Scotty

Duff / Munro for me too !

I wasnt meaning Gringo Jnrs wedding per say ... but to have a race night on the 12th for one ICT group and another on the 26th for a different group doesnt seem to make sense (for either body). The same applies at the end of the season when it seems to be a scramble to organise different end of season parties.

Cant make it but I have one simple suggestion for them ...... CO-ORDINATE Supporters Trust, Football Club and Supporters Club events so they dont clash or happen too close together .... even joint events where each entity might make slightly less money is surely preferable to several events where people are forced to choose which ones to go to either because of dates or economics

I wouldnt call it Americanisation either ..... Fans at Toronto FC are positively encouraged to enjoy themselves (within reason), especially in the "supporters section". In fact, TFC are expanding their supporters section by another 4 blocks for 2009 season. Maybe they actually have it right. The seating is priced in such a way that the expensive seats that draw business people or corporate groups are at the centre line, with prices dropping as you go further round the stadium. The whole section behind the goals is classed as the supporters section, and rules are relaxed, standing is allowed, and flags and banners tolerated ....... People buying tickets in those sections are told to expect noise, chanting, flags, drums, banners and it is suggested to them to move elsewhere if they are not comfortable with that !!! It remains to be seen what will happen as the team evolves, especially as Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (the owners) are notorious for pricing normal fans out of the stadium at the Air Canada Centre where the Maple Leafs play hockey but for now, they are treating us pretty well. note: before anyone asks ... friendly prices are higher than MLS because the friendlies have been against the likes of Benfica, Aston Villa, Pachuca and Independiente !

Ours (also a Lab [or lab x Newfoundland cross to be exact]) would rip open cushions, tear up newspapers, plastic bags etc ... anything she could reach or that we had left within reach by mistake. She grew out of it by about age 2 !! We were told it was likely "separation anxiety" because Labs are so sociable and our particular one had been abandoned by her former family and ended up at the Humane Society where we got her. We went and bought a big cage/crate but she didnt like that so we tied her out in the back yard on a 30' leash but she always ended up tangled up in the shrubs after chasing squirrels. In the end, she just stopped doing it. Not sure if it was because we give her lots of attention when we are in the house, because she gets frequent walks as a 'treat' for behaving, because we learned not to make a big fuss over her as we left the house, or simply because she learned for herself that although we were leaving the house, we would be back soon .....

The shows are making it there too though .... The big wheel is a prime attraction and so is the food wagon

Wasnt your opinions that made me think that, it was a couple of comments you made. I would say that many of your points are valid and well put and have added to the debate. I am sure Alex who is often accused of being overly positive will welcome having a fellow positive poster to share in the abuse banter. Who knows, perhaps more people will be posting positively if and when the BB and communication in general with the club improves. I would agree. Its an age old argument that gets trotted out that "everyone is so neggy". My age old response is "well, come on and be positive then". As far as I am concerned, there is no point in people complaining about negative posters and then not doing anything about it. Funnily enough, in these last couple of weeks where positive noises have been coming from the forum in relation to the rebirth of BB and improving communication with the club, I havent heard many people applauding the positivity of this initiative. Simple fact is, we are all ICT fans and we all want to see the club do well. Some people are never happy and will moan all the time, some are never unhappy and will be positive all the time. I like to think that I personally have a balance of the two and will come down on whichever side I believe in. I like to praise the club and will do so when its merited, but I will also criticise when I feel it is warranted. Numbers are pretty good really, and the rationale is quite simple. On the old forum we had complaints of slow page loads, sluggishness etc so when we moved over here we decided to concentrate our server resources primarily on the active members. Guests can see all forums and can see the list of threads but can only see the first post in each of them. This reduces the number of queries and locks on tables within the database considerably and speeds everything up for "real" members. I am tempting fate now, but I can honestly say we have not had a single complaint about the speed of the forum that has been traced back to the forum itself. There may have been brief slowness on a couple of occasions in the last month because of Internet conditions or our service provider but the site itself seems to be like **** of a shovel compared to the previous one.

Looks good ..... Thistle on the other arm ? That's my dog's name too ! This do

My initial suggestion to GB was to have a partnership of interested parties and to highlight it not only on here, but also on the official site, the trust site (if they wish) as well as putting something in the program. I further suggested that points for discussion could be added by users on here or via an email address that we can setup for those who are not members of the site to submit questions to. If we get a few more members that want to discuss things on here out of the process, all the better, but the email address will allow those who dont want to join this site, don't really surf the internet, or who may have an issue with those of us who run it to participate. There is spin, and there is spin. When it is done well, or when it is appropriate it is fine but when it is done badly or used to mask the truth (which usually comes out eventually) it is perhaps not such a good idea. The club have been guilty of both and quite frankly, PR is one of the areas where they fall down badly. The previous BB articles had a fair bit of what some might call spin. At the time, I preferred to say that things were "told truthfully from a certain perspective" !!! There were no lies (that I am aware of), but positive points were emphasised and questions that were asked were answered directly where possible. I will be quite happy to follow that same format in future articles and emphasise the positive things that show the club in a good light but its a two way street. We need to be respectful of the club and its officials to make this work and keep them engaged in the process but they also have to be respectful of their fans and not go down the "mushroom" route. If we can achieve this then maybe we can both learn things and crucially "understand" where the other is coming from. Right now I am happy that GB has agreed to this and I am approaching it with a fair amount of positivity, much like many of the posters on here. There are probably lots of little things/incidents I could pick on to make me bitter if I wanted to be, and Billyshears, I dont know what your connection to the club is, but you seem to know more details than some. However, as far as I am concerned, we have all moved on, its water under the bridge and in this matter I will have no personal axe to grind, no grudges to settle and a mindset where all I want to achieve is for the club and fans to view each other in a positive light and show each other a bit of respect and understanding. Maybe then we can all get back to what we actually want which is to support the team on and off the park.

Angie Everhart (below), Isla Fisher, Kate Walsh, Julianne Moore, Julia Roberts, Gillian Anderson, Nicole Kidman .... just a few very attractive ones. Marilyn Monroe was also a redhead originally

forgot the lifted at the game part :o

Can questions such as these be raised at the AGM for clarification? .... it certainly seems as clear as mud to the average punter !

Totally mate, whether or not these ranking are meaningless is meaninlgess. Any excuse we exciles have to rip the p*ss out of them is greatly received. This may explain our glee at the latest rankings, although we will likely slip a few places after Saturday

Lossie have a fair old trek too !

Canadian pundits are now writing off Canada for the 2010 WC !!! A home draw to Jamaica and a home loss to Honduras leaves their hopes hanging by a thread. None of the Canadian players covered themselves in glory in this game and the higher ranked Honduras team looked hungrier The qualifying over here works like this. There has already been 2 rounds of qualification with 35 teams whittled down to just 12. The remaining 12 are in 3 groups of 4 and the top 2 teams in each group qualify for the final round-robin group. The top 3 in that final group qualify for the WC. The 4th team in the final group goes to a playoff with the 5th placed team in the South American qualifiers. (South America has 4.5 places and North and Central America has 3.5)

a 3-1 home loss (as predicted unfortunately). The game was a farce. TFC had their chief scout and the equivalent of TWO Highland League defenders starting an SPL game ! One of the defenders (39 year old Rick Titus) was decent but the other cost us 2 goals. The biggest losers though were MLS who - for me - lost whatever credibility they had established over the last year.

At the end of the day, many "intelligent businessmen" as mentioned on another thread have been around the club for a while. I dont have a problem with any of them profiting through their association with ICT so long as that profit does not come at a detriment to the club. Mr Sutherland took a club who had crippling debts and through some jiggery pokery worthy of a spot on the Paul Daniels show made all of that disappear. I will admit to not really understanding the mechanics of it at the time, with stadium trusts, property companies etc, but what I did understand was that we suddenly went from a situation where we owed a large six figure sum and were contemplating a "pay a player scheme" through this website to being one of few clubs in Scotland who were in the black and we were all relieved. At the same time, I was also aware of another scheme that had just published (or was about to publish) a draft proposal of a long-term plan for the development of a new leisure and marina complex along parts of the golden mile and around the bay into the stadium area. The idea was to have a cosmopolitan, european style leisure village and the stadium would be slap bang in the middle of the map. coincidence ? perhaps not. At the end of the day, we were not too bothered at the time, we accepted our new debt-free existence and the transfer of our biggest asset to the Stadium Trust (and I still believe that was the right thing to do). It now looks like Mr Sutherland or one or more companies associated with him may profit more than we would like if any of this comes to pass ..... but at the end of the day, we are still there, still largely debt free, and I dont believe Mr Sutherland would/will do anything that is not in the interests of ICT or at least has a neutral effect on ICT.

The other three being Darren MacKintosh (commercial exec at club), and Les Kidger and Kenny Cameron (responsible for organising a lot of the stuff surrounding Barry's testimonial) I welcome this ... perhaps these guys can come up with ways to raise money to facilitate some of the suggestions that might be made via BB. I particularly welcome Kenny C into the mix as I spent more than two years working with him on BB so know that he knows how to listen to the fans. http://www.ictfc.premiumtv.co.uk/page/News...1385593,00.html

hate to say it but Toronto FC look like they may do badly tomorrow.... but then again, how often have we all said that about teams in adversity !! 9 players on international duty compared to Chivas' 2 another 3 or 4 on the injured list with no chance of making the squad two strikers likely to start (Dichio / Barrett) neither of whom have lasted 90 minutes in months several 'makeweight' plyers called up from lower leagues for a "1 day loan" the head scout (a retired player) likely to be a substitute likely to only be 1 or 2 'recognisable' subs as 13 of the 26 man squad are missing in total.

I have always been prepared to have my ideas scrutinised, taken apart and modified or rejected .... it happened all the time when I was doing the last set of BB articles and some of the ideas we suggest or questions we ask this time will likely have the same fate .... The main point is re-establishing the dialogue as far as I am concerned. The rest will follow if we can get that right. I think I have also tried to 'manage expectations' in some of my recent posts (as has IHE) by mentioning that we should walk before we run and that we should not expect every single thing to be answered as some things simply cannot be. I think it has also been made clear that people should expect a few answers that say "NO" and most have said that is acceptable if there is a 'because' sentence added to the end of it. [PS: i get the reference .... but remember that CJ ended up working for RP !!] As for the 4 people not being ST holders .... I assume you mean myself, IHE, Gringo Jnr and Caley D .... I dont think any of us have to be to have the best interests of the club at heart or make sensible suggestions !!! I actually was one for a number of years before I moved over here (as well as a shareholder and centenary club member) and would still be one if I was living in Inverness. By the end of this year I will have travelled 14,000 miles to see a total of 3 hours of football .... IHE is also a frequent traveler and Gringo Jnr moved up here to be closer to the team so the yardstick should not necessarily be that you have a ST. Anyhoo .... not wanting to get too confrontational with you as I think we are basically saying similar things and your suggestions are also pretty good. The format will obviously be a work in progress right up to and beyond the meeting with GB and I am sure the club will also have an idea how they want it to work .... between us, hopefully we come up with a workable solution that everyone can be happy with.

Scallywags at Yonge and St Clair is your best bet (very accessible via TTC/Subway) .... its a Pay-Per-View event so will cost $20 but that also includes Ireland and England matches if you want. http://www.scallywags.net/schedule.php

It was an SPL initiative that died .... no blame on ICT for that one.

We purposely tried to choose moderators who had a wide spectrum of opinions so that when problems arise we can reach a well rounded solution. Moderators are free to post their own opinions just like anyone else.

..... Who you gonna call

No disrespect intended Laura, and its a commendable idea, but don't you think the club should be doing this rather than the trust ... Perhaps instead of making you buy them, the club should be giving you a certain quantity of free child/youth season tickets which you can manage and allocate to those who might need/want them