ictchris

Loads of people saying that stuff has happened, nothing coming out.

When are our accounts due out?

Kelty don't own the pitch they are going to rent us

https://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/news/exclusive-kelty-hearts-don-t-own-pitch-earmarked-for-caley-351962/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

You have to laugh.

57 minutes ago, CELTIC1CALEY3 said:

Surely making Ferguson, Bolan and Gardiner redundant would not be that expensive? Restructuring the club changes roles which can necessitate redundancy.

You can't make the manager redundant, I assume we are still going to need one of those.

8 hours ago, STFU said:

It was clear that the vast majority in the room were in support of a boycott on season tickets but the trust said they could not endorse it for legal reasons.

A quick google shows that other fans groups have endorsed season ticket boycotts so I'm not sure what's different for us.

https://www.shropshirestar.com/sport/football/wolverhampton-wanderers-fc/2024/05/23/wolves-1877-supporters-trust-message-to-fans-boycott-season-ticket-renewals/

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/03/27/manchester-city-premier-league-ticket-prices

Either way the message from fans was clear and those in the room would rather take their chances with administration than accept the Kelty project.

Don’t know the details of those groups but the Trust owns about 10% of the voting rights in the club. Maybe that changes legal responsibilities. I don’t know but it seems possible.

Reading accounts of the meeting a few people at the meeting said they’d prefer administration to this but administration is not a panacea. It’s entirely possible that administrators could look at the situation and wind the club up. 

Harper is gone.  We get a development fee I think.

I'm cross posting with P&B at this point, apologies if this doesn't make sense.

I think administration is where this is going to be honest.  What has been hinted at is that quite a few of the other major shareholders (Dougie MacGilvary and family and Alan Savage) want to take over but don't want to have to pay off the money that Morrison and others have put in and are owed.  So if the club went into administration the money owed to him and others could be CVA'd down to a lower ammount.  That's very dangerous of course and would definitely put the club's future at risk.  But I can't really see any other outcome if the current incumbents don't walk away.

Another point about it is that I don't think Morrison, who is a wealthy man by all accounts but not so wealthy that he can cross out £1m a season, can afford to walk away and the only way he'll get his money back is for us to get back into top flight.  Hence we've got the Operation Moonshot sensibility - stage concerts to make loads of money!  Get involved in a strange battery farm property deal to make £3m!  Appoint coach from English Premiership on a huge wage and move traiing to accomodate him!  It's moonshot after moonshot and none of them have worked.  The only way we can go is to build the club up again, the way it was done before, and that isn't going to be a quick and easy job.  It's certainly not a job for Ross Morrison and Scott Gardiner, or any of the current board.

I think Morrison can't see the wood for the trees.  He says if the fans don't buy season tickets the club goes bust but then he does things that pretty much every single season ticket holder opposes.  It's the way that the current board have treated fans for years - we don't give a f**k about anything you say, think or want, just cough up money again.  Eventually that road runs out.  He even seems to criticse the fans by effectively saying "oh well no-one cared when we announced we'd shut down the youth academy!".  I think I'm right in saying that was never announced, they said "oh we might have to shut down the youth academy depending on what happens".

The idea of all these unnamed people in football phoning him up and telilng him what a great idea this is is a complete fantasy as well.

The whole tone of the discussion and interview is the usual for Morrison - "we have to do this, we have to, there's no alternative".  You get the feeling that in just about every case with the board they decide something and then just cover their ears and fail to look at the problem in a different way.  

Interview with Ross Morrison in the Courier

Drake posting on here like

Hello, my name is…. mr Renidrag, yes that’ll do.

For all the despair I think the situation is retrievable. I think of the example of Raith Rovers, who went through completely alienating their fan base, for different reasons, a couple of years ago. They have come out of that experience far stronger as a club and have had their best season in decades, with a far more energised and engaged fan base. I’m not saying stopping this will mean we shoot back immediately but if the fans can stop it, if we can get new people involved off the pitch then we can reinvigorate the club from top to bottom.  As Old Caley Girl says, the current board  all seem to be about the hare-brained schemes and have forgotten about making the stadium a worthwhile place to attend.

I didn't recognise those people as Muirfield Mills.

18 minutes ago, ictchris said:

In the Battery Farm thread someone, I think it might have been Charles B, posted a grab of the biggest shareholders in the club.  The biggest shareholder, by far, is the Tulloch/Sutherland owned ICT Trust.

The post is here

The biggeset shareholder is the Trust, not entirely sure who controls it.  Variouspeople named as officers of it, including David Stewart, who was MP at the time.  Previously David Sutherland was involved, as was Ken Mackie.

39 minutes ago, old caley girl said:

Don't think that's the case anymore? 

In the Battery Farm thread someone, I think it might have been Charles B, posted a grab of the biggest shareholders in the club.  The biggest shareholder, by far, is the Tulloch/Sutherland owned ICT Trust.

Another point about all this is that if we end up with lots of fans failing to renew, we could end up losing them forever.  Once people lose the habit of attending matches they often don't get it back.  

Worth noting that the Board of directors includes Graham Bennet and Alex Chisholm, who were assured would help reconnect the club to the local community and local businesses. 

22 minutes ago, Scotty said:

If they wont move to Inverness, then they should not play for Inverness. I don't care where they are from, local, Scotland, England, anywhere else, but the minimum requirement to play for Inverness is a commitment to live and/or work in the local community. 

We've had quite a few players who didn't move to Inverness over the years.  It's not a requirement.  Extending this to the whole footballing operation is the issue.

What does this mean for our youth academy?  Lots of hints that this was going, is it?

What does it mean for the Hub at the IRA that we are apparently part of?  Is that offski?

I think that this will fall apart and the club will go into administration this close season to be honest.

Some fans making the point on P&B that many more remote clubs train far away from their home base - Queen of the South train in Hamilton, Stranraer train in Glasgow, the Angus clubs mainly train in Edinburgh.

Major difference here is the distance - Kelty is more than twice as far away from inverness as any of those clubs and the fact that this is a wholesale relocation of the football side of our club to a rival.  Also, and no disrepect to any of those places and clubs, but we haven't had to do this before because Inverness is a bigger city than those places and we have had more success than any of them.  We aspire to be in the top flight, we spent 15 years there.  

You have to ask about the board members who are signing this off.  What are they thinking?

Also, the club is owned in the main by David Sutherland.  Does he support this? 

Geniunely think we could end up going bust this close season tbh.

Some other clubs have training based in different places to help with logisitics etc but this seems like we will be moving the club lock and stock somewhere else except for match days.

On 5/20/2024 at 10:19 AM, SteveA2 said:

There's a centre half at Buckie, Jack Murray who's 23, has been one of the best players in the league supposedly. For a defender he has scored 26 goals in 51 games which is phenomenal. I'd be much happier if we're looking at these kind of players rather than useless jobbers coming up from England.

Just after we got relegated we took Buckie's captain on trial, Kevin Fraser, and wanted to sign him but expected them to just release him for nothing.  They didn't and he never signed.

We also had Blair Yule on trial that close season, he was highly rated at the time coming out of the Highland League with Cove.  Arbroath signed him in League one for a year and then he returned to Cove where he's been every since.  I think I'm right that Scott Davidson, centre-forward who previously played for Fort William also trialled with us that summer but we didn't take him and he's continued playing in the Highland League for various clubs.

Not sure of other Highland league players we've had on trial since then.  Do we even scout the HL?

You have to assume that the club has been working out what our 'backers' can afford to write off and what guarantees they can extend for the forthcoming season before making moves in terms of staying full-time, changing manager, impact on non-playing roles etc.

It's also worth noting that full-time football is no guarantee of promotion.  Queen of the South have been fulltime since they got relegated and finished seventh this season, behind a lot of part-time teams.  Falkirk and Dunfermline have both had extended stays in the third tier as full-time clubs in recent history.

Live feed of the board meeting here

It's also not as though relegation came as a huge surprise.  Not having something prepared is pathetic.

It makes me think that we are going to go into administration to be honest.

Are we going to get an all-timer of a seething statement announcing Gardiner's resignation?

The mystery board meeting is absolutely key.  We need to have someone in place to build a team for next season now, literally today.  Our rivals in League One are already ahead of us - Arborath signed Callum Gallagher, who has an excellent record at that level.