads from the season before!

I disagree with that. Everybody's prepared to give a young player a chance at first. When he was breaking into the team he was a cult hero with all the young lads chanting 'Rory, Rory' as he warmed up, with his white boots and so on, even when I hardly knew who he was. He just seemed to start believing his own publicity.

At the risk of banging on and on and on..... ICT got the 10000 seats rule changed. While we're still full voting members of the SPL, ICT should get the USH rule scrapped too. USH has been a disaster for our pitch. Let clubs have USH as an option. Fine them if they lose a game to a frozen pitch. Let ICT take the risk and keep Tommy happy.

:rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao: Brilliant.

Not only that - the wee mink was challenging ICT supporters to 'come ahead' when he came out to the team coach.

After we beat sellic in 2000 we were on against Aberdeen at TCS - score 1-1.

Aye, granted, but how do you quantify loads, do you mean busloads or telephone box loads. I'm afraid I'm with Charlie Bannerman on this one. One or two guys I used to stand with who are middle aged now, some of whom are still on banter terms and some who would cross the road if they saw you. Not enough to put a significant dent in the attendance at TCS though IMO. I'm middle aged myself now and I wonder what I was getting het up about - it's only a game of fitba.

Plenty pre-merger photos on show inside the stadium, i.e. celebrating the club's roots. It might have been a touchy subject in 1994 (myself included as one of the touchies) but only a handful of hard cases still actually care. The club is 17 years old so half the support weren't even born in 1993/4. Either one or two people have been pulling your pi55er Dougal, or you need to get out more.

A tim at work says both matches were ?40 ticket price, so a ball park figure is 110 000 X ?40 = ?4.4m shared between them.

I'm speaking as somebody who was muttering on the way out of Easter Road (for the first time ever) about not coming back. However: The only point where I can agree with Laurence is the punting. I think TB sometimes gives opponents too much respect and doesn't allow ICT to play football. This is backed up anecdotally by players' dads etc when you meet them at the games. As for the rest, Laurence I think you have posted some bizarre stuff since you came to live amongst us. Your attitude seems to be that you are doing us a favour. You admit that you had never seen a Scottish match in your life so your criticisms of ICT are strange as you cannot compare it with anything else in Scotland. As said before ICT is really a div 1 club and punches above its weight. Let me admit, as someone in my mid fifties, that Scottish football is going down the swanny. Older people always say this, my teachers used to say it back in the seventies, but it's true. It's true because of globalisation. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In the seventies a Scottish club could give an English club a decent game and they always sent their strongest squads up to play us. Same goes for the national team. We actually had a winning record against England in internationals till quite recently. When I was at school people who came in with Old Firm scarves on got stick. Then in the 80s you got the odd Liverpool scarf. Now you ask people who they support and they say Barca or ManU. Only today I was asked in the classroom 'who do you think will win tonight?' I thought they meant ICT but they meant Chelsea v ManU. In the long run globalisation is death on a stick for wee nations like ours. At least in England the wealth trickles down. In Scotland it used to trickle down from the Old Filth. In 1968 Rangers paid Hibs a record £100 000 for Colin Stein. Now they buy foreigners. Carlisle United have far greater resources than most SPL clubs. Was it Crawley who were paying £150 000 for a player recently? ICT's record signing is about £65 000 and the players get about £1k per week. Fleetwood Town are now playing Keigan Parker and they're only in the Conference. If you think we're bad, try watching that lot over the bridge. Thank Christ there's more to living in Scotland than just football, which presumably, Laurence, is why you relocated to Boat of Garten.

?22 to watch that pish. Note to TB - text me on Sat. morning to say if you're going to play the long ball and I'll go and do the garden or something.

Ryan: "feck's sake Granty, I've saved your win bonus for you again this week". Jonny: "is it 20 mins gone yet? I feel a limp coming on" I heard it called TwitFace the other day, which I thought was quite appropriate.

Outstanding at cellic park on 8/2/00 but a player who never really achieved the potential he showed as a 17 year old with us. Best of luck Dick.

that was a bad one too but my worst quarter final experiences are.... at Number 2 - Scottish Cup replay with Partick thistle in the wettest day the world has ever seen sitting in the end of the north stand with no roof!, Eventually losing to a Scott Paterson freekick 1-0. Number 1 - 2005 against Livingston in the league cup quarter final. We scored first only for them to equalise JUST before half time. The game went to extra time and we were almost going to penalties and hampden when Paul Dalglish scored with 2 mins to go in extra time! Aye these were hard to take too. I was at both of them.