Charles Bannerman

Laurence... for a very long time before the Scottish Cup was made "all in" a few years ago, Highland League sides had to qualify for it through the Qualifying Cup. For a time this was a national competition (which, off the top of my head, I think Inverness Citadel won in the 1930s) and then became North and South, with the late four in each progressing. Though this, Inverness clubs often qualified for the Scottish Cup and frequently - especially between around 1984 and 1992 - did very well. By the way, the Arbroath v Bon Accord score in 1885 was 36-0.

The other founder members were the long defunct Citadel, Union and the Cameron Highlanders - all also Inverness teams. Thistle were the inaugural champions. I believe that a team called Ross County also started, but disappeared after a few weeks, to be re-formed in 1929. I also believe that the only club ever to have scored "nul points" is Elgin City.

There is only one thing that's worse than hubris...... misplaced hubris laced with irony.

A wise and measured response to a comment straight out of the "Pride of the Highlands" and "Always in our shadow" stable.

It's quite clear that these Protestant and Catholic communities can no more peacefully coexist in West Central Scotland than they can in Northern Ireland. Without going into historical detail, I would find it difficult to describe 60 years of Jacobite rebellions as the Reformation going "fairly smoothly". Then, after that, you have the continuing marginalisation of the Highlands by the central belt which, in football terms, left the Highlands outwith the SFL until 1994, hence adding in all the disadvantages of a very belated start.

Once again you put your finger on an unfortunate symptom of the fundamental problem - which is the Old Firm. They are of such a size and have become established/ imposed themselves on Scottish society to such an extent that they also have the media running after them - which in turn only compounds the problem. Some of the toe-curling sycophancy I've seen towards OF managers at post-match media gatherings beggars belief. It all keeps coming back to that root cause of Scotland's failure, after 500 years, to come to terms with the Reformation. This has led to the continuation of rival religious groupings which have in turn adopted two football clubs as their focal points. The resulting clout these clubs receive has made them magnets also for much of the rest of the population Aided and abetted in addition by the media and the football governing bodies giving them what they want, this leaves scant pickings for the rest of the clubs - especially in economically marginal areas like the Highlands which have been attempting to sustain two upper flight clubs in a situation loaded against that.

In fact, if you look at the attendance figures alone, last season the Old Firm accounted for 62% of the total Premiership gate while the two Highland clubs had just 4.7%. If, even adding in the lower leagues, just two clubs are accounting for such a disproportionate amount of Scottish football's turnover, then that really doesn't leave much for the rest

Regrettably, your pay-off line there is the key to the entire scenario. Celtic and "the new team from Glasgow" are hoovering up so much of Scotland's football cash that precious little is left for the rest, and Celtic's "European munificence" is really only p!ssing into the wind in return. This two club hegemony further marginalises already marginal areas like the Highlands. Hence ICT, despite considerable financial assistance over the years, has passed the limit of punching above its weight while County, despite what's very likely a much greater level of subsidy, are now also finding their Premiership future in severe jeopardy.

So what now? Re-name this thread "Dundee Derbies Next Season"?? There's actually a serious message here - if Dundee is not that far from having no teams in the Premiership, what price the inner Moray Firth? Edinburgh didn't cover itself in glory fairly recently either.

I must say that my attitude to "glory hunters" has softened a bit. Even as recently as the 2015 Cup Final, I had a bit of an ambivalent attitude to the unprecedented presence of around 15,000 in the Inverness end - glad to see that level of backing for the club, but also a bit resentful at people turning up only for this extra helping of self-gratification. Now, I tend more to believe that everyone is free to buy into attending matches at whatever level their interest determines. With ICT there will maybe be a few dozen who attend every game, home and away; a few hundred who never miss a home game; a couple of thousand season ticket holders who attend most home games; a few thousand attending half a dozen or more games.... up to 15,000 for a Scottish Cup final. Nobody in a "more frequent" category really has the right to play the Self Righteous card and criticise less frequent attenders. Then there's the large majority of the population of Inverness who have no interest at all in watching ICT, many, possibly even most, of these with no interest in football at all. Where the final of a national cup for lower league sides (that's a definition, not a dismissive term) comes on that spectrum remains to be seen.

Caleyboy, I sometimes wonder if you have more agendas than an entire volume of Highland Council Minutes??

I'm not sure that the numbers totally support that conspiracy theory, given that the Muirfield Mills interest alone already outnumbers the Mcgil/Savco holding by about 3:2. But even if this were the case, DFS now has about 300,000 shares - approx 8% (I'm not rigorously checking numbers at this time of night) while MM control about 1.3M (ballpark 35%) and Mcgil/Savco has around 900,000 (knocking on 25%). Then, in a pretty splintered situation, you have the Supporters' Society we're not sure if the club actually has or not, holding (or perhaps not holding?) 10% of voting rights - more than DFS who is now around the 6th biggest shareholder. However that 10%, the 5th biggest clout, is in a state of total uncertainty. On the other hand if it's felt that the club would be better off without that £250K.......

Don't worry about the indirect answer, Huisdean, because you raise a very valid issue.

Ironically enough, Balmacara (the "new Balmacara", I think) was the most playable pitch in shinty last Saturday and hosted the only game that went ahead.

A further straight question - if you were on the current board, what would your attitude have been to accepting the £250,000 personal donation from "the builder" which is part of the £450,000 received in recent months to keep the club afloat?

Straight question - what would your alternative strategy have been to raise the £6M of other people's money that's been needed to get the club to where it's been over the last 25 years.

I should perhaps instead have said - this HAS ALREADY DEVELOPED into the mother of all fixtures backlogs!

This could be developing into the mother of all fixtures backlogs!

Apologies, OCG, I am probably a victim of my own attempt not to be too abrasive. A touch of the Sir Humphrys, perhaps. Essentially what I'm saying is that I wish some people would accept that, thanks to pretty good governance, this club has led a charmed life for years. It's therefore not all that helpful trying to apportion blame when the realities of a fundamentally loss-making operation can no longer be kept at bay. I would be even more reluctant to press the nuclear button with the suggestion that if people want a superior product then they should be prepared to pay more for it (as happens in any other line of business) instead of constantly looking round for other people to subsidise their activities.

Good question. Some folks don't seem to understand that the club's most notable feature over time is what it has done in the face of adverse circumstances. However the most prominent comments seem to come when things depart from the charmed life that largely good governance has created because something short of perfection has disrupted this otherwise privileged existence. Most complaints seem to arise when a relatively rare error has meant that a fundamentally loss making lifestyle can no longer be cobbled together.

No, I'm simply putting your CTO comments - current and historical - into a realistic context. This in particular may help forum users, especially more recently joined ones, to evaluate them - which I think is very appropriate and necessary. So, to provide a little more detail than in my previous post.... for an extended period on here some years ago, you waged a constant campaign of criticism and undermining of the stewardship of this club, prominent within which was the constant highlighting of any and every difficulty - real and imaginary - of which you could conceive. Then, by a process which has never been entirely clear and despite your having seriously antagonised those in charge at the time, you suddenly became part of the "establishment" as a "volunteer". Equally suddenly, more or less overnight indeed, the tone of your CTO posts switched from arch-antagonist to those of an arch-apologist for an administration which could suddenly do no wrong. In consequence, some would argue that there was a great deal of "credibility" indeed in the phrase "e*se-licking happy clapper", which was IHE's penetrating observation on this new status. Alongside this ran considerable uncertainty, reflecting a potential conflict of interest, as to whether some "CaleyD" posts were personal observations or being offered in your capacity as a club functionary on behalf of the club. Meanwhile, and coinciding remarkably with you ceasing to hold any position within the club, the "worm has turned" again, the happy clapping has stopped and board members once more have to use toilet paper in considerable quantities. This is a process which is more than evident from the stark contrast between your more recent, suddenly once again negative posts, and your earlier, persistent assurances that the set-up which led to over-resourced relegation and financial crisis, was infallible. I trust this puts into useful context a wide variety of "CaleyD" posts over an extended period of time.

Oh well, Scarlet, as long as you are content to reconcile that with the historical sequence of:- a constant tide of condemnation prior to an apparent visit to Damascus, upon which Inverness Caledonian Thistle suddenly achieved a period of administrative perfection up to and including over-resourced relegation.... before reverting to consistent mismanagement on more recent regime change.

What I am saying is that more or less every year things applying to it will drop off the ends of the accounts into the next year, so a lot of these factors are self-cancelling in whole or in part. The £250 a week was quoted by the manager at the AGM in respect of, I think, Coll Donaldson. We are, of course, talking about first team wages here. The rest are a fraction and we don't want to muddy the water. We do seem to be making an incredible meal of the fairly obvious - that the new board have come in, realised the cash that had been splashed in the past (and not to any great effect) and are doing their best to reduce expenditure as well as increase earned revenue streams. This would also appear to be a reasonable approximation to what Kingsmills has also been saying, although he is free to contradict me if it's not. As an aside, I wonder what a complete outsider would make of a chronological list of all your CTO posts which come to some judgement on how well the club's affairs are being run at any particular time?

It also looks as if Caley D may have reverted to his previous status following his "e*se-licking happy clapper" period.

I don't think it really matters when a rent write-off is agreed. It's surely when it's actually written off that it disappears from the accounts and this process is only being finalised now. Items "missing" the accounts deadline is an annual factor, so these 2016-17 accounts may well also have benefited from something similar at the start of the accounting period. In terms of cost cutting, the most excessive wages have been steadily been getting removed from the player pool and, as we were told at the AGM, wages have dropped to as little as £250 a week. Also, if all that much has been bounced forward to 2017-18, then that will presumably reduce the need for whatever subsidy will be required in the current season - albeit a season of reduced Championship income streams. I suspect that what we are again effectively talking about here is that the inner Moray Firth isn't capable of sustaining two upper league football clubs and hence two player pools being paid far more than can sensibly be justified in relation to their ability to generate earned income.