CaleyD

Football Match – Happyness Comedians v ICT Legends 25/05/2013 : 2:00 pm - 3:45 pm @ Bught Park Join your favourite Happyness comedians as their team, led by Patrick Monahan play against Inverness’s finest. The comics will be taking on the ICT Legends/Fans. Kicking off at 2pm on Saturday 25th May at Bught Park. Spectators are most welcome where no doubt there will be some robust tackling and serious skilled football from the experts, not the comedians. Fred MacAulay will be on hand to commentate!

"Pride of the Highlands" Stand

I once caught a 60lb salmon in the River Ness.

Would love to have seen him stay, but seems that it was mutually beneficial for both parties. Hogg wants/needs regular football...not surprising given how close he came to being out of the game altogether. The club offer him a deal, but can't (quite rightly) give him any guarantees. Hogg gets the chance to move to a team where the competition for places is perhaps not as tough and the club free up a wage which they can invest in adding someone in an area of the park we could do with developing.....win/win.

Do you think if we posted a copy of the picture to him he'd sign it for us?

I get that...and fans are entitled to be frustrated. However, you can't list the "poor" bits without balancing them off against the "great" bits (and vice-versa). Pulling a draw out of the hat when down to 10 men at Hearts, pulling back from 3-0 down against Dundee Utd to make it 3-4 and then being sucker punched by a dodgy penalty....to name just two. At the start of the season most of us would have been happy to have done a Dundee Utd and sneaked into the top 6 by the skin of our teeth. We didn't do that though, we got ourselves to the top end of the table (admittedly after a slow start) and then held our own for a large part of the season. To have achieved that alone on the resources we have was a minor miracle. It's a little disappointing that we ran out of steam at the end, but that's just the reality of operating on a budget which doesn't allow us to have the depth of squad that's needed to ride out injuries, suspensions etc. So yeah, we could all put together a list of the reasons we "failed" to make Europe, but there's a far bigger list to be had by looking at the reasons we achieved what we did this season....and it does the club, players AND fans a total injustice to underplay that....IMO.

Inverness actually fairs pretty well when you look at average UK/Scottish club attendances as a percentage of population. To have maintained attendances this season with another SPL club in such close proximity has, IMO, been a huge achievement in itself and I predict our attendances will increase next season....not purely because we've had a good one this year, but because a lot of the "neutral" fans who went OTB for the novelty factor will have realised the grass (quite literally) is not greener on the other side. I spoke to one couple at the stadium last week who were in doing just that. CJT have seen a lot of new faces...many of them families...attending this season and with the continued/improved deals on tickets for that demographic then I'd hope we see even more of them next season.

It never fails to amaze me how much people get drawn in by what is printed in the press. Direct quotes are often shortened or portrayed out of context in order to sensationalise them because journalists know that in doing so they generate conversations such as this which provide exposure and (potentially) increase readership. I get that some people are a bit down, I am/was too....but does anyone seriously think for one second that Terry, the players, the Chairman or anyone else didn't/don't want the club to be achieving as much as possible? Nobody ever heard of trying to look on the bright side when disappointing things happen?

Nah qualifying for Europe would be a progressive step for the club and I would see that as a positive to be honest As ive stated on another thread my only worries would be getting a bad humping by a club from Ireland or some other diddy country which could do more damage than good for the long season ahead when expectations are now higher than they ever were before due to this seasons success It all depends on the draw, realistically we are looking at only one tie, I can't see many travelling to some hovel in Albania or Kazackstan can you? Dougal Based on that logic we should just withdraw from competitive football all together.

For details on voting for the ICT Fans Player of the Year - Click Here

I am going to say it .... yup .... I agree with IHE !!! Not sure about 14-14-14, but IHE is right, every system that could be proposed would be flawed in someone's eyes. For me, whatever the solution is, the foundation has to be simple ..... no splits or complicated realignments of leagues in mid season, no complicated self-preservationist tactics or rules, no multiple ruling bodies and a focus on turning the downward spiral in the opposite direction ... I tend to fall into the 16-16-16 camp with the addition of 6 new (ambitious) teams from juniors/HFL/South. If the likes of Caley Thistle and County can reach the SPL in 10 and 18 years respectively, then there is no reason others could not follow a similar path .... 16 teams does present a problem of only 15 home games per season as opposed to the current 18 in SFL or 19 in SPL, but maybe there could be some creative thinking on that with the establishment of an additional national cup competition or even regionalised cup competitions with home/away legs that would inevitably lead to a few derbies (and increased crowds). Failing that, if adding ambitious teams is not an option, I wonder if 20-20 might be an option? It would obviously call for 2 teams to be lost to non-league play, but with current finances and the game dying on its feet that - unfortunately - may not be as contentious, or as problematic an issue as it sounds .. go 20-22 initially and drop it to 20-20 over a few years through attrition. 2 leagues, 3up, 3 down, playoffs for a few more, pyramid system below that to allow ambitious teams a route into the 'big time', and all being run under a single organisation where each member club has a single vote and a simple majority is needed for most decisions. Youth development would also have to be taken seriously but not all clubs could afford academies so perhaps regional academies (initially) funded by the league and/or any grant funding available which could then be utilised by all clubs both big and small (assuming they did not already have their own that they chose to continue using). I know this will never happen, but its a fairly simple concept ..... These are ideas off the top of my head ... they may be good, they may be crap, but something has to change and for me the most important part is getting the foundation right and then building on that ... the rejected proposal doesnt seem to address that, but no-one else has really shouted a viable alternative from the rooftops ....... The problem is not that any of the above are bad ideas, the problem is delivering something from within the system that exists already and getting it past the 11-1 vote. As it stands we have some clubs who want a 10 team league, some who want 12 and others who want a larger league 14/18/16 or whatever. The reasons for each differs, some of it is opinion, but a great deal of it is determined by the business models under which each club currently operates....and within the SPL you probably have 3 or 4 very distinct business models based on club size, income sources, costs etc. You have the club at the top with a turnover of £50 or £60 Million all the way down to clubs with a turnover of £3 or £4 million. What seems to be widely agreed is that relegation has a huge financial impact on clubs. With that being the case then you have clubs who want to do as much as possible to "protect" their SPL status, clubs who think (arrogantly or otherwise) that they are never going to be relegation contenders and don't fear it, clubs who believe they have a business model which would survive relegation (and may be the case if they have wealthy benefactors)...and Celtic!!! That group of 12 clubs then have an opportunity to grow the games income, but in order to do so they need to open the doors to the whole (professional) game in Scotland. That then brings in the added complication of having to come up with a proposal that brings those other 30 clubs to the table. The two things most likely to appeal to the other 30 are better finances and an increased opportunity of promotion to the upper tier. Strangely, the finance issues seems to have been the one that has caused least problems with the SPL saying they were quite happy to give up £1.3 Million in the first instance...there were also guarantees that if/when finances were increased then this would be used to further level out the curve before the top league saw another penny. The other factor was always going to be tricky. How do you offer reduced risk of relegation to the (current) SPL clubs AND offer increased opportunity of promotion to (current) SFL clubs AND do all that without reducing the number of games in the season below acceptable levels? The answer to that, as far as the 12 SPL clubs were concerned (back in January) was the 12-12-18 structure. Probably not ideal in the eyes of any of the 42 clubs, but acceptable in return for everything else that came with it. Also, let's not forget that this proposal was not defeated because anyone voted against the structure. St Mirren and Ross County can play the "listening to the fans" card all they like, but their decision to vote against was based on other factors....although it seems totally unclear what those factors really were/are. The voting levels required on protected matters was always a smokescreen. I stated that before the meeting yesterday and the events and outcome of that meeting showed that I was right. Everyone around the table yesterday is a businessman and most of them will be dealing with contracts, company rules etc on a regular basis. They will be no stranger to the concept and reasons for protected matters. In fact, any ICT fans who has/had an interest in the merger of Thistle and Caley will be no stranger to them as the outcome of negotiations that allowed the merger to happen contained many...everything from what colours must be used on shirts, to which people were entitled to appoint members to the club board. These things were in place for a set period of time and were designed to "protect" certain matters which were important to those contributing to the new organisation. All of these are now gone because (although some are now honoured as tradition) with the exception of one thing......ICT fans benefit to this day from one particular protected matter, and that is the 10% voting right which is attached to just 108 company shares which are currently held by CaleyJagsTogether. You can argue the rights and wrongs of all those protected matters but the fact is that without them and without compromise then ICT would never have came in to being and we would not be where we are today. Given how difficult it was to get that agreement between two clubs should give us more of an appreciation than anyone on the need for/benefit of compromise and how difficult it will have been for the SPL to find enough common ground within 12 clubs to get the reconstruction proposal to the stage they did. We can argue the rights and wrongs of the decision taken yesterday, it's all "what if" and "what might be"....we'll never get the full answer to the first and only time will tell on the second.

Prices wouldn't go down if we had a larger league....so you would be paying the same (or more if number of league games reduces) to watch those teams anyway. Prices are not set based on quality of opposition, they are set at the level needed to bring the income necessary for the club to survive. The only hope we have of ever seeing a decrease in the prices (without dropping down the leagues) is to improve financial stability and give clubs an environment and confidence to tinker with them. The status quo cannot, and never will, provide that.

Some people seem to be of the opinion that the reconstruction talk is a new thing. It's not, and has been "on the table" for years. What has changed is the fact that there's now a proposal that was acceptable to enough teams for it to make it to the stage of it having a realistic chance of being implemented. So, yes....after looking at and discussing all the options for years, this IS the ONLY one that has any chance of being achievable....not only in terms of league structure, but in terms of gettin acceptance on all the other things which people want. There is no magic "other option" just sitting on the sidelines ready to replace this one if it fails....and that's the harsh reality of the situation. There's 12 reasons for that....and that is the 12 SPL clubs, all with differing priorities, different business/operation models and with a huge gulf between the financial situation of the top team/s and the bottom. IMO, it's a miracle they've found any solution which was acceptable across the board....do we really want to risk letting that pass us by? I must admit I'm with Jamie on this one, I will seriously consider not renewing as well after having a st for 10 years, This may well turn out to be our greatest ever season but would our season tickets be sold at Premier league prices or 1st division prices, If by luck we end up in the middle 8 after 22 games we would be playing the likes of Raith Rovers Morton QoS etc not Celtic etc, we would only have 1 home game against the top Premier league teams then 1 more against the lower spl teams and 1st div teams. Is there going to be a split price season ticket depending on where you finish the season i.e. you pay half a season at spl prices then half a season at 1st division prices if that is where we end up. I totally fail to see how the quality of our football is going to change just by juggling the numbers I keep hearing people coming up with this season ticket argument thing....here's my thoughts.... At the moment we have a league structure that doesn't guarantee a set number of home matches, yet clubs are happy to sell season tickets on that basis. The new system guarantees you 18 home matches. Under the new proposal, those finishing in the bottom 4 will play 8 post split matches against "lower" opposition. Top 8 and you avoid that. With a 16 team league, you are guaranteed to play 8 games against these "lower" opposition, regardless of where you are in the league. If you really object to games against these teams, then surely the new proposal is better as it at least gives you a chance of avoiding these games? People, for the most part, buy a season ticket because they want to watch the home team regularly. If you only want to see your team playing the best teams, then surely your argument should be for a smaller top league? How does these "lower" teams get better if we do not have an all through financial structure? I think a lot of people forget that we were once, and could easily be again, one of these "lower" teams. Our relegations season cost us close to £1 Million and wiped out the clubs entire financial reserve...plus some. had the proposed financial structure been in place, then the financial impact would have been halved, we'd still have some money in the bank and the club might have been able to consider cheaper ticket prices. As it is, the club now have to try and compete at a higher level whilst trying to replenish those reserves....something which we seem to be on track to start doing. However, how long will that take, and what happens should the worst happen in the interim? The SPL aren't, and neither they should, just hand over millions of pounds to a different body for them to do as they please....the only way to achieve these things is as a single body. I have, again, attached the presentation which CJT gave to fans for people to look at. Would also like to highlight that this presentation was open to all fans and was advertised on this forum - the paper, on our website, via Facebook/Twitter (even on the club pages), by letter to all CJT members and via MFR....really don't know what else we could have done to let people know!!! cjt_reconstruction.pdf

First off, protected matters no longer exist after the 3 year period...they become normal matters, just like everything else. As is often the case with any business or organisation, different things can require different levels of voting. e.g. To change an item in the articles of association might require a special resolution needing up to 75%, whilst an operational matter might only require a straight forward majority (greater than 50% if it's a simple yes/no choice). You also have things where the board have the power to make the decisions themselves and a vote of all clubs is not needed....not an issue as the board will have representatives from all leagues.

The 11-1 voting structure will not remain in place, and that's the problem when those doing the questioning and running these programmes have not done their homework properly. What does is exist is something called "protected matters". These are put in place to offer stability and time for change to take effect and for clubs to adjust within a "known" environment of operation. They also stop people forcing through change under the guise of "for everyone's benefit", only to adjust them the moment they get what they want. They are normally time locked....and in this instance that is 3 years. All other matters (non protected matters) would be decided as is normal for any business. I don't have a full list of the protected matters within the reconstruction proposals, but it includes the league structure and financial distribution model. In effect, it would take a large majority of the 42 clubs to change any of these "protected matters"....but only during the first 3 years. After that time, it would take the same level of votes as whatever is set for other business. Gilmour was trying to argue that this was a bad thing because what if they've overlooked something and it desperately needs changed. Well, if that's the case and it's such a big issue for the majority, then getting the numbers needed to change it within the 3 years would not be a problem. That has to be better than a structure whereby they could, for example, decide after a year that they wanted rid of 10 teams and the other 32 vote them out of the setup because it only needs 75% (or less). Even if you are absolutely dead set against the "protected matters" issue, you are only being asked to commit to it for 3 years....then it's gone. Under the status quo we could be stuck with the 11-1 voting structure for much longer than that as there's no certainty that it will ever be changed. The other benefit of these "protected matters" is that it gives you something with a minimum term to go and sell to sponsors, media etc. This, again, gives stability because 3+ year deals can be put in place to secure and grow the league income. At the moment it seems to be all deals with "get out" clauses if/when things changes or aren't working out for league partners....how can clubs forecast and put long term plans in place within that type of environment? These "protected matters" are not something that has just been added to the proposal, they have been there from at least January and I'd be surprised if it wasn't an element on any of the proposals that have been considered. In fact, it would be the basis upon which any reconstruction plan must be based. All in all, a total red herring and (IMO) Stuart Gilmour only served to make himself look extremely stupid on Sportsound tonight because there's no good reason to reject reconstruction on that basis....even Roy MacGregors "how do we sell season tickets for the new setup" argument made more sense....and that's saying something!!!

What's even more ironic is that two of the clubs who have been most vocal against the 11-1 are going to use it to their (perceived) advantage to prevent change!!!

So how do prove these people hold one view or the other? You or I claiming they are as opposed to the proposal holds as much weight as anyone else saying they don't. FWIW, I actually don't believe the vast majority of people who attend games give two hoots on this issue. All they want to do is go along and watch a game of football and see their team win....that comes from getting out there and actually talking to them. You also need to remember that much of what fans have been asking for is delivered by the proposal, it's only the larger league issue that is the stumbling block. Are they really willing to give up the other 85% of things they asked for and consign football to who knows how many more years of the status quo through pigheadedness? The setup as it is just now will never deliver a large league....like it or not. At least with the proposed changes you get a more democratic voting structure which has a chance of delivering a larger league somewhere down the line. Taking the ball and storming off home in a huff achieves nothing.

They are regularly used on the Mexican border for doing Grass drops...but maybe not quite what you were meaning!!!

No, the sizeable majority of the industry's paying customers are so disinterested that they can't even be bothered to take the opportunity to have their say on the matter. That's something in itself which I find extremely frustrating. Not in a long time have fans had such opportunity to be heard, yet they make it so easy for people to ignore them because they won't take the time needed to attend a meeting or take part in a survey. Look back 12 months to the Rangers scenario, promises of extra support if clubs "did the right thing" etc....did it transpire? Did it heckers like.

The 95%+ of Scottish Football Fans who haven't attended any meetings on the matter, or didn't complete the fans survey, would seem to agree with you. Which, if you look at it, means that those who have said no equate to less than 5%...which is less than 1/11 representation. Surely fans can't seriously think that decisions should be made on that kind of minority!!!

Of course there's self interest...but the self interest actually serves those outside the SPL more than it does those in it. The question is, how do you move beyond the self interest when you have a (current) 11-1 voting structure? It needs to be done one step at a time and with compromise. The alternative is that we stay as we are now and just keeping banging our head off the wall and get nowhere. Trust me, I've had all the frustrate and angry conversations there is to have with people (including the club) over this....but it doesn't change the fact there needs to be change and this, under the circumstances, is the only option with any chance of moving things in the right direction.

The club asked that CJT present the information, which we did at a meeting following the Societies AGM (meeting was open to all fans, ICT or otherwise).

The problem is, it can't. If it could then it wouldn't be on the table. It's part of the compromise needed to get sufficient support to give the proposals...which should be more about the improved financial and voting structures than the league structure...a chance of coming to fruition. To get clubs in the SPL to give up something...mostly money...then you need the sweetener of increased opportunity for improved income. i.e. you only need top 8 to get games against better supported clubs who will put more punters through your gate. To get support from the SFL you need to give them a better bite at the cherry of top league football...an improved chance at success in return for the hard work an investment. The 12-12 to 8-8-8 is the "transition", because you can't get enough support for any proper leap to a larger league. It's far easier to move from the newly proposed setup to a 16 team top league, than it is from what we have at the moment....not purely because it will have improved voting structure, but because (all being well) people in positions of authority will come to accept that there's not this huge gulf between bottom of the SPL and top of Division 1. You also shouldn't believe all you read in the press about this system being used elsewhere. It actually served it's purpose in Austria and Switzerland...and if it was so bad, then why did Switzerland use it for 15 years!!!!