Scotty

For me, I think the best option - whether some agree with the organisation and its current leadership or not - is to make the Supporters' Trust "strong and relevant". Call out that statement for the BS it is!! An inbuilt voting share of 10% plus the potential to have other supporters to perhaps proxy their personal shareholdings to the Trust may be the quickest and possibly most effective way to have a voice heard. I hear the arguments made, and everyone is entitled to their opinion, but for those who decry the lack of communication from the club, then the Supporters Trust is at least communicating on here in this forum, and has been reasonably often, as well as the subforum they asked us to setup (https://caleythistleonline.com/forum/152-supporters-trust/) and it should be noted that they also just setup their own feedback forum on the back of the report: https://www.ictsupporterstrust.org/forum Only issue I have is I don't use credit card for personal online purchases and there does not appear to be a PayPal or alternate payment option otherwise I would be reporting now that I have joined already because the 'strong and relevant' comment has tipped the scales for me.

If that quote from the club is correct and completely in context, then it is worrying. I am guessing it came from the CEO as it sounds like the kind of verbiage he has used in the past. If so, then exactly what does this employee of the club, which is owned by its underlying shareholders define as a "strong and relevant" group? If we assume that the season ticket base is somewhere between 1000 and 2000 as often quoted, then is the definition of "strong" or "relevant" 10% 20% or 50% of that number? Who has arbitrarily decided the level or does it vary depending on how accountable you choose to be? Does an organisation with 200 paid members and a minimum 10% voting right in the organisation for which this employee works cut it? no? 500 members with the same 10% right? If so why the delineation based on number rather than voting share? We (CTO) have - on average - 5000 unique 'real people' per month visiting the site when you exclude anonymous visits, bots, search engines etc. Are we strong or relevant? or, as has been levied at us in the past are we just a bunch of whingeing naysayers in the eyes of some folks and happy clappers in the eyes of others? Are sizeable numbers of Twitter and Facebook users relevant even though not organised into a single cohesive group? Social media postings, even on an individual basis if strong enough can often cause policy changes in even the biggest companies. What about Podcast listeners? or Travel Club members? or section 94? all of whom seem to be relevant to the club sometimes and not others. Bottom line is that when enough people from all of these disparate 'groups' are unhappy about the situation then the powers that be should really take notice. Whether you are a proponent of the Trust or see issue with it, it doesnt really matter, the reality is that the survey is an excellent document and one that the club would be ludicrously stupid to ignore or write off just because it says what they don't want to hear. The highlighted bit is the money shot here IMHO. We have been through all of the highs and lows together and for most of it we showed "TogetherNESS" as the old cliche went ... but sometimes during our 29-year history, we have gone it alone with the support and club badly misaligned. These have typically been the deepest lows and the club at those times has become more and more insular thinking it protects itself if it does not communicate. This is the worst I have seen communication in my memory and to be sure, it does NOTHING to protect the club, just alienates more and more people. For fans to not even get a reply from the SLO or when fans send generic emails with zero controversy and those are still ignored, is unacceptable and if we were ever to aim for the premiership again, this would also pose a problem for achieving UEFA club licensing for the top division. Its not that hard. You start with the small stuff. reply to emails and engage the support. Perhaps one day you can graduate to multiple paragraphs or regular communications? ^ this 💯 % You are entitled to your opinion, but I can't really agree with this. Over the last 29 years there have been various incarnations of official supporters' organisations with varying names. The commonality between them is that they were always run by unpaid volunteers, who have the club in their heart. Is it the same group of people? yes, quite frequently its the same names in the frame every year, but that's because these are often the only ones stepping up. Do those people become jaded after a while? absolutely - talking from experience on that one. You can only bang your head against a brick wall so often. In the case of specific individuals you mention, yes, they did a good/great job of engagement either while volunteers or in some cases while in the employ of the club, but I think in those cases life happened with job changes, moving houses etc. or they also banged heads against brick walls, so they no longer actively participate. Again, you are entitled to show your displeasure how you want, and it is perhaps wrong of me to comment in either direction given that, other than the player sponsorship (for last season, or for the season just started) which we have heard nothing about since the end of the season, I have very little commercial interaction with the club or local businesses except when visiting. Wholeheartedly agree about the concert debacle and to this day I wonder why they never looked to talk with (or perhaps they did?) someone like Les Kidger or Kenny Cameron who had previously run successful concerts either at the stadium, as a (CK Events) partnership, or on their own. indeed. All seems very unsustainable. Think it has pretty much been like that for a few years hasn't it? Getting to that point too. For me, one of the best (worst) examples of where we wasted money we didn't need to, was Pixellot or whatever it was called. Through the years with volunteers like Don and Andy and others ICT built a pretty good (dare I say award winning) social and broadcast media team, but it seems that this was not really good enough for some as volunteers are (and to an extent always have been) viewed with suspicion at ICT. "What are you after?", "Why are you doing this?", "What's in it for you?". Some people can't grasp that volunteers can simply be in it because they want what's best for their club and are willing to put in time or services if they cant pour in hard cash. In the end we chose to replace that perfectly good arrangement of Andy doing the excellent camera and editing work with a baldy headed social media moment that still does the rounds on social media and not in a good way. Why did we do it? Was it because the perfectly good system in place needed replacing? or was it more to do with it not being an idea that came from a specific source? That ethos is a sure recipe for failure and its painful to watch.

Makes interesting reading so far - have added a sidebar link to the right of the page for anyone who needs to go directly to the page --->

... or hope !!

and we know which end of the table each of those teams were at for most of the season... will give the boy a chance and hopefully be pleasantly surprised 🙂

Kind of had a similar transition at Toronto over the years ... Season tickets started (2007) with really nice printed tickets sent out each year but you could also use an account on the website where you could download your ticket and print a PDF for entry - or have the PDF or a screenshot of it on your phone. Each had a barcode linked to your ticket so it could only be used once. Then (maybe 5 years later) they did away with the printed tickets and allowed you to continue either printing PDFs or using screenshots, and over the last 2 or 3 years they have taken away that as well and now the only way you get in is via the Toronto FC app. You can show a barcode from the app or download to Apple Wallet. It's all linked to a Ticketmaster account (so you can use that app too) and that makes it easy to send your ticket to friends if not using it (no Ticketmaster fees for that fortunately). Downside, from an ICT perspective perhaps - as mentioned - some of the older supporters may not have tech skills or even a smartphone capable of doing this, and from the club perspective, there may be a significant cost in creating a fully digital ticketing system that can scan and verify your ticket in real time and allow some of the expected bells and whistles...

New 2nd kit not for me. Happy with the V neck home kit, looks really good in pictures. Also happy with the vertical stripes red/black from last year as it also looks good and I hope we keep it this year too (given the promise to have 2 years at least for each kit). The orange one, not so sure. It is definitely different and I am assuming the red squares are actually more red than they look in the picture as they seem to be similar to the shorts where the orange border fades away towards the bottom of the shirt ... keeper tops are cracking.

Prefer the V neck myself. Find it very hard and uncomfortable to wear the round neck shirts and tend to stick to polo tops these days. Can see myself getting one of these I think.

Better watch out for that Nairn #4 !!

you are probably right, but then again, depending on who the fan is then they too stand the risk of being accused of just being a boardroom shill by elements of the fanbase. A classic case of not being able to please everyone. I am sure the well-meaning members of the Trust, and anyone else who has been on any supporter's organisation (and not just at ICT) can attest to this. Perhaps what is needed is a bit of both? A fan based rep for the generic or oft asked fan questions and a club official where it needs a more formal answer or may need to be escalated. Email forwarders could handle both people under one address 🙂 The club have always been pretty parochial and insular with information, and in some cases, that's the correct stance. We may want to know everything and think we have the right, but we do not. Confidential info, personnel information, or business critical stuff need to remain confidential until it can be announced where appropriate. However almost everything else should be up for public consumption and certainly not a secret, but that's seldom the case. When called out about this behaviour, the level (and scope) of insularity then increases exponentially and actually does damage like we are seeing now. We have seen it many times before with different boards so it's nothing new. What's also not new is the fact that it's also pretty pointless trying to "manage" the non-confidential info this way as the flow of info from the stadium can sometimes be akin to water in a sieve. Many of the things raised recently are hardly state secrets (or should not need to be). How about we get back to the way the club used to share some info in a timely fashion and trot out the confidentiality clause only when it really is something that should not be discussed in the public domain. #OpenNESS

Don't care who it is provided they are responsive and handle the contact with supporters quickly and with fairness. Also don't buy the "doesn't get emails" line. It is so simple to set up email aliases, groups and/or forwarders that can deliver or forward email sent to one generic address such as SLO@<domain> to one, two or a hundred other email addresses including personal or internal addresses.

not my experience with Mr. Rae.

Is Keith back? Thought he had moved to Brechin City last September? Although he does seem to have been tweeting about ICT in Apr and June. He was indeed easy to deal with when I last spoke with him.

email address seems appropriate given the speed of response.

nope, communication should not be dependent on membership of anything. However, if the trust can reach a tipping point where it has a significant membership, seen to be representative of the support then they really do need to listen if the Trust speaks with a representative voice. Whether they do or not is another question. I would wager that many of those who don't get a response or who are grumbling may be shareholders. I for one would be happy to proxy my miniscule holding to the Trust for any meetings in future. If you have a few hundred more like that then you take the 10% voting share they already have and make it a little more. That just might be noticed. If we do manage to make it back to the premiership then it is also worth considering that our current method of communication - or lack thereof - may not stand up to UEFA club licensing criteria.

Having been involved in the committee of the Supporters Club 20 years ago, and probably involved to this day in something other than just the website if I still lived in Inverness, I can say that if enough people came forward to want to be involved, then the supporters club/trust (or whatever name it went under) would typically relish the idea of having actual elections. The reality is you get a handful of people, mostly the same people, stepping up to get involved in these ventures. These are typically folk that do have the interests of supporters at the heart of things and are dedicated ICT fans so also try to do what's in the interests of the club. Over the course of a few years they do get questioned about motives and in some cases cant win - being regarded a certain way by both club and supporters alike. I understand when some of these folks get jaded as you can only bang your head against a brick wall for so long, but they keep doing it because no-one else is coming forward. Would be great to see some representation from all parts of the ground and all age groups. I too have been lax in throwing my fiver in, but perhaps I should.

We cant force players or their agents to accept our contract offers, nor to negotiate them when they are coming to an end. The days of Jim McLean style contracts have been over for decades. Its a sad reality but given how we also lurch from year to year financially, offering longer term contracts is also not feasible whether we like it or not. Even if we were in a position to offer long term deals, if a player doesn't want to commit to that length of contract there's not a lot we can do about it. Unfortunately, I agree. As much as it sticks in the throat, players going to County or Killie is currently an upward step. Higher wages, higher level of competition etc. We cant put that ridiculous situation right until we can get out of this division (in the right direction).

IT could be ...

@Govan Jaggie - think life happened ... like many people who are no longer around the site.

All ready here. Just coffee for now but the beat up old cup which I have had for years could only be bettered by the one on offer today 😉

Just donated to take it over the £1000 mark. Well done you absolute (Inter)Nutter !!

Thats likely the prize money but does it include the shared gate receipts for the semis and final? That might be where the numbers look wrong as the number floating around a few weeks ago was well over £1m impact on our income.

Aint gonna happen IMHO ... Police Scotland will quosh that idea citing public order concerns. Gives @IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER way too much time for all those Voddies.

2015 FA Cup Final kicked off at 5:30PM ... obviously didnt want to be overshadowed by ICT -V- Falkirk game that kicked off at 3PM the same day. Managed to convert a few TFC & Arsenal fans to ICT that day 🙂 The cynic in me says if there is money on the table (or under it) then it will be moved away from 3pm, especially as the FA has confirmed Man Utd -V- Man City as 3PM (assuming the proposed rail strike doesn't kybosh all of that). Logic dictates that they will go for the earlier kickoff for the SFA final as they never want to give fans too much time to get tanked up before the match. Time to set the alarm clocks folks!

http://stats.caleythistleonline.com/player.php?id=189