Scotty

I went down the rabbit hole didn't I !!! https://seventy7.ventures/seventy7-ventures-appointed-as-capital-and-business-advisors-to-ldg-group https://www.linkedin.com/in/scot-gardiner-ab659847/?originalSubdomain=uk https://seventy7sports.com/ and my personal favourite page: https://seventy7sports.com/client-portfolio

thought that too ... it was the tie that threw me off but the stadium looks right on google. Big screen on the profile looks like it is for some corporate event as those are not players who are shown but photo not so hi-res that you can zoom in. However, that's enough time wasted on this rabbit hole for me. Just NO Facebook, NO.

ehhh, Facebook ... just NO !!!

I apologise for this now being in your head .... could be worse, could have posted a link to Agadoo !

Am I alone in actually feeling sorry for County? Perhaps I have been overseas too long, but my dislike for County is at a lower level than the Adams-Esque seethe that I feel for the 'Livi Lions'. In fact, County barely scrape into third behind Livi and Elgin.

Agree. The contacts that Charlie, Kells or others at the club have can be invaluable. However, how we treat other clubs and the players themselves has a huge impact too. We were sh1t at that more recently, and everyone has seen or read about how we treated Shane Sutherland, or Aaron Doran, or how we didn't pay other clubs for loan fees etc. I would like to think that we are now starting to rebuild that - seeing that the club are offering short-term contracts to players recovering from injury, and also the news that operations were paid for is a great sign. The crop of loanees that Kells had after administration also seemed to sing the praises of the club so hopefully clubs that the previous regime burned in the past can see we are back on the rails in how we deal with players and other teams.

Jack Newman's contract is expiring at DUFC according to TransferMarkt. Might be worth a shout?

Happy on both fronts. Great when someone other than the twins win something and whilst I had no soft spot for Aberdeen when I went to university there, nor when we played them in cup games, I softened on them in 2004 when they helped us out with a groundshare, getting us into the SPL. Also lots of player history between the clubs, and the recent loaning of players to us under administration may well have helped keep us in L1. Delighted for Shinnie as well. 300th appearance, lifting the cup twice in 10 years with two different clubs, great stuff.

Hopefully he may be able to be involved in football in some capacity if that's his aim. My son's football team over here has a couple of coaches who had to quit the game through injury, one who played in Germany and the other here in Canada. They cannot play competitively but can still do coaching, technique, tactics etc. One has also founded his own academy as a side gig similar to what ex-players sometimes do on both sides of the pond. Also, let's not forget ICT legend Pele Paterson, whose playing career ended through injury too. He went on to be pretty successful as our manager

Posting this in the main forum as it affects everyone and not everyone reads all the various other forums! Take a read and feel free to ask any questions you may have in the thread below. I will be upgrading the site to a new major version of the forum software during the summer. The look and feel of the site will not change too much, but some features may be added or deleted based on the capability of the new software. I will also take the opportunity to merge or migrate certain portions of the site based on feedback from a few people. Here is one major change that will definitely affect everyone .... You will no longer be able to login with your display name (username); you must use your email address. This is a security feature and in preparation for this change we would encourage all users to make sure your email address in your account is up to date and valid. You can check/change this within your profile here: https://caleythistleonline.com/settings/. Not sure when we make that switch, but you can already login using your email so you may want to get into that habit and if necessary change it to a current one and/or reset passwords etc. Other changes in the software that I don't think affect too many people or may not be that major to most users include: Status updates have been removed in v5. Open tagging has been replaced with a new system in v5. Facebook & Twitter social promotion has been removed in v5. (mainly used by our admins) Forums: Q&A mode has been removed in v5. From a design perspective, we hope to retain most things but may prune older posts and content as the database is pretty huge and can cause things to slow down here and there. The older posts would still be visible, and searchable, but images or links may no longer work once archived. This preparatory work will start before we migrate to the new version as we don't want to migrate a whole bunch of stuff we will no longer use. We have confirmed with both the Supporters Trust and the Travel Club that they will have their own mini-sites (labelled as Clubs in the new version of the software). This will allow those groups to manage and maintain their own area, have a separate forum area, gallery, blog, event calendar etc but all be accessible and searchable by users from the main forum listings and 'unread content' search. We are open to any other niche forums being converted to clubs and/or adding new areas - for example, might we benefit from having a separate area for supporting the women's team? Open to ideas and or development/growth in that area. Send me a note if you think of something that might be worthwhile considering. Our stats program (https://stats.caleythistleonline.com) is getting old and while it will continue to be maintained and available on the site for the foreseeable future, we really need to get it updated to PHP8 compatibility. This will either cost us a fair bit of cash to get the original developer to do it (£750 - £1000) or we are always on the lookout for someone in our user list who has the skills to do it. I can dabble and tweak, and know just about enough to get into trouble with things, but I don't have the ability to do a full conversion. If you know anyone who would like to sponsor this upgrade (and would receive advertisements/accreditation on the stats site and pages) or someone who has the skills to donate their time to update this resource let me know. Once updated, we are happy to maintain it on a weekly basis and would even be happy to once again share it with the club as we did before (This was one of the ties that was severed by Rae/Crook a few years ago). Other than those tweaks, I don't think there will be a huge amount of change.

Maybe we should both phone Barcelona ! That Nessi and Messi tie in a few years ago could have been massive for his career.

Have to admit, there is something about Red/Blue stripes and an eagle on the chest that makes me smile First thought for any of the parents on my son's football team when I wear my ICT top is that it's a Crystal Palace one and more than once a conversation has started with "... you dont see many Crystal Palace fans ..." before clocking the badge properly and realising they still haven't seen one Congrats to @Eagle4Caley on a job well done. You even have your own Josh Meekings now too

Yup - September 22nd 2001. I had been in Canada when 9/11 happened and flew back (nervously) 10 days later. Coyle scored an 18-minute Hat-Trick, and we were 5-0- down at HT. Pretty strong team on our side, but one of those days i guess. https://stats.caleythistleonline.com/matchdetails.php?id=777

Oh, I remember that place ... the Sh***berry Excelsior Stadium! Prior to permanent emigration, I flew back into Glasgow one time, got a lift to the ground, cases and all, from InterTheNet, then endured a first half that saw us ship a record number of goals, fell asleep for most of the second half and got up the road on the supporters bus .... those were the days

Would love for them to stay if a contract can be agreed but will wish them well if they decide their future lies elsewhere. All four contributed well to our survival, were important parts of our team in a season full of turmoil, and that's all we can ask for. Fingers crossed for next season. As KoB says, happy we are in a position to say we can field a team next year - got a full team plus 4 subs signed up

He will forever be able to say that he lost his job due to administration, but after a 2-6-2 record in 2024/25 (12 pts) and some horrible football, I think he would have been long gone had the administrator not saved his bacon and sacked him. To be fair, he did only lose two games in 24/25, but his style saw us turn potential wins into 6 draws in 10 games. His replacement put up a 14-4-8 W-D-L record over the rest of the season, still losing games, sometimes when we shouldn't, but those draws turned into wins and that was a huge factor in staying up. I wanted to like DF at ICT, and some of his banter was - and still is - entertaining to listen to, and I even appreciate him taking a pay cut before administration, but if he had been left to continue the season, even for another month then I think we would have been relegated or at least in the playoffs again. Kell's record in his first 10 games was 6-1-3 (19 pts) ... which was 7 points more than Dunc's first 10 games ... and we missed the playoffs by 7 points! If he did not get punted on the first day of administration, the conversation we are having now might have been very different.

Don't go dancing in the streets of Raith now !!!

Yup - good luck to Keith. Hope he does well (except against us of course).

I remember my Granda relating to me that the "back roadie" behind both Hawthorn Drive and St Valery was made by the people who first lived in those houses. Many a summer was had where cars and motorbikes were tearing down them because they were unclassified roads and no license required. The trees and the wall lining the canal towpath at the top lock area were also great play places, especially as they had platforms on the housing side, accessible if you climbed the chains .... Health and Safety? What was that! We had our garden plot behind the house in Hawthorn Drive for many years, which eventually became a more organised facility staffed mostly by folk doing their community service ... We literally "lost the plot" when they took over the land and told us to move 60 feet to the left where my Granda taught me the joys of double-digging untended land to make a new plot I hate gardening to this day [ironic since I ended up for a spell as a Garden Centre Manager!] The bike run was a good one too .... you cycled from the top of Hawthorn Drive, along the 'back roadie', then at St Ninian you would go through all the various lanes to access the garages behind the houses until you eventually came out at the police houses at Bruce Gardens. Then it was up the stairs at that top end of St Valery, a quick tour of the stone hut before cycling the towpath all the way back to the top lock and doing it again, maybe in the other direction.

Totally agree. And it seems we may be at it again in thinking of reducing the Premiership to 10 teams to try and make things easier for the twins in being able to meet European schedules. The idea being that 36 games is easier than the current 38 perhaps? or are they looking to drop it even lower? to perhaps around 30? Reality is that football should be about all of the teams in the league not just the big two if you actually want anyone else to be remotely successful at home or abroad. 3 leagues of 16 teams plus the pyramid below it is and always has been my personal favourite. With an added 4-6 teams in the Premiership, you don't get that instant 'fighting relegation' mentality that most teams have to adopt, and perhaps you increase revenue and performance because of that, and maybe even have the ability to develop youth. If we take the current league tables and apply it ignoring promotion/relegation for a second, you get something like this. 4 teams into the Prem that would not be out of place or have been there before, a decent championship, and of course a new name for the league below as no reconstruction is ever good without some new names thrown around. Premiership: Celtic, Rangers, Aberdeen, Dundee Utd, Hibs, Hearts, St Mirren, Motherwell, Kilmarnock, County, Dundee, St Johnstone + Falkirk, Livi, Ayr, Partick Championship: Raith, Morton, Dunfermline, Queens Park, Airdrieonians, Hamilton, + Arbroath, Cove, QOS, Stenny, Alloa, Kelty, ICT, Montrose, Annan, Dumbarton National League: Peterhead, East Fife, Edinburgh, Elgin, Spartans, Stirling A, Clyde, Stranraer, Forfar, Bonnyrig, + Brora, Brechin, Banks O Dee from HL and East Kilbride, Caledonian Braves & Tranent from lowland league. (no B' teams allowed into main structure). Below that the pyramid continues to operate with a pathway to the main leagues for new and ambitious teams. Payment structure for league position must be fairer than the current system where teams finishing 1st and 2nd in Premiership take the lions share of all the sponsorship revenue. If the big two did want to reduce the number of games played, then why not play everyone just twice, once home and once away - that's 30 games and because you are not playing each other potentially 6 or 7 times a season between league and cups there is less opportunity for things to become stale. There is still the Scottish Cup and League Cup for everyone, and maybe for those teams not playing in Europe there could perhaps be an extra competition to make sure there are a few more games to make up for lost league games so they can generate some revenue. Perhaps a playoff system similar to MLS or based on Mexican Clausura or Apertura ... or, maybe just an expanded promotion and relegation playoff. I am sure better heads than mine could work it out. Regardless of the format, there has to be a way to give top end teams fewer domestic games (if that's their wish) while figuring out a way for other teams to be able to try and make ends meet with more games that will interest fans and generate some revenue. You are right - wages are insane. @Charles Bannerman has been blowing that particular trumpet on here for years and he is not wrong. I remember the days where £5000 a week was seen as a really high wage for a footballer (rather than a normal person). Thats around £250K per year and now some players are picking that up a week! Maybe not in most teams (or workplaces) around Scotland, but the wage structure globally impacts every league in the world. I don't believe Salary caps are the answer although there is one aspect of this in MLS that might have a nugget of an idea that could be applied. But I say with almost 100% certainty guarantee the 'haves' would not vote for it as it involves giving more money to the 'have nots'. In MLS there is a salary cap - google it if you need it explained or look here: https://www.mlssoccer.com/about/roster-rules-and-regulations - but the short-ish summary is that teams have just a little less than USD$6m per year to use on salary. They can have up to 3 DPs (Designated Players) and each one of those DPs is charged to the cap at a little less than $750K regardless of their actual wage. Its all very complicated and there are various ways to 'adjust' things so you can have multiple high paid players and still remain under the cap. Thats why each team tends to have what they call a "capologist" scrutinising every potential signing. Miami of course have Messi on $20m a year (not to mention Busquets, Suarez and Alba) and Toronto have Insigne on $15m per year (as well as Bernardeschi on $6m) but that's what rich clubs can do. Only $750K of that wage is counted against the cap, the rest is ignored in terms of calculating the cap hit. However, what it does create in many teams is a disparity or imbalance between the abilities and wages in the squad. MLSPA (Players association) publishes the player salary table twice per year : https://mlsplayers.org/resources/salary-guide and it makes eye watering reading. For TFC in 2024 we had 3 (DP) players above $1m then another 8 above $500K [3 of whom are not worth that], another 4 between $250K and $500K [all but one who we got rid of at the end of last season] and after that everyone else is below USD$250K with 7 players making the league minimum of USD$71.4K which in Toronto or most big North American cities is not a living wage. For Miami it is the same, Messi and Busquets make almost $30m between them, then surprisingly Suarez and Alba make just $1.5m with another two players over $1m. Yet they have 13 players getting less than $100K per year which is 2 DAYS of Messi's salary. (and that's before endorsements and apple TV royalties). The nugget that COULD be taken from the salary cap in MLS is one idea - which seems to have been omitted from recent documents so perhaps dropped as they adjusted the rules ahead of this season - is for teams who had 3 DPs to have to pay a 'tax' to the league for the privilege. Basically, teams were previously allowed 2DPs but when LA, NY, and Miami were squad building they pressured the league into allowing 3 DPs. Some teams like those mentioned as well as Toronto took advantage of this because they had the money. However, other teams are not quite so rich and stuck with two. Due to this MLS devised a plan whereby any team signing a 3rd DP must pay an additional fee to the league that was then re-distributed to teams who did not have a 3rd DP. That money was then added to their cap to allow them to sign better mid-level players under the cap. LA, NY, Miami and Toronto got nothing from this fund, but teams like Colorado or Salt Lake City got a share of this pot over and above other money from the league. Like I said though - can't see the wealthier clubs in Scotland agreeing to something like that if we agreed a similar payment that allowed them to go above the wage cap for a certain number of players, or for overall salary in the squad. They will no doubt argue that the Financial Fair Play rules already oversee this but that does nothing to help out the less wealthy teams, quite the opposite in fact.

Starting to read through it ... but first thing that jumps out to me is

Completely agree Thats how it works for me in Toronto. I am in a group that committed to season tickets in 2006, just after we got accepted into MLS but before we had an actual team, a manager, a stadium or even a formally agreed name. My price is still a little lower than people in my same section who have purchased in the last 5-10 years although the gap has narrowed. Getting a discount does work and in ICT's case could perhaps make you feel you belong again. There may be some residual irritation from some supporters at losing shares so language also matters and addressing season ticket holders as 'members' and giving a 'member discount' for continued season ticket renewals might be a way to hit two birds with one stone. I think the loss of revenue could easily be made up with merchandise, program, or food sales ... or from more profits in Bar 94 which seems to be doing well thanks to the ST. As much as administration was a hard slog and SG was almost universally despised within the ICT support, it has galvanised us. We are far closer to being a community again than we have at any point in the last 7 or 8 years, more willing to work together, and the club has got back to basics and seems less arrogant about everything.

Scotty: Cove @ 2.2 CDN Girl: ICT @ 2.1 SOS: Alloa @ 2.25

*** joker to be applied to any predictions if we still have any left *** Scotty: HT: 1-1 FT: 1-3 1st Scorer ICT: Bray 1st Scorer Opp: Dillon Crowd: 820 CDN Girl HT: 1-0 FT: 1-2 1st Scorer ICT: Mckay 1st Scorer Opp: Sandilands Crowd: 768 SOS HT: 0-1 FT: 1-3 1st Scorer ICT: Devine 1st Scorer Opp: Brown Crowd: 810

I was responding to another thread when I was reminded that I had meant to post a little more about my son's training. As i noted above, he does it three times a week, plus we have him in a dedicated 'striker school' for the next 8 weeks, with one or sometimes two games during the week so he could potentially be playing or training 5-6 days a week in May and June. However, this is at a local (grass roots) club rather than the professional team (TFC). He was with "TFC Juniors" from age 5, which is the starting pathway to the professional academy, but they mothballed that program at the start of COVID and when they re-opened the youth training, the TFC academy now starts at age 14 with nothing below that. They recommend you go to a local grass roots club and the one we are at is affiliated to and has close ties with TFC but is not TFC. They all follow the same national training curriculum, and his club employs professional coaches, but this is where I think ICT actually do better than people give them credit for. The structure, framework and dedication of individuals is there, it just needs a bit more attention and maybe some resources to hopefully take it up a notch. Many teams are shutting down youth systems as a cost cutting measure but I am glad we are not one of them.