Scotty

2011 - yoda - Hibs - a FORCE once again

That happens to every club they will have a great spell getting goals all over the pitch, taking the full points but then out of the blue they will be getting no where, no goals and picking up the odd point My point is that it has happened to Brewster 3 times now ... with us, with DUFC and with us again .... I dont know the man and I have no axe to grind with him other than the fact I believe he was ripping the heart out of our team. I dont think he was doing it on purpose, he was just not cut out to be an SPL manager at that point of his career. Butcher may end up being no better, and there is evidence to support that - Brentford, Australia etc - but his SPL record since his hiring was better than Brewsters record when he got sacked and that should be an end to it. There is also the fact that he did reasonably well at another SPL club, which is something Brewster could not do. However, and I have been at pains to point this out, even with mitigating factors taken into account, Butcher's record right now is, at best, "average" and only a better record next season should be acceptable to both him and to us. I dont accept the viewpoint of some fans that we can solely blame him for our relegation in the same way as I dont accept the viewpoint that we can lay ALL the blame at Brewster's door. Its been a bad season and there is more than enough blame and s*** to go around !

doubt it ... rumour already that we will be lucky to see 2 or 3 of the first team ..... not sure my football budget stretches to $125 +parking fees for an evening friendly against a 4th string lineup ....... very torn about this one ! Have until next week to decide though.

I fear you could be right.

Oh I know it doesnt work like that ... and you are correct, Brewster's first 15 games in charge after taking over from Charlie were promising to say the least, with wins over Hearts (twice), Celtic and Dundee Utd and a run of 5 wins in a row .... it just went downhill after that (which also happened in his first spell). Like Mantis, I am not saying Butcher is the messiah, I just dont think there deserves to be so much anti-Butcher sentiment after 15 games in such difficult circumstances. In 07/08 Brewster had a decent record - winning 37% of games, losing 51% and drawing the rest - but in 08/09 that record had changed to winning 22% and losing nearly 70% so he had to go. Butcher has a record of 33% in each of the W/L/D categories so far and personally that is "average" or "adequate" as far as I am concerned. I would expect Butcher to post far higher numbers in 09/10 or he will too be on a sticky wicket. For comparison sakes .... Robbo's division 1 championship winning side had a league record of 58.3% wins, 19.4% draws and 22.2% losses so I would say that might be a reasonable benchmark to aim at next season ?

and Toronto FC are playing Madrid in a friendly in August ..... still torn about getting a ticket though prices are pretty high

yes we knew what we had to do on the last day ...... and we didnt do it. Just like we didnt do it in every single other game we lost (or drew) over the whole season ..... we lost 1-0 to Hamilton in our first home game, we lost 2-1 to St Mirren in the next one .... We conceded 5 at Ibrox and 4 at Falkirk .....not to mention countless other results that you could say "what if" about over the course of the season ... including winning 3pts when it wasnt expected at places like Ibrox or Pittodrie. The bottom line is that a turnaround in ANY game we lost or drew would have kept us up. Is Butcher to blame for this ... well, YES I suppose he is to the extent that the buck stops with the manager so for any dodgy result in the last 15 games of the season then he has to accept culpability along with the players .... but as I have said before, what he inherited in terms of a demoralised team cast adrift at the bottom of the SPL is not necessarily a good benchmark from where to start so I am prepared to cut him more slack than his predecessor who has to accept responsibility for the 22 games that he oversaw. Add the players to the mix and also the board - who it can and has been argued could have sacked Brewster earlier - and you have a multitude of people we can all point fingers at. However, no matter how much finger pointing we do, no matter who any of us choose to lay the blame at, no matter how much we moan and groan or bitch and gripe, it will change nothing. Disharmony f***** our season last year, we need to make sure we are all behind the team in the coming season to try and help them get back to the SPL.

agree. his form is spread evenly between W/L/D .... extrapulated to a full season that amounts to 13/12/13 and could work out at between 49 and 52 pts depending on where you put the "12". Based on this season that is a 5th or 6th place finish !

At the end of the day, the jury is still out on Butcher and like Brewster before him he needs to be given time to show whether he can or cannot do it. 15 games when stuck in a relegation mire with a demoralised squad of players and other issues all around is hardly a fair benchmark. Butcher's stats are definitely what you could call "average". If you cast aside the two cup games (won 1, lost 1) you are left with 15 games. He won 5, he lost 5, and he drew 5. We scored 15 goals, we conceded 15 goals. Depending on whether you are part of the glass half-full or glass half empty crowd, you could say he didnt lose 2/3 of his games ... or he didnt win 2/3 of his games. However, if you compare his stats to Brewster who was in charge for 22 games this season, Butcher suddenly looks a bit better than average in comparison ! Brewster's tally was 5 wins, 2 draws and 15 losses with 20 goals scored and 38 against. Using the same half-full, half empty logic .... Brewster didnt lose +22% of his games but didnt win +77% of them !!! Like many others, I believe that TB and MM need to be given time to work. It is devastating that we were relegated on so many levels and as much as they could and should take some small part of the blame, there is enough of it to be spread around many different people !!! I hacve said it before, and will likely say it again, but we were not relegated on the last day ..... if we had scored 3 more goals or gained a single more point over the course of the whole season we would still have been in the SPL and you can choose where you want to lay that blame. Brewster lost 15 games and drew 2 .... I am sure we could have gained a point or scored more goals in at least one of those !! Butcher lost 5 and drew 5 ... again, you could argue we could or should have scored a couple more or gained a point in at least one of those games ...... The simple fact is we didnt, and any amount of post-mortems is going to change precisely nothing. We need to get behind the team for next season and be the extra man that drives whatever team Butcher puts together onwards and upwards back to the SPL !

Scottish season = August - May MLS Season = April - October for me there is always football :)

In a tight 1-0 game there is always doubt but thats going off-topic and there are already a dozen threads dealing with the what ifs !

In the club's defence, and one of the (many) reasons I have never liked Errea as a shirt supplier is that we are an extremely small fish in a big pond ..... we have no clout with them. It is they who dictate deadlines to us, it is they who dictate minimum order quantites to make a line viable, it is they who can takes weeks (or even months) to deliver, it is they who take a whole month off in summer thereby extending delivery dates, it is they who hold an amount of money in bond (or used to) as if they dont trust us ........ The club are not innocent in all of this but they cant take all the blame !

Do you really believe that playing in Div1 under TB is a preferable option to playing under John Hughes in the SPL? Thats really two questions in one ..... Playing in Div 1 as opposed to the SPL should not be preferable for any player. However ........... playing for TB, the man who discovered him while at Motherwell and brought him to Inverness and got decent performances out of him in both places may be preferable to playing for Yogi in Falkirk. What if Falkirk get relegated next season? ... they almost did this year. What if he doesnt respond to Yogi's style? What about the ICT curse? Its a gamble and the answer will depend on a couple of factors I would have thought .... #1 is money. If he is motivated by that then he will be offski, no doubt. #2 is how much loyalty he has to TB and how well TB can make the case for how he sees next season going. If Butcher is setting the bar at going straight back up then maybe he will stay, but if the bar is set that we want a top half finish and be back up within two or three years then I would not blame him for looking elsewhere.

According to one paper yesterday we have been paid our twelvth place reward. it said that all bottom six clubs had been paid after the split the equivalent of the bottom place. the rest were waiting on the individual placing differences. We could be waiting on the parachute payment though. According to the chairman in one of the papers, cant mind which one, we were still waiting for our 50K. The 3m is to cover these payments so one way or another we will get, or may have already received that 50K. The parachute payment should bnot be affected by any Setanta shenanigans as that comes from the SPL and was not part of the TV money deal where each club gets a certain percentage.

If Foran stays (and I hope he does) it will have been for one reason and one reason only .... Terry Butcher. That is the one thing we have that Falkirk and St Johnstone cant offer him.

Should mention this one to the Toronto FC supporters as we "march" from the pub to the stadium for almost every game ...... although I cant see them walking from Toronto to New York in between our last two league games

was looking for something else on NewsNow and came across these links published today 442 Magazine: http://fourfourtwo.com/news/restofeurope/32074/default.aspx Reuters UK: http://uk.reuters.com/article/sportsNews/i...0090605?rpc=401 Reuters India: http://in.reuters.com/article/sportsNews/i...05?rpc=401& Yahoo Sports: http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/news?slug=reu-...s&type=lgns well done guys, you truly have gone global !

its the 12 who were waiting on the final payment of the season from Setanta - we will get around 50K.

I perhaps have a unique viewpoint on this as I was one of two people responsible for creating the first Boardroom Banter series of articles and heavily involved with a few more folks in resurrecting them for series 2 !! At the time of series 1, the club embraced the fans and wanted to get information out to them. This was largely down to people like Kenny Cameron, Ken Thompson and even David Sutherland putting some effort into it and also to me in regularly writing articles that the club did not see as controversial. At the end of the day, we were a lower division club, with a smaller fanbase, and we were not in the SPL goldfish bowl so questions could be asked and answered in a fairly open manner. We were also the official site when these articles were happening so they were tantamount to official releases from the club (that nobody except the fans was interested in). I can pinpoint the exact moment that series 1 of BB came to an end. It was when Kenny Cameron left the board. Liaison with the fans (via the website) which had been undertaken first by Ken Thompson and then by Kenny Cameron over the course of the previous 4 or 5 years was turned over to Nigel <whatsisname> (Inverness Medical) and that was the last we ever got in terms of liason with the board until Kenny/Grassa agreed to try it out again this past season and although the answers have been less open, I still commend them for at least trying. A lot has changed over the ensuing time period. There have been significant changes in the administration of the club some good, some not so good. We are definitely more professional in many areas but numerous positions that were once occupied by volunteers are (were?) now paid positions and volunteers were more and more excluded or looked at suspiciously, partly because certain people didnt like the access it gave them, and partly because the club had to step it up a notch for the SPL. In my opinion, this eroded a lot of the goodwill away from the club as it moved more and more towards being a corporate entity that seemed to view fans as a necessary evil than a community based club where people were approachable. I guess that is progress for you though. The SPL was also a big factor in the club having to be very careful about what it said both publicly and through any other means such as their website. I wont go into the long drawn story about how we went from being the official site back to being unofficial (I'll save that for the book ) but SPL rules meant the club could potentially be held accountable for comments made by fans on message boards attached to an official site. The long and the short of it was basically that the club and myself had to make a decision whether the site would lose the forum, or lose the official status and as you are reading this forum you know what the decision was ..... As an official forum we definitely cracked down on wayward comments far more than we do now. I was mindful of trying to walk a tightrope between fans and club and at times pleasing none of them. Some at the club would say that we allowed chaos and anarchy, some of the fans would call us the club's own little pravda ... you couldnt win. When we became unofficial we didnt change much except the latitude of certain rules and this has meant that when you take everything together .... the relaxed rules, the perception that the club dont care, the goldfish bowl effect of the SPL, the increased expectation of fans, and any manner of other factors, the forum has become a far more critical and skeptical place than it was 5 years ago. So with the re-introduction of BB, Grassa and Kenny are approaching a more "hostile" environment than they once contributed too, they have to keep one eye on SPL communication/comment rules, and with the increased "professionalism" at the club, they also have to deal with a lot more internal politics and bureaucracy about who can say what and when. Its no wonder the articles/answers are a lot more "generic" and a lot less effusive. My philosophy on this is "slowly slowly catchee monkey". We did once have a great and trusting relationship between board/fans/website. For varying reasons (depending on your own personal viewpoint) this has eroded over the last 5 years. It will take time for that to be rebuilt and time for the "banter" to be as off the cuff as it once was. The club used to answer some questions in a jovial manner but this is unlikely to happen any more as it would likely be twisted - by fans or media - into something it is not. Lazy journalism and the continued emergence of the Internet has seen to it that comments made in jest can often be turned back on you. We will keep trying with BB until such time as the club or you guys decide it is not worth it. I will always believe it is !

Ian Vigurs was our most promising youngster and one of a select group of ICT players that can pass the ball. He arrived at Elgin at 15 y/o played about 20 odd games then signed for ICT and in the 4 years since then has played 20 odd games, which part of promising were you thinking of, 6 years and an everage of 8 starts a season? Everyone has jumped on the band wagon of Vigurs but no one seems to have given a second thought to Zander, same age only been on the pro books 3 years played twice as many times for Elgin and over twice as many for ICT has also chipped in with more goals, and while at Elgin got nominated for 3rd Div Player of Year. He didn't get a chance with Butcher due to injury (think he had an Op) and also released, I think this is who we should be moaning about losing rather than Vigurs or Wood but of course Zander doesn't have his mate on here to push through his personal agenda(CaleyP)!! yes i am mates with iain but i am also very good mates with the majority of the team including dougie and very good mates with zander too, so if you are trying to use the bias card then sorry that won't work. mike i must ask though, you do realise zander only started once for the club, good argument there mate considering iain is in double figures on that stat. also iain actually scored more goals as well, zander got 1 i think and iain got three. o well maybe next time your argument will be stronger mike but probably not. Iain Vigurs: 15 starts for ICT, sub appearances in a further 10 games, 3 goals, 4 yellows : http://stats.caleythistleonline.com/player.php?id=83 Zander Sutherland: 2 starts for ICT, sub appearances in a further 7 games, 0 goals, 1 yellow : http://stats.caleythistleonline.com/player.php?id=37

As it says above ...... "As an existing Season Ticket holder, you have until 5pm Friday 3rd July to renew your seat; release seats will be on general sale from 9am Tuesday 7th July" If you know when you can pay, then it is a wise suggestion to contact the club directly and have that conversation. If they know about it, they may accomodate you.

no. definitely not too late. There are quite a few contributors from last year who dont come on this site (for example some Innes Bar punters) and Guzz expects they will want to be involved. As it stands, the cost of sponsoring a player has also reduced so at a tenner a head we will likely sponsor more than 1 item from 1 player. The costs for next season are: Home top - ?320 Away top - ?240 Training top - ?80 Boots - ?80 so by my reckoning - assuming everyone who committed to it actually pays - we are already good for Granty's home top and two-thirds of the way to an away top for him or another player ........

The club have asked us to point out that In addition to the normal shop hours, the ticket office will be open every Saturday from 10am to 2pm until further notice to help fans renew or buy their season tickets.

if someone from the club sends it to us we will happily make it available.

home kit will be the same for next season, its the away kit that is changing. It will be predominantly white and I believe it is similar to at least one of the designs on the kit thread we had a couple of months back but not sure which design !