Scotty

Yeah, was going to say this. I disagreed with him on twitter when he posted this and he is one of those I referred to when I said I had only heard of a couple of ICT supporters who had thought this a good idea. Mike has an impeccable track record of supporting ICT and Caley before that, sits in with the proletariat when our paths have crossed and in his younger days was a High School boy and began career at local press (Courier/P&J) as well as MFR before moving onwards and upwards. The rest can be got from Wikipedia! Regardless of what you think of his ‘with strings’ offer from a few years ago, the bigger issue is no-one replied. There is a pattern here of looking gift horses in the mouth and not bothering to contact folks who may be interested in helping in one way or another.

cant read it, behind a paywall.

You are in my time zone I think, just a bit further south (of the border). We've got a fair few on here residing outside the UK so dont hesitate to jump in ...

Time for the thread

I have seen two people in total online who are ICT fans who support this move. I can't count how many ICT fans have diametrically opposite viewpoints (including myself). Plenty of folk who are not football fans or not ICT fans saying 'whats the big deal' but almost to a man (or woman) they live south of Perth (as do the ICT fans who are in support of the move). People like Kristine and the other hard-working staff at the stadium could likely do a better job, that's for sure and crucially, if they were out of their depth or needed assistance they would ask for - and get - help. Any time I have been over and popped round the stadium, it's been Kristine, Keith, Charlie or other folk I know who always have a cheery hello and time for a quick chat .... These buggers cost me hundreds in the club shop each time I have a conversation, as it gives the wife and son time to browse the merchandise!!! Probably raised more money for the club that way than the CEO!

But it has to be the correct right-hand man. I don't know if he was pals with SG before he appointed him, or if SG just talked a really good game at the interview process, but a quick google search, even back then would have provided a ton of info from his time in Dundee and at Hearts. That should have given pause for thought and/or a sense that he would give the guy a chance but there had to be oversight .... Clearly we do not need a CEO in the current league, and certainly not this CEO. We need someone who will go in, get their hands dirty, listen to opinions and ideas from all sides, be able to evaluate and implement them where they prove to be good, be open to fan engagement and ideas, and capable of working with a team of excellent ICT staff and hopefully volunteers who I believe will be chapping at the door if we reverse the Kelty cock-up and divest ourselves of the CEO. This is in my opinion the only (and the cheapest) way to get us back on the right track. We have great supporters, many of whom have a diverse and under-utilised skill set because they have been regarded with suspicion and derision for so long. Recognise the talent, pull together and get us back up where we can be. A bag of balls and a sack of half-time oranges?

what about 8-Track and phonograph?

Yup. I will give him that. In any and all conversations with him that I have ever had (a few but not many), he has always come across as a fan not just a chairman and he was a fan long before he was the chairman so fair play to him for sticking his head above the ramparts. He has also put his money where his mouth is for many years and is clearly hurting not only at the club's current situation, but presumably from the criticism he is getting as well. Some deserved, and some perhaps undeserved. Unfortunately, I believe he has been painted into this particular corner by our CEO and may be guilty of the same kind of loyalty towards him that Kenny C had for Foran which ultimately proved to be a misplaced loyalty, albeit to a far more likeable person. Haven't listened in a while as I seldom have any time, but have listened to the last two and wow, you guys just nailed it. Lee almost had me in tears on the last one given the raw emotion on display. That was as heartfelt a statement as I have heard for a while. I was also nodding my head and agreeing so much with you on virtually all the points raised when listening on my commute home the other day that drivers around me on the highway probably thought i was headbanging to some metal music!! On this last one, which i listened to this morning at work, again I was nodding along, but at one point I think I heard the penny drop for the chairman (or hope I did). Think it was when you did the quick math of losing around 1000 season tickets that he seemed to have an "oh, s***, yeah" epiphany. Here's hoping at least. Get that Trebuchet ready boys! Great stuff, keep it up

and we still would, but we are not on here every second of every day. Thats why we have a report button so site users can alert us to anything that personally offends them and needs to be brought to our attention. No action needed here as the user has edited their own post.

A quick google search shows up a lot of possibilities locally, if we were, for example, a community club and not pissing off the community at every turn. This example seemed pretty decent... https://www.highlifehighland.com/blog/new-physio-clinic-opens-at-inverness-leisure/ "“We have a team of highly skilled practitioners with experience working within many sports from professional football for Inverness Caley Thistle Football Club and Celtic Football Club to Olympic skiers in the Austrian Alps. Our sports massage therapist, Josh Meekings is a former professional footballer and therefore knows the demands of sports people."

Indeed - that is quite the number and bears further investigation. Does it - for example - pay for housing for any non-playing staff? I would hope that we are not paying the full rent/mortgage for 13 houses. On a business level, I would not baulk at us subsidising a player's relocation costs and housing for a defined period (within reason), but it should not be ad infinitum. Thats the way most employers work when they ask you to change location.

I would rather he got his employee to stand down. This image really should be a caption competition

A few simple graphics I did over the last couple of days. Feel free to post and share. @CaleyD was our graphics Wizz kid so these are very simple

If that has indeed happened with both Grassa and Charlie then I am sorry, that speaks huge volumes. I know neither are everyone's cup of tea, and everyone is entitled to their opinions, but both played for the club, both have been involved with the club for decades, both are LOCAL boys, and both should still be associated with the club. In fact both might be the figureheads in the boardroom and backroom we (initially) need to get behind to get us back on track and start getting the city, and local businesses and people behind the club again. It will be a long and arduous task after the mayhem and destruction caused by the current incumbents. We will see. thats a lot of ego deflation to endure and humble pie for one man to eat. Bullshit. I agree they will likely try to spin it that way, but this was just the straw that broke the camel's back. Too many hair-brained cunning plans that Blackadder would have been proud of. The chairman did achieve unity however, so I will give him that. We are pretty much all united against this absolute folly of a decision and our ineffective CEO.

Your old account still exists. Do you want me to merge them under the new email? Send me a PM if you do and confirm the old one, and which username you want and we can get it done.

Obviously won't be there, as the only plane available to me lands at Kelty International Airport too late to make the quick 140-mile trip up the A9. However, as a member of the trust, I would like to ask if we can put something to the meeting to see if we can formally ask the club to seek the resignation of our CEO. We have no power to demand it from the club, other than the power of the fan (and media and former players) reaction to this newest statement but surely that should be enough. I have heard a lot of stuff over the weekend, and added to the examples from the past, this man's position should be completely untenable. Everything he does is supposed to be for the good and benefit of ICT, and there does not seem to be anything he has ever done that falls into that category. He said this when he came into the club and that goes contrary to everything that is being said now. "My priorities are to build a strong support team to generate the income needed to field a side capable of progressing to the Premiership of the SPFL and – parallel to that work – develop a strategy for the club which will give confidence to the local and regional business community as we look to garner their support for what is, after all, their team" He has failed 100% in that self-proclaimed target. When you fail time after time, (at club after club), then your position is untenable. If the board believe his reign to be acceptable, then they too need a good shake up, which brings me to my next point. If rumours are true, there also appears to be a spot on the board available after the resignation of one board member last week. Rather than have a cronie co-opted to that position, can we publicly put it on record that we want (demand) fan representation on the board via the Trust? This has been mentioned before by the trust, but it is really important now, crucial in fact. I only have the minimum shareholding of £250 but you can most certainly have my proxy (as offered before) if this requires a vote at some emergency EGM that must surely follow soon. I am sure many other disgruntled fans would be in the same boat in supporting this and hopefully some of the larger shareholders too? Can we get some momentum rolling for this?

Ok, I just can't hold this one back anymore. It has gnawed away at me since 2020. When the club asked about 'ideas' for fund raising or cash injection in autumn of 2019 prior to COVID, I did a little groundwork and then spoke with the chairman on WhatsApp. I put him in contact with someone over here who held very large purse strings, and moreover was interested in exploring if there could be some benefit in some form of relationship between ICT and them. Very few specifics - as that was to be discussed - but youth and young players were mentioned. (This was helped by using Ryan Christie as an example of our youth, the fact that Caley had participated in a youth tournament in Toronto many years ago, our community club identity as our ethos, and how we had ascended the leagues over the past 25 years). The only thing that had to happen to kickstart the discussion was a single phone call between the CEO and the person I had talked to. This was in October 2019. This is a small excerpt from one of the various emails I received back from him at the time: "Hi Scott, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. At this point we are not prepared to purchase a club or give cash, but we are open to taking on some of the costs in soccer operations by either covering the coaching staff and/or loaned players' salaries. It’s something we’ve been doing with <redacted> a bit this past season. So would be more cutting expenses then a cash infusion, not sure if that would work or not. Would be open to explore that if of interest to them." When I spoke with the other party, in person, in March 2020, just before COVID hit, he confirmed he had not had a call in the previous 5 months, so the organisation had moved on with other plans. So that simple phone call was never made and the opportunity to save costs, generate more ideas, have 'free' loan players (subject to clearances), and see where (if anywhere) that potential relationship would go was lost forever Now it has to be acknowledged that this is all hypothetical and the discussion may have gone precisely nowhere in the end, especially as COVID then hit, but surely it was worth a phone call to find that out? Would it have helped us out of the current predicament? possibly not, as they were not - at that time - interested in cash infusions, but who knows how any relationship would have developed over the past 5 years if that single first step had been taken... As alluded to before, and as others have said about their own experiences, it is my opinion the phone call was not made because the idea was not from a certain individual. Instead, we pin our hopes to battery farms and badly organised concerts hoping for the big prize. Are we also buying lottery tickets each week in the hope of getting 6 numbers? It's Bill Leckie who despite the rag, and his proclivities for St Mirren, has been a great grassroots football journalist for decades. He was the one who wrote that article from the 4-3 Livi game many years ago featuring the famous Gringos photo and describing it something along the lines of the "cherry on top of an already scrumptious cake would have been a Caley Thistle equaliser" and then contrasting it to an old firm game the day before where the ref had been hit by a coin. Great Article.

I am starting to think that as well.

The man is an @rse to even contemplate making a statement like that. Speaks volumes. So based on the figures mentioned elsewhere, once the ST reaches 300 members, or lets say 350 to be sure, then we are good? The petition is now approaching 400 signatures so may also be regarded as a relevant straw poll eventually. nahh, only joking, its not what they want to hear so they will ignore it.

This article from the courier says it all - https://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/sport/i-never-believed-the-club-would-do-it-ict-legends-weigh-351640/

Thats parochial and insular bullshit. We have signed plenty of players from outwith the HL and local area who have done loads in the community because they have embedded themselves in the community. Carl Tremarco is a great example that jumps to mind but there are a load of others I could come up with depending on what you class as being "embedded in the community". Carl went on to stay in the local area long after his ICT days were over and them being over was a decision made for him not by him. You can represent the city and be present and active in the community even if you come from somewhere else, and even if you go somewhere else after your ICT career is over. Where you come from is irrelevant. Wanting to play for ICT, who are based in Inverness, Scotland, is the minimum requirement. I would agree however that the club has become less "community" focused over the last 5 years. Prior to COVID it was all about #TogetherNESS and working together to try and make sure the club could function properly. Fast forward 5 years, and after one commercial disaster after another and dragging the club name through the mud with the battery farm, we get a statement 3 days after relegation asking for "UNITY" then another statement today that completes rips out any semblance of COMM-UNITY from our club. There is no unity without comm-unity. Moving training to Fife because it will make recruitment of players - who do not want to move to Inverness - will, in my opinion, have a far greater long-term impact on us than relegation. I actually just 'liked' a tweet by "Jailender" calling County the only team in the Highlands. I liked it, not because I will change loyalties, but because, right now, he is correct. We cant let this happen. Central to our success over the years has always been community and a sense of team spirit fostered by our distance from the central belt, which even led to the use of a bunch of hashtags a few years ago like #TogetherNESS . The current regime seem to be trying to reverse all that progress at an astonishingly rapid pace and for many fans, any move outside of Inverness, even for training, will be seen as the final straw.

If they wont move to Inverness, then they should not play for Inverness. I don't care where they are from, local, Scotland, England, anywhere else, but the minimum requirement to play for Inverness is a commitment to live and/or work in the local community. Sounds more like the wording of our CEO not our chairman.

Over the last couple of weeks, my favourite expletive seems to have become the word 'Horsesh*t" and this falls into the biggest pile of it I have seen. ever. How do we get enough people or voting percentage together to force an EGM? This cannot be allowed to happen. It will kill the club completely. Supporters Trust? I thought Gardiner could not top his previous debacles .. Pixellot, the Concert, alienating staff, players and supporters, not to mention relegation but f*ck me, I underestimated the man. This puts a cherry on top of the whole fu*king lot, a really huge feckin' cherry! Funny how, for the most part, the players that end up staying in the area after their careers wind down came up not from Scotland, but from England. The central-belters, for the most part head back down the A9 to Glasgow/Edinburgh or some commuter belt outside of those cities. We are only 1 hour from London or Manchester by air and I bet there are plenty of hungry players down there who would not whine about the A9 as much (other than on match days). Hop on EasyJet and its all sorted. Happy to have another David Raven, Carl Tremarco, or Gary Warren out of that kind of scenario. To me its all about the sell-job. We may be a career club for some players (Tokely for example), but for others, who clearly won't make this their long-term club, we have previously used it, and should continue to use it, as an opportunity to sell the player on getting a career back on track or putting themselves in the shop window to get a move. Even if that move is (currently) to a higher league team across the Black Isle where they would not even need to move again. If they don't want to come here, then they don't want to come here, its that simple. Geography is simply an excuse. Look all over the rest of the world and a 140-mile relocation in some countries or for some clubs is called a commute! As for accommodation costs ... why are we paying these? My employer doesn't pay my mortgage, not directly at least, but they do pay me enough so I can afford it. Its my responsibility to get a house in a location I can afford that allows me to get to work to earn my wage. Back in the days when we were in the third tier before, players like Bobby Mann came to the club and literally stayed in B&Bs whose owners had an affiliation to the club and no doubt gave them a deal for a long-term rental. That may be an avenue to explore again. The bigger problem is that we are no longer in the Premiership or even the league below, we are now back down in the doldrums so attracting any player, regardless of where we train will be exponentially more difficult. Don't forget there will also be added costs. Presumably all the first team players (including young players in the squad) who currently live in Inverness and have houses will need to be brought down to Fife and either stay for the week for training or travel back on a daily basis? The first will cost money, the second is unsustainable. What about the youth players? How do they fare in this. Will they be brought to Fife or will they - as suspected in some circles - be abandoned and put an end to our youth system. How will players travel to Inverness for home games? In their own cars and claiming travel expenses and maybe a night in a hotel the night before? or will we hire a bus at considerable cost to get to our home-away game thereby doubling our transportation costs for the year. I could probably rant on for pages but I will stop here. This has got me more raging than the relegation so well done Gardiner. Now Get the F*ck out out of our club and take your cronies with you !!! Utter Horseshit!!! This cannot be allowed to happen. As others have said ... how can we be a community club when we are not even in the community on a day-to-day basis?