Scotty

This is ours ... anything else is a browser thing

This is definitely not ours:

unfortunately - its caused by our out-of-date stats program putting too much stress on the server with what they call 'long queries" because it is using an older version of PHP. Basically it does not kill the query after done and the load on the server increases over time until its unsustainable. I have to close down SQL (you will get a database error) and then disable stats for a while until it settles down (stats pages unavailable) ... and then it all works again for a few weeks until I have to repeat the process.  

I did that when I read Mantis' post last night so it should work now ... just have to re-enable the stats later today. 

another group shot I came across from the Innes. Originally posted this to the memory page for Big Stew! 

Feel like I have had to write too many of these posts more recently. Gutted to hear earlier today that a staunch ICT supporter and good friend to all of us who used to frequent the Caley Inn and Innes Bar has passed away.

https://williamtfraserandson.co.uk/notices/david-shields-inverness/

David "Uncle Albert" Shields was a gem of a man who I was proud to call a friend. He was on the receiving end of much of the banter from myself, Big Stu, Calum and others over the years and was nicknamed "Uncle Albert" by us in reference to the character in Only Fools and Horses after he had made one too many references to what he did in the Navy. He took it all in the good nature it was meant, even using @UncleAlbert as his login name on here, and we always had a laugh in both pre and post-match "get togethers".

In terms of ICT he was a staunch supporter, and while fit and healthy, was always there to the side of the tunnel with his wife and fellow ICT stalwart Kay who was also - for a time - a moderator on here when I needed a few people I could trust to help out. Kay also had to moderate Dave, myself, Calum, Ross and Big Stew in the Innes on more than one occasion!

Sadly, ill-health overtook Dave and I don't think he made it to too many games in recent years, but I will always remember one thing from quite a few years ago, when we were having money troubles at the club (sounds familiar). He and Kay bought and paid for a set of electronic substitute boards for the club. No fanfare just asked what was needed and then went and got them sorted out with the things they needed. Thats the kind of person he was, and they both were as a couple. Real good people, who were not in it for reward or recognition, just wanting to do what they could, where they could.  

Off field he was a friend to many, including myself and others on here, and a really close friend with Calum, Jill and their kids who called him Uncle Dave instead of Uncle Albert. Not sure who adopted who, but when they say you can choose your friends but not your family, in this case that is wrong, as they became family to each other over the years. 

David, thank you for your service in the Navy, no jokes this time, and thank you for being you. You will be missed my friend. I will likely have a nice wee (?) tot of rum tonight to celebrate your memory. 

I also want to offer our deep and most sincere condolences to Kay, his wife of countless years, and also to Calum, Jill and the kids, on behalf of me personally, and also my entire family who also knew and admired Dave. I hope the positive thoughts and memories of Dave may help lessen the grief they feel right now.  

Please feel free to share memories and pictures of Dave in this thread as I am sure there are a lot of stories and anecdotes to be told. 

3 minutes ago, Robert said:

Yes, just confirmed. 

https://ictfc.com/david-wotherspoon-signs-for-ictfc-2/

As you will have seen, we have now established separate areas for the Supporters Trust and the Travel Club who have started to make use of them to publicise events and add content. These are self-contained areas within the site and the management and moderation of them is under their control. Topics will appear in the main list of topics and calendar events will appear in the calendar sidebar. 

We have also added the fixture list for 2025-26 to the calendar and it will also be available in the traditional stats program.  We are still looking for a sponsor for that part of the site to enable us to pay for an upgrade to the program, or for someone with mad PHP/SQL skills to deconstruct and reverse engineer the program we are using. Its classed as 'abandonware' from the original author and only one person (we know of) has taken it up and kept it modern. Easy option is to pay him for the updates, but the cost is high  For now it will trundle along as it is. 

I am now starting the next stage of updates and as part of that some areas of the site may become unavailable at times, menus may change, and some unused parts of the site, or infrequently posted in forums may be merged into others. If you spot something not working for an extended period, or looking weird beyond a few minutes or hours, let me know. I want to streamline everything and remove any clutter and noise before we perform the actual software upgrade. 

All being well I hope to do the software upgrade at some point (later) next week or perhaps the week after. 

LOL - The 'Wotherspoons' breakfast .... yes, very clever. 

I hear from a good source that he is indeed training with us today, so fingers crossed. Quite a few other trialists still around and apparently, we are being made aware of these through various people who have been around the club in our good years ... nice to hear about people pulling together for the benefit of ICTFC. Cautiously optimistic for the season ahead. 

Will leave it to Kells and the coaching team to evaluate our trialists as we approach the start of the season, but one the one hand you have an international AM/RW/FWD player and a striker coming off a 34-goal season which sounds really good ... but on the other hand, if you scratch the surface, the international is for Dominican Republic, ranked 136th in the world, and who does not appear to have played internationally since around 2018, and the striker is several tiers down and currently without a club. Maybe they are uncut diamonds who will be the finds of the season ... or maybe .... not. 

1 hour ago, CaleyD said:

This any use? ICT_2025_26_Fixtures.ics

Cheers @CaleyD - that did the trick. We just need to go in and assign the venues but thats brought in the dates alright

If anyone finds ical or ics versions of the fixures let me know - its a helluva lot easier to import into the calendar

29 minutes ago, High1ander said:

Scotty can you post a link so I can catch up on the postings

Mainly on Twitter

but also on facebook

https://www.facebook.com/ICTFC/

Waiting for Rossnaldo to sign

This is all going to get confusing ... and I see we also signed a right back while everyone was looking at the Remi Savage signing

You can really feel the enjoyment and tongue in cheek banter coming from the posts. its a breath of fresh air from last few seasons. 

1 minute ago, izzy said:

 

Please let this be true

It is 

#ICTFC are delighted to confirm that Remi Savage has signed an initial 1-year deal with the club.

Welcome back, Remi!

https://t.co/CnF2e10EgX pic.twitter.com/w0g7asbb68

— Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC (@ICTFC) June 19, 2025

Not sure if anyone different is running this or they have just become unshackled from the previous regime, but its been really entertaining to read these last couple of weeks. Well done to all involved. 

Another Goalie signed. Press Release from club below: 

"

15 hours ago, Duke of Inverness said:

Why are there so many annoying Pop Ups when you are on CTO? 

Can't seem to cancel them from appearing?

We dont do popups. We do google ads only and these are top and bottom of forum, sidebar and sometimes inline ads. If you are getting actual popup ads I would like to know more as we have not enabled these as they bug the **** out of most people including me.  

As CaleyD noted, we do have an option for removing ads by becomiong a sponsor and also, I will be reviewing the ads as I work through the new site design and software. I think we do currently get too many as I let google choose positioning and sometimes I see double myself when i go to certain pages. 

Paul Allan just signed his new contract extension ....  https://ictfc.com/paul-allan-agrees-new-deal-at-ictfc/

Press Release:

"Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC are delighted to announce that midfielder Paul Allan has agreed an initial 1 year contract extension with the club. 

the use of the word vendors makes me think it is a browser or account thing. i have not seen it before, its certainly not configured by me and i would be interested if someone does get it, to let me know what was shown in the "view details" link, or to tell me the steps they did to get it showing up! I have tried both Edge and Chrome on PC in normal mode as well as incognito mode and both with and without cookies and cache cleared and logged in and out. 

As for the ADs, will take a look as part of the upgrade to see if I can strike a better balance. The reality is that the site costs me personally about US$2000 per year to run. This includes domain name registrations, software maintenance and support, hosting fees and other expenses. We usually manage to scrape by on the revenue from the ads and a few people who pay for a modest site sponsor subscription each year, so it is mostly self-financing, but without ads there would be no site unless we have a major sponsor willing to drop the cash into the site on a yearly basis that would allow us to remove the ads completely !   

To the best of my knowledge, that is not our popup. I have certainly not encountered it. That looks like something from your phone, phone provider or browser asking about your overall advertising preferences when using your browser or device. Our cookies popup looks like the image below. 

In terms of ads, if you choose to de-personalise these settings then it has little to no effect on us, you get a generic ad from google instead of one that is 'targeted' based on your browsing habits or recent google searches. Perhaps you are less likely to click on a generic ad, or maybe we would get a few cents extra from a targeted ad, but other than that, not much difference. 

Where we do see a difference is if someone blocks ads as that doesn't generate any income from google and - in the absence of a sponsor or benefactor - we need that income to run the site.  The biggest revenue generators currently are what they call "vignette ads" which are the ones that come up in between pages when moving around the site. Our users hate these with a passion so we have disabled them in favour of the normal boring banners and sidebars.  

This is our page when you browse to it in private mode (so no cookies retained) - click to view full size.  If you click on any of the underlined words in the disclaimer it will take you to the relevant page or setting. Other than that we set nothing. 

I also did a check on both Edge and Chrome and it bears no resemblance to your image. On Edge, I can see we set 37 cookies, most of which are session cookies meaning they expire when you close your browser. A few others, mostly relating to logins or account settings, and site features (like remembering what threads you have read or not) have expiry dates in the future. For example, your cookie accept policy as shown in the image above, stays active for 6 months and would then require you to accept cookies again and your login cookie allows you to stay logged in for 3 months at a time.

You have the option to clear all these, or to logout of any machine you have logged into the site with from your profile settings page: https://caleythistleonline.com/settings/.

You can also change cookie settings on the cookies page, the link for which is at the bottom of every page. https://caleythistleonline.com/cookies/

14 hours ago, IBM said:

And you even get Mantis in the video  I have heard them on Radio Scotland and like the music.  Back to Runrig I preferred Bruce Guthro to Donnie Munro.

Nahh, Donnie Munro for me every time. Just something smoother about a lilting west coast accent when singing. (Boydie not included!)

If I listen to the same song sung by either, I am almost always going to come down on DM's side. I think it is the Party on the Moor album or maybe another live album where BG introduces DM to the crowd and he starts to sing, and the difference is night and day. Both have their merits, but DM for me. 

The longer I stay overseas, the more "shortbread tin" I feel like I get (Billy Connolly fans should get the reference).  Started listening to a bit of Runrig again recently after a few years of expulsion from the playlist, as well as P&D, Deacon Blue, Franz Ferdinand and others. Big Country has never been off the playlist, and Simple Minds are apparently in Toronto shortly, but I think I am already committed to something else that night.  

14 hours ago, Charles Bannerman said:

Tommy absolutely loathed Gardiner and I am told that it had been his fervent desire to live long enough to see Gardiner leave the building. Unfortunately Tommy didn’t quite make that but - again wherever he is - I am sure that he will now be just as fulfilled in seeing that wish also granted…. commendably abruptly by Alan Savage!

Tommy always was a good judge of character  Happy that he appears to have been right about AS as well. 

14 hours ago, CaleyTennis85 said:

Did Alan Savage mention if any of the previous interested parties from interested in investing during the bidding process had got back to him offering to help him out with investment?  I seem to recall from one of the previous press conferences that interested investors were willing to contact Alan himself and offer to help him with investment etc.  Or am I misunderstood, which is highly possible .

The entire press conference is linked on this thread both in audio and video. You will note there is no mention of this anywhere.  Have a feeling that AS is more likely to announce this as and when anything is a done deal rather than before the ink is dry on any contract. 

14 hours ago, CaleyTennis85 said:

look forward with positivity to what the future holds for us under the stewardship of Alan Savage and Charlie Christie (who I'd like to see kept on under this new regime) .

Charlie is in with the bricks. He is going nowhere. Him, Graeme Bennett, and Kells are the preferred dream team in terms of creating a triumvirate spanning the team, board, and back office. When those three areas are aligned, we have traditionally done well and every one of them is motivated to do so and for once, the backroom leaders understand things given that both played for the club too. AS will oversee it as he noted and others will be brought on. It all sounds pretty positive, especially considering where we could have been ... but as CaleyD notes, the proof is in the pudding.   

Worth listening to that audio. Lots of nice little snippets in there from improving the supporter experience, to adding a stage behind the North Stand, to covering the singing section, a testimonial for Aaron Doran and even practical things like replacing power hungry floodlights with LEDs and such like. Feeling pretty positive right now that little tweaks here and there will optimise our outgoings while trying to maximise sponsorship and income.