Scotty

Fox cant be the worst - he scored a couple of goals and did ok in some games Other than my first choice of Vetle, I would class some of the worst as those we didnt get the best out of and there are 3 that spring to mind 1. Gary Farquhar - heralded as a superstar when he came to the club because he was coming from a higher league he vanished almost immediately and his ICT career ended because of off-field problems. 2. Mike Newlands - never even kicked a ball for ICT. A career ending injury meant he never made it into the squad let alone onto the park. [attach=1] Farquhar, Newlands and Bavidge sign for the club. 3. Paul Bradshaw - looked very promising in pre-season when he signed and in his 5 appearances and I think he might have been a very good player but once again, off-field issues and inability to adjust to full time football ended a career.

Its has been happening for years and I am sure it will continue to do so. I agree that some players will probably treat the job like any other job from a business or salary point of view (and we have seen plenty of examples). If I am honest I would also walk if the situation was the same ... in fact, I did !!! I used to work in IT for the website of one of the national Canadian newspapers in downtown Toronto (on a renewable 6 monthly rolling contract which means no pension/benefits) and got a call from a recruitment firm who offered me an interview for a slightly more senior IT position with what is now my current employers. They offered me a permanent position with pension/benefits and a salary increase of more than 50% over the newspaper job ... the downside, I would have to drive 50Km to work on the western edges of the city each morning instead of taking public transit to downtown. I weighed it up and now do the drive. However, my point is that football is not a normal job because it involves the fans and the media. There wasn't thousands of people expecting me to stay at the newspaper just because they liked reading the website and saw me as an integral part of it, it was only my work colleagues who were sad and even though I was leaving one of the best media outlets in Canada my departure or any discussions over what they could offer me to stay didnt make it into the newspaper. In the case of a footballer, we the fans (of any club) have an expectation that our particular club is the best place for a player to be and no-one could possibly do any better ... in fact, why would they ever consider moving !!! Its a mindset based on our own love or passion for our club but the reality as we all know deep down inside is that they can and will make more money elsewhere and if they dont have a deep rooted loyalty to the club in the way that someone like Rossco or Grant does they will probably move as they have to look after #1. It doesnt make it any easier for the fans, especially because of our own loyalties to the club, and that is why there is a backlash. We admire players who are honest with us - such as Darren Dods or Dennis Wyness (when he went to Hearts) but have a different reaction when we feel the player isnt being entirely honest which is the case with Dargo. Dargo has done nothing wrong - he saw out his contract, waited to the end of the season and considered then declined the new one - end of story - but because it has dragged on a bit we feel like we have been strung along, possibly because the noises coming from the agent were positive ("ICT have made a very good offer") and we then got the big negative wallop a few weeks later. I agree with you when you mention the circumstances under which players leave the club and that we never get the full story (never have, never will). There have been rumours about what CD was offered but we will never know for sure. Grassa said at the outset that no-one other than the OF would be able to match what was offered but if he signs for another Scottish team then that is clearly not the case. The club captain who led us to the SPL (Bobby Mann) would have stayed at the club if a couple of very small contract wrinkles could have been worked out but it was alleged the club never got back to him on that so he left. One of our other popular players from years gone by (Mike Teasdale) also had an ignominious exit at the end of a contract when both he and the fans would have loved him to have stayed for another season or two and maybe move into a coaching or PR role at the end of it. I cant help feeling we lost an opportunity there with Mike as he was a very friendly face to the fans and happy to get involved in things off the pitch (first and only player to look forward to doing regular web chats with the fans). He would have made a good PR man or fans liaison. anyhoo, this is turning into a novel so I will summarise .... We are always going to be upset, bewildered or annoyed when a player leaves, especially one that is a fan favourite but we are more likely to be annoyed when we dont feel we are getting all the facts or are being strung along and this is why Dargo is getting a hard time and Dods is not. Once again, I reiterate my thanks to CD for all he did in an ICT shirt and confirm that I dont care if he does well or not at his next club as his welfare is no longer my concern.

NO-ONE is irreplaceable but EVERYONE is important

Thats a very interesting comment worthy of further discussion. Tommy is a crucial cog in the wheel of ICT whether it be his immaculate pitch or whether it be related to kit duties. If any member of staff were to get one, then TC would be the man !!!

I dont think anyone is denying that footballers have a short career and need to maximise what they can get - thats is one of the reasons why there is no outcry about Darren Dods who is also leaving. [yes we were pissed off when he announced it earlier in the season, but he has performed professionally since then and goes with the good wishes of most fans]. I dont blame Dargo for saying no in the end, we made him an offer, he refused as he felt he could get better elsewhere. end of story. How much influence was exerted by the "girlfriend who didnt settle in the area" we will never know, indeed that line could all be smoke and mirrors .. but it doesnt really matter, he made a choice ..... in the end. The thing that seems to be pissing off most folk is the 'time' part of it and we can split the blame here. I do believe that CD has strung the club (and therefore the fans) along a little bit in an effort to play other clubs off one another to get the best deal he can from someone, anyone (except ICT) and that a decision to move had been made yonks ago. That rankles with me a fair bit and reduces my opinion of a striker who will always be remembered as good as opposed to legendary which would have happened had he stayed another couple of seasons and doubled his goal tally. However, ICT also have to take some blame ... once again we conducted business in the press rather than behind closed doors and what is worse set and allowed the player to break a number of deadlines (although, do we know if the player was even aware of these deadlines or not ?). We have to be more professional in this manner. As for the fans, yes we probably are over-reacting, but fans and players have a special relationship ... no matter what anyone else says in this thread, its NOT like any other job. Fans form a bond with players who play for their favourite club and as most fans would never dream of switching their club alliances they tend to get upset and bewildered when their 'idols' switch those alliances ... that is one of the reasons why Rossco is such a legend. He is not the best right back in the country but he is 100% loyal to ICT and we the fans love him for it. Darren Dods goes to DUFC with a grudging respect because we the fans felt he was being honest with us and performed professionally after the announcement earlier in the season but CD, in many fans eyes strung us along which is why he is getting a backlash. Does he deserve it ? probably not, Can we really blame him for his choice ? no, its a short career. so - as I said elsewhere .... I dont wish him luck as his welfare is no longer my concern .... but I do thank him for his contribution to ICT over the last two seasons.

Who play Hearts away on the 22nd Dec, Falkirk away on Boxing Day, Killie at home on the 29th and Aberdeen away on the 2nd Jan (at 7:45pm) ......??? Think its ICT who will be angry .... at least Aberdeen have one of their two main festive season games (ie. Boxing Day / New Year's Day (or 2nd in this case) ) at home

plenty to choose from Charlie Christie Bobby Mann Mike Teasdale but I have to give it to Jimmy Calder in the end

So is typing in block capitals ... its not only hard to read but considered 'shouting' :rolleyes02:

Tony was a decent player ... shame he didnt make it but i do remember his goal ..... absolute corker.

:buttkick: :32:

is it deja vu, or senility .... lets have a poll :015: :015: :015: think it was done before on the old SN site but not on here and not for a while so plenty of posters who have never participated in a thread like this :004:

Just make sure someone is there with a camera as you have now created your own Graham Spiers moment :clapping03: :clapping03: :clapping03: With Levein in charge at Tannadump I have a feeling that the Arabs will start to perform a lot better than in previous seasons and even if they dont make it to the top 6 they will be a bit higher than 9th i think !!!

- English connection with Kings - Olde English origin as a fortified town or castle - Germanic origins meaning secure place - 'Briggs' probably derived from 'Bridge' somewhere along the line All these go together to make a very plausible answer that the word Borough is spelled that way (as opposed to Burgh) because it was named by the English as a securely fortified place where the English Kings went on occasion and the exact location (ie with Briggs on the end) probably had something to do with a bridge to the secure place or over the nearby River Lossie. Who would have thought that English Kings would have started the trend for caravan holidays at Silver Sands in Lossie :015: :015:

oh dear .... looks like the SPL website (and the rest of Premium TV's network of official sites including ictfc.co.uk) has suffered a meltdown .... havent been able to get on there since this morning !!! - guess they got hit hard by people looking for fixture lists !!

I would concur !! As has been mentioned either in here or on another thread, we need a proven goalscorer / poacher. Bayne and Wyness have their own particular styles but Dargo was an out and out poacher (and I mean that in a good way). Tokely may be many things but natural goalscorer will never make it onto his C.V. :004:

of those particular two - Vetle would win hands down as the worst .... or maybe win is too strong a word ... he would probably manage to lose that honour too as he was so bad. for those wanting to refresh their memories of our former players, go to the main site and click on squad - if you select ALL seasons from the dropdown box you will be able to see a list of every player who has pulled on an ICT shirt ..... we are working on adding the appearance information and profiles for as many as we can, but at leat this will give you a list of names for now :004:

Charlie will get literally dozens of emails a week offering him players from both the UK and abroad .... so many in fact that he probably bins half of them as a lot of them will be spam or not worth pursuing as the players wouldnt get a work permit. Before the club moved to their new official website (and email addresses) I used to get a fair number of misdirected emails or emails that were just sent to "admin" with a request that they be forwarded to the manager (which I did). A lot of these emails offered players from the likes of Syria, Cameroon, Algeria, Egypt, Ecuador, Brazil etc etc etc .... I am sure he gets a similar dose of more 'professional' emails from UK or European based agents who have actually taken the trouble to look or ask for his direct email address rather than doing a scatterblast mailshot and he probably pays a little more attention to these as well as memos that come from other clubs with lists of players available for loan .... however, the hard part is finding a gem (like Stokes) in amongst all the mediocrity. I would like to see if we could unearth a gem but wouldnt limit this to the SPL .... perhaps Hagi/Popescu will actually recommend someone or maybe our somewhat tenuous and so far unfruitful relationships with teams in England (Sheffield courtesy of a former Chairman, Man Utd courtesy of current Chairman etc etc etc.) will finally come to something.

according to wikipedia ..... the word burgh is derived from Scots language and refers to corporate entities whose legality is peculiar to Scotland. (Scottish law was protected and preserved as distinct from laws of England under the Acts of Union of 1707.) Pronunciation is different from the English word borough, which is a near cognate of the Scots word. The word has cognates, or near cognates, in other Germanic languages. For example, burg in German, and borg in both Danish and Swedish. The equivalent word is also to be found in Frisian, Dutch, Norwegian, and Icelandic. In southern England, the word took the form bury, as in Canterbury. The Scots language burgh and the English language borough are derived from the Old English language word burh (whose dative singular and nominative/accusative plural form byrig sometimes underlies modern place-names, and which had dialectal variants including burg; it was also sometimes confused with beorh, beorg, 'mound, hill', on which see Hall 2001, 69-70). The Old English word was originally used for a fortified town or proto-castle (eg at Dover Castle or Burgh Castle) and was related to the verb beorgan (cf. Dutch and German bergen), meaning "to keep, save, make secure". In German Burg means castle, though so many towns grew up around castles that it almost came to mean city, and is incorporated into many placenames, such as Hamburg and Strasbourg), A number of other European languages have cognate words which were borrowed from the Germanic languages during the Middle Ages, including brog in Irish, bwr or bwrc, meaning "wall, rampart" in Welsh, bourg in French, borgo in Italian, and burgo in Spanish. The most obviously derivative words are burgher in English and Bürger in German (both literally citizen, with connotations of middle-class in English and other Germanic languages). Also related are the words bourgeois and belfry (both from the French), and burglar. More distantly, it is related to words meaning hill or mountain in a number of languages (cf. the second element of iceberg).

ok, I will stick my neck out too ...... 01: Rangers --------------- 02: Celtic 03: Aberdeen 04: Hearts 05: Kilmarnock 06: Dundee United --------------- 07: Hibernian 08: ICT 09: Falkirk 10: Motherwell 11: St Mirren --------------- 12: Gretna

Full fixture list now available on main site at following link : FIXTURE LIST The list contains dates for all (authorised) friendlies, League Cup, Scottish Cup and of course SPL games.

I dont think there is any hard and fast 'rule' per say ..... Some players get a testimonial after 5 years or 10 years, some get it after a certain number of games and very often senior players will have it built into contracts as a sweetener. I think the main thing in awarding a testimonial is that the player is deserving of it and Barry Wilson certainly falls into that category for ICT as did Ross Tokely. I would add Grant Munro and Richard Hastings to the list for future testimonials. Richard is entering his 11th season at the club (albeit with a 3 year break in the middle - similar to Barry !), and Grant - believe it or not - is entering his 10th ICT season. Although we havent yet added all the matches and reports to our stats program you can click on the squad list to see the seasons that all players were signed for, and if you sort the list "by number" you will see the longest serving players at the top of the page. The "numbers" we used were the player numbers issued by Ian Broadfoot in his stats spreadsheets so, for example, Richard was the 16th player to ever sign for the club and is still going strong ..... (Tokely is #41 and Barry is #42)

I hope it is not moved ..... Sunday 5th August is the the expected debut of David Beckham in MLS. The game against Toronto (in Toronto) has an early kick-off so I would miss the ICT game :007: ..... or maybe I could sell my Beckham tickets ..... $30 tickets ( $30 is face value in season ticket pack but it is $110 if bought on the day) are reportedly going on eBay and other sites for around $600 or $700

thanks for the goals Craig but may the curse strike and your scrotal itch not be soothed by any creams known to man nor beast .... with the exception of IHE :017:

closing this thread - same question being asked on the other fixture thread(s).

Its illegal to reproduce the fixtures without a license .... we have paid for a license