CaleyD

Caley Thistle have lodged an appeal with the SFA over Ross Tokely's controversial sending off against Rangers on Saturday. http://ictfc.com/news/team-news/137-tokely-appeal

Will be interesting to see if they continue this next season as I'm not convinced they'll "break even" with the way it's set up. ?354 normal price ?200 3000+ sales ?150 3500+ sales ?100 4000+ sales They achieved the ?150 mark by the deadline and gone on to sell a total of 5700 Season Tickets. From the figures I can find that means they've had to more than half the price to double the sales. If you read more into this, you will also find that a great many of those sales are from people who may not even make any games, and they;ve done it to support the club. OOPS....how wrong they got that one. The club need the additional income they would spend on matchdays to compensate for the discount, so by not contributing on a matchday they've scored an own goal. They think they've contributed ?150, but what they have really done is cost the club money by allowing others to make a saving. What's more, they've taken all those people who might only attend between 6 and 12 games a season and made a season ticket viable. So, instead of 12 x matchday ticket at ?20 (total ?240) they're only going to get ?150. It may all come out in the wash and they might just manage to meet the shortfall from additional matchday sales and a bit more to have made it a viable project....who knows, and I guess we'll find out next season.

I believe clubs are duty bound to count all season tickets in the attendance figures, whether people are there or not. I guess, technically speaking, if something happened that prevented fans being allowed in to the stadium and the decision was made to proceed with the game, then you would still have an attendance figure equal to the number of season ticket holders + any pre-match ticket sales.

Not much I can add that hasn't been said already. I'm not one to play the "bias officials" card as, for the most part, I think they are just crap....but yesterday was about as blatant bias as I have ever seen. Whether that's intentional bias or it results from the pressure refs come under during matches involving the OF is open to debate....what is certain is that the officiating yesterday was far from fair and honest. Feel really sorry for our guys. They might not have been at their best, but they were matching Rangers all over the park and looking the most dangerous on the break. Whether they were doing enough to take anything from the game we'll never know as the Referee took it upon himself to decide the outcome.

ICT are working even closer with MFR this year, and one of the things we're doing is "ICT-RADIO". Essentially we get interviews every Tuesday from player/manager which look back at previous weekend and forward to next weekend....then on match day we get post match interviews. We get these online as soon as they are available and generally within an hour or two of them being done (and working to improve that time). We're also working on getting them done on video and first couple should appear at some point today on "ICT-TV" and/or within the official match reports. http://ictfc.com/matches/ict-radio

I also read it as quoted from the article. 600,000 fans have stopped attending in the past five years. To me that says 600,000 less clicks of the turnstiles over the 1140 matches played in that period. I make that down by 526.3 per match. Pretty meagre amount really considering standards have dropped so much in the period. Which is why (as I said earlier) I used the raw data to produce my figures and not those being reported. If you look at the figures in the table I did previously you'll see that for just the 8 teams that have been in the SPL for the 10 years, the difference between last year and 5 years previous was 449,480. For the various combinations of the other 4 teams for the last 5 years the difference between last season and 5 years previous was 123,194....total = 572,674....or as near to 600,000 as matters for reporting purposes. That's 150,000 per year (you only have 4 drops measured in a 5 year period) and it's cumulative. i.e. 150,000 between years 1 & 2, another 150,000 between years 2 & 3 (300,000 total)..etc..etc. If, as you are stating, it was 600,000 less "clicks" over the period then you would only expect to see a drop of 150,000 between the start and end of the 5 year period.

That's the information (copied and pasted) from the club...e.mail arrived at 4:21pm

Actually, it's 600,000 less per annum...so about 16,000 a week (give or take). The decline was already happening before the latest recession hit. It's doubtless had an impact, but it's certainly not the main cause.

We still have a few Home tickets left for tomorrow's lunchtime game against Rangers. Either contact the Club Shop by phone on 01463 227451 or call at the Stadium in person. Unless you have purchased tickets online previously, you will be unable to buy tickets from TicketMaster. Tickets will only be on sale until 11:30 tomorrow (Saturday). Note: These tickets are only on sale to ICTFC supporters. Anyone attempting to enter the Home Stands whilst wearing Away colours will be refused entry. Any Away Supporters found occupying seats in the Home Stands are liable to be removed from the stadium.

So it's ok for Celtic to allow attendances to plummet so long as their fans are watching on TV, and they can do that without expecting to take responsibility for the games decline???.....give me a break. It's apologist, defeatist excuses like that which allow them to ride roughshod all over the rest of the league. In regards TV viewing/income, the SPL gets ?13 Million a year from Sky/ESPN deal. Viewing figures for last season were 9.7 Million. That's ?1.34 per person per game viewed. So, in effect 1 fan in attendance is worth about 15 viewers. Celtic attendances are down 181,328, so unless they've added 2,719,920 to TV viewing figures in the last 10 years, their overall contribution is still very much a negative one. No matter how you want to try and split hairs, there's no basis in fact (or figures) to justify them continuing to command the share of income that they do...regardless of it's source. I'm not suggesting they don't get a proportionate share of income, I'm saying that the proportions have changed and that needs to be reflected in how cash is divided.

Proctor goes radio ga-ga Utility man David Proctor has already shown Terry Butcher he can play in a variety of positions but now he?s trying his hand at radio commentary. Proctor, who was sidelined with a hamstring injury after limping off in last weekend?s 3-3 draw at Dunfermline, will join Iain Auld and former Caley Thistle skipper Mike Noble on MFR tomorrow for live commentary of the Rangers match. Hear Proc?s patter on-air from mid-day tomorrow on MFR FM, DAB and online @ mfr.co.uk Direct Link for Matchday Commentary - http://radioplayertwo.mfr.co.uk/

Like the Jedward touch!. Will the game sell out though?. I think, if it doesn't, the policy needs to be reviewed It's the old "If you half the price, do you double the attendance" argument. One that has been proven time and again not to work. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to justify the prices, but it's an industry issue and not a club one. If the club could put an SPL team out on the park and run a club for half the cost and charge half the price they would...but that's never going to happen, not here, not anywhere. There's another thread on the go at the moment that's talking about club finances and making losses. So it's not like the club are making money hand over fist for shareholders and not passing on savings to the fans. Could you imagine the uproar if they cut ticket prices and then next year reported record losses...it's a no-win argument, no matter which angle you look at it from.

Not an error or oversight at all. The point I'm making is that Celtic have reaped the benefits of having a lions share of the income from the league for years. When things were on the up they were happy enough to pedal the line that they were doing most for the "good of the game". Now that things are on the decline, they want to continue in that privileged position, even though they are the ones contributing most to the erse falling out of the game....both in hard number and % terms. The question is...Why, when they continue to receive a disproportionately high % of the finances are they doing least to prevent the decline? Would it not make more sense to divert at least some of those resources towards clubs where the decline is much slower...after all, they are making best use of the little they currently get. Even 3%, which is representative of the drop in Celtics share of the overall attendances for the period, divided up amongst the smaller clubs would give them all an extra couple of hundred thousand. Imagine what someone like ICT, who have actually grown attendances by 7% since getting in to the SPL, could do with that. The impact on Celtic? I doubt they'd notice it, and if they did then tough, they should have been thinking more about putting their success/income/privileged position to better use over the years to prevent/slow the decline they have witnessed.

Maybe, but ?12 to sit in the Family Section, an area designed and priced for Children/Families (the clue is in the name), is pretty decent. It's a bit like complaining that First Class cost so much more when you have the option of a cheaper seat in Standard Class which, at the end of the day, serves the same purpose of getting you from point A to point B.

Before I answer the question on my theory that the OF are dragging us down, I've done a bit more looking at the figures....working from the raw attendance data for the last 10 years and not trying to understand what figures someone else has got and how they arrived at them.<br><br> This table is only for teams who have been a constant presence in the league for all 10 seasons covered...and is probably as honest a representation as you can provide for attendances over the period. Years shown are season end.<br><br> <table border="1" cellpadding="1"> <tr> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td><strong>2002</strong></td> <td><strong>2003</strong></td> <td><strong>2004</strong></td> <td><strong>2005</strong></td> <td><strong>2006</strong></td> <td><strong>2007</strong></td> <td><strong>2008</strong></td> <td><strong>2009</strong></td> <td><strong>2010</strong></td> <td><strong>2011</strong></td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td><strong>Difference</strong></td> <td><strong>% of overall drop</strong></td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Aberdeen </strong></td> <td>266666</td> <td>223721</td> <td>197391</td> <td>244382</td> <td>254553</td> <td>237024</td> <td>239877</td> <td>245650</td> <td>209228</td> <td>173460</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>93206</td> <td>28.54133174</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Celtic </strong></td> <td>1111723</td> <td>1093919</td> <td>1095489</td> <td>1100913</td> <td>1104841</td> <td>1100623</td> <td>1067449</td> <td>1095740</td> <td>866061</td> <td>930395</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>181328</td> <td>55.52585243</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Dundee Utd </strong></td> <td>152134</td> <td>145649</td> <td>148789</td> <td>156007</td> <td>155753</td> <td>135787</td> <td>157532</td> <td>164432</td> <td>149412</td> <td>140391</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>11743</td> <td>3.595915055</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Hearts </strong></td> <td>229523</td> <td>229096</td> <td>226997</td> <td>233176</td> <td>318569</td> <td>321799</td> <td>270815</td> <td>273554</td> <td>275197</td> <td>269506</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>-39983</td> <td>-12.24350436</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Hibernian </strong></td> <td>220163</td> <td>192986</td> <td>167111</td> <td>238244</td> <td>262540</td> <td>277146</td> <td>266069</td> <td>240997</td> <td>231119</td> <td>223360</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>-3197</td> <td>-0.978978151</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Kilmarnock </strong></td> <td>144800</td> <td>140749</td> <td>132357</td> <td>112672</td> <td>134348</td> <td>136149</td> <td>117442</td> <td>108808</td> <td>112461</td> <td>122106</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>22694</td> <td>6.949305651</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Motherwell </strong></td> <td>111694</td> <td>115618</td> <td>118278</td> <td>132244</td> <td>118757</td> <td>111658</td> <td>125377</td> <td>104915</td> <td>95528</td> <td>99838</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>11856</td> <td>3.630517661</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Rangers </strong></td> <td>909711</td> <td>927475</td> <td>930853</td> <td>924848</td> <td>935659</td> <td>949143</td> <td>913723</td> <td>941137</td> <td>903723</td> <td>860793</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>48918</td> <td>14.97955997</td> </tr> <tr> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr> <tr> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>3146414</td> <td>3069213</td> <td>3017265</td> <td>3142486</td> <td>3285020</td> <td>3269329</td> <td>3158284</td> <td>3175233</td> <td>2842729</td> <td>2819849</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>326565</td> <td>10.3789584</td> </tr> </table> <br><br> From that we can see that there's been a 326565 drop in bums on seats over the 10 season period (10.38% drop)<br><br> Of that, Celtic are responsible for the lions share at 55.53% followed by Aberdeen at 28.54% and Rangers at 14.98%<br><br> Hearts are up on 10 seasons previous, but you will notice that they are currently on a downward trend. Hibs are the same.<br><br> Kilmarnock and Motherwell are both down, but seems to be signs they are on an upward trend.<br><br> Dundee Utd are probably as stable as you could/would expect allowing for natural fluctuation.<br><br> FWIW, despite a drop during our season leading up to relegation, ICT have shown an increase year on year and last seasons attendance was higher than 2004/05.<br><br> <br><br> On to my comment about "dragging us down".<br><br> There seems to be this mentality among those who move in the upper echelons of the game that Rangers and Celtic are the driving force. Whilst I appreciate the arguments that without them we wouldn't be the draw that we are, that's not the point to be argued. The point to be argued is that the erse is falling out of the game and the largest contributors are the OF (and Aberdeen). Before anyone hits me with the argument that the bigger teams are obviously going to have the biggest impact on the overall picture, look at the figures....whilst most clubs are down 5% to 15% of their own attendances, Celtic are down a whopping 35%...so even when measured against themselves they are the biggest disaster zone in the league....by a country mile!!!<br><br> For years they have commanded a lions share of revenue and it was hard to argue they were due some recognition. Now that things aren't so good, they have to take equal responsibility for the decline and, IMO, are no longer entitled to command the privileged "lions share" they have for too long now. If the smaller clubs have been able to avoid the levels of decline that Celtic have on very meagre budgets, image what they might be able to do if they received an extra ?200k or ?300K as season. An amount that would likely go unnoticed for the OF...and let's face it, the evidence doesn't show they've been using it very well for the "good of the game as a whole".<br><br>That is why I think they are dragging us down.

The bus will depart from the ICT Social Club on Greig Street at 09:45am and will then pick up from the Stadium at 10:00am. Please make sure you arrive in good time for the bus....Thanks. Cost of Travel is..... Supporters Trust Members ?13 Non-Members ?15 Bookings can be made in one of three ways..... 1. ONLINE BOOKING - This can be done from the Supporters Trust Website under the Travel Club Link. Instructions are provided on the site, but if anyone has any problems then please let us know. Payment can be made online via PayPal. You do not need to have a PayPal account, just look for the link on the PayPal page for paying by Debit/Credit Card. 2. PHONE BOOKING - This can be done by calling 07951 309 504 We answer the phone when we can, but this is not always possible. If you do not get a reply then leave your name and number (or text us) and someone will call you back. 3. STADIUM CLUB SHOP - We are now able to take bookings in person at the club shop. Please do not phone the club shop to book, if phoning use the Travel Club number above. Even if not booking online, please take the time to visit the website and familiarise yourself with the Rules/Guidelines - Thank you The online booking system is new to both you and us, so please bare with us as we get to grips with it and fine tune it to meet the needs of the users. If you have any problems or would like to provide ideas/suggestions then please get in touch by e.mailing us at [email protected] Joining The Supporters Trust For those who wish to join the Supporters Trust, you can do so online at www.ictst.co.uk via Paypal. Forms are also available online for you to print and return with your payment. If you would like us to send you out a form then call or e.mail ([email protected]) us. A supply of forms are also available at the club shop and payment can also be made there.

CELTIC HOSPITALITY

As has already been said, it won't cover us as we weren't in the SPL for the period being reported. What also makes me laugh is the blatant misuse or misunderstanding of the figures on the part of the reporter..... 600,000 Fans have stopped attending games!!! Really??? Capacity of all SPL Stadia is in the region of 260,000....only half of them are used every week, so say an average of 130,000 max could attend every week...which the obviously don't. When you drill down into the figures, the OF account for something link 65 to 70% of the drop, Motherwell and Aberdeen are the other who's attendances have nose dived. For the rest, they are about the same or seeing increases. Take from all that what you will, for me it just serves to dispel the myth that certain teams are propping up the league. In fact, it could be argued that these teams are actually dragging us down.

Looks like parents making a lot of fuss over nothing...whilst they're busy going round mumping and moaning about a pointless piece of paper, the lad seems to have taken it on the chin and moved on. Makes you wonder who it is that really wants/needs the piece of paper...I suspect it's the parents.

With all the stories you hear about players (even professional players) being dumped by fax, e.mail and even text, I think it's credit to the coaches that they took the time to sit down and have a proper face to face with the lad.

Still seats available for anyone who's looking to head to the game. Give us a call/text on the Travel Club number 07951 309 504

If a player is fouled outside the box and then falls into the box then it would be a free kick at the point the foul was committed...outside the box. If a player is continuously fouled as he enters the box then the referee has to decide at what stage during the incident the defender prevented the player from continuing a credible attack on goal. In a holding situation, provided the attacker stays on his feet and in control of the ball (is continuing his attack) then the referee could deem that he is playing advantage. However, the moment the player is brought down and/or loses control of the ball that advantage no longer exists and that is the point at which the attack has been stopped by means of foul play...and thus a penalty should be awarded.

Think we should all get dressed up in the striped pyjamas

Yeah, no worries.

I thought they had done away with the whole "buy a ticket before entering the turnstile thing"...was certainly cash gates in operation for home fans. With regards the checking of jackets and things. Away fans (at all grounds) are always subjected to more checks than home fans and I can understand why as they are more likely to be carrying things like drink etc. Experience has taught me that when going to away games, take the bare minimum, have a jacket with as few pockets as possible and wear it till you're through the gates. Makes it so much easier for the stewards to give you the once over and more often than not they can get a visual that you're "safe" and not concealing anything and you'll walk on by unhindered. A jacket bunched up under the arm or whatever could be concealing anything and a bag is almost guaranteed to warrant a quick look. Being searched should not be viewed as "treated like crap". Unfortunately we live in a world where not everyone can be trusted and if someone was to get something in to a game and it caused an incident because Stewards hadn't taken reasonable precautions then we'd all be up in arms and asking why they weren't doing their job. I think this is a case of "careful what you wish for" because if you start saying why do the home fans get treated different and demanding parity then the most likely outcome is an increase on searches at the home end as opposed to a decreased level at the away end. At the moment, clubs are more comfortable with home fans as they tend to know them, they have their details from season tickets, if something happens they can be more readily identified etc.