Charles Bannerman

That was the Romnanian team I was meaning. And would the Danish have been from their "Second Division"? :) T6NY - I may well have mentioned this at some point since 2006 or you may have read the stuff I did for the Highland News at the time. But I don't think I've said anything recently. I remember the Bolton friendly in the less than friendly summer of 1994 very clearly since it was CT's second ever match after the rather uninspiring debut game against Simmurn. The night of the Bolton match was best remembered for the discovery and quick covering up of the Caley Rebels' painting of the Telford Street untinals black and red after plastering the rest of the place with blue and white!

I was at the Montecatini game in 2006 although I had to get back to Inverness before the second one. The Montecatini game broke all manner of records. It was (I think) 12-0 ICT which remains the biggest score in any ICT game. It also produced the fastest goal and the smallest crowd which, excluding a Highland media corps of four, numbered something like 11 at kick off before rising, Clachnacuddinesque, to about 25 later on. Just the previous day I had watched the players train in the searing heat on the same pitch while I did my own session on the running track which went round it. I think Golly's heart monitor converted to the highest work rate in the sprints. But as for that game - if you thought County's annihilation of Stirling Albion was one way traffic..... The small crowd of course meant relative silence punctuated only by the referee's whistle, the usual shouts of the players on the park..... and the incessant whine of Lambretta scooters which Italian youth seems to ride manically absolutely everywhere. Not as manic, though, as the following night when Italy won their semi final of the 2006 World Cup. The locals just went mental... two on a Lambretta... three on a Lambretta.... three on a Lambretta waving flags and drinking Peroni. The procession went round and round Montecatini for much of the night as the ICT players tried to sleep in their hotel right in the middle of it. And that was just the semi. Unfortunately I had gone home by the time they won the final. The thing was, though, there was a good humour and complete lack of aggressive edge to it all which would have been difficult to replicate in Britain. I would not have felt so safe in similar circumstances in the UK. I was unable to go back the following year but apparently the Romanian side Universiatea Craivoa were the biggest bunch of divers, cheats and chancers you ever saw. (Sorry Stevico!)

The best candidate to date by far for the CTO "word of the season" award! :025: You stick wi me Charlie boy,eh'll broaden yer vocabulary wi words ya never kent existed Having said that, I believe the spelling is actually "formulaic" (cf "pie") :025:

The best candidate to date by far for the CTO "word of the season" award! :( It does also sum up one of the two things I was really trying to say, which I have since clarified by text with L_G and which I will repeat in more detail here. First and foremost, please be in no doubt that I thought Saturday night was an absoutely excellent occasion, free from many of the "formulaeic" :( aspects of the classic Sportsman's Dinner. HOWEVER I think there are drawbacks with the venue which is in a position to milk the fact that it is the only place in or around town able to accommodate relatively large numbers. The Drumossie's monopolistic position means that the drink is far too dear and they seem to charge organising bodies quite a lot for food which I think isn't all that good. It seems other disagree but quite frankly, when the main course arrived I underwent what has become my normal, reflex reaction there which is to look for the separate roast and boiled potato dishes and then realise that their absence is explained by the mousse-like semi colloidal substance which is hiding under the vegetables. The Drumossie is also too far out of town. Then, moving on to your "formulaeic" :( :( Sportsman's Dinner (which Saturday was NOT... it was several leagues above that.) Here you have speeches (often TWO) which in themselves are becoming a bit of a rapidly forgettable cliche ridden tedium. After that you count up the additional cost of the "heads and tails", raffles and an auction (which on the other hand is of no real interest to many attending.) Apart from all that, these functions tend to be a bit of a Fat Cats' Paradise with tables of corporate largesse and of limited attraction to normal punters from the general public. Once again, I emphasise that was what Saturday was NOT but on a personal note I think I have now got to the stage that the Drumossie and the Sportsman's Dinner, never mind both, are weary and overpriced solutions so, apart from my commitment to Clach, I will be giving anything with either of these components a miss.

I have to say I'm certainly becoming a bit weary of these dinners at the Drumossie and the Stadium would be a welcome change of venue. I was very pleased to be at the Drumossie for Saturday's excellent 10th anniversary celebrations and will definitely support next month's Clach one given the current climate. But I think that's me for a while, irrespective of venue. There's something of a sameness creeping into these Drumossie functions and I think the venue has quite a bit but not everything to do with that. For a start it's pretty expensive (before you think about a return taxi to an out of town venue) and the food really isn't all that good for what you pay (and I speak from over 30 years' experience of school dinners). It's usually a plate of soup, a rather small and prefabricated main course with soggy mash and frazzled courgettes, some kind of arty looking but not really all that substantial sweet followed by coffee. The service can also be very slow. Moving on to the bar, it's extremely expensive. On Friday I paid ?4.75 for a small glass of house white and ?6.20 for a large one. The barmaid was actually extremely apologetic and empathised with my observation that you can buy two bottles of perfectly drinkable wine out of Tesco for ?7. The only reasonably priced drink I could find was Carling which is actually their only lager (astonishing for a place like that).... and I'm prepared to listen to anyone who might suggest that ?3.15 for a pint of p**h is not in fact "reasonable". I'm not surprised wedding guests at the Drumossie smuggle in carry outs and the only thing that surprises me about the Old Firm's defection to Tennents is that it's even worse. Then there's the rather hackneyed Sportsman's Dinner format. You come in and you cough up a further tenner for your red and yellow cards. You then get tapped for more for the raffle. After the meal a couple of people stand up and crack a series of jokes, frequently expletive ridden, which may make you laugh quite a lot at the time but next morning you've forgotten 90% of them. Somewhere in there there's the euphemistic "comfort break". Why can't they just use the word "toilet"? Anyway during even a single visit you will watch upwards of a fiver's worth disappear down the pan. But most people don't really need a "comfort break" because most people can go to the toilet while those with enough cash are bidding breathtaking sums in the auction. Then you stand around tables having OK quite a decent crack with people but by now the bar staff are wanting to chuck you out so it's off into your premium rate taxi. By the time you get home, only the most abstemious are less than ?100 lighter for the night. I was actually wondering whether the venue was maybe a factor in Saturday's numbers being just a little bit down. I suppose if you're on a freebie at somebody's corporate table it's OK, but if you're paying your own way it's a lot of money for what's become (Saturday excepted) "just another Drumossie dinner" the gloss is maybe wearing off if you've been to a few. Maybe the Kingsmills Suite will revitalise the proceedings which were conspicuously rescued on Saturday by the interviews!

Steady laddie!!!! ;) :clapping03: :clapping03: Some people, though, do seem to need a medium through which to express what must be their fundamental frustrations with life - some of these, I think, quite deep rooted and maybe even subconscious. Football seems quite frequently to be adopted as just that medium. You know the kind of folk I mean. They nominally latch on to a particular club and actually appear to be quite fervent supporters. But when you look more closely at their behaviour, the most common trait by far is the consistent expression of dissatisfaction, apparently caused by and the fault of a player, manager etc of the football club although what they are really expressing is actually something quite separate. This tends to be at its worst when the football club fails to supply them with their craved for shot of self gratification. I think the Old Firm suffer from this quite a lot. Freud would find these people very interesting indeed.

Make no mistake about this. County were absolutely devastating here against a Stirling team that weren't actually all that bad. County were a good deal more than competent and the Stirling keeper had a few good saves, including one early in the 2nd half which denied Gardyne his hat trick before Wood, deprived of the opportunity to take the penalty by Brittain, eventually got his. During the last 20 minutes I thought County looked especially strong which I think may well be down to the Brewster influence in what seems to be a very effective partnership in Dingwall. What I have just said might not go down very well here, but that's how it was.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think this was a TV commentary game for anyone. In fact in discussion with L_G and Vic, who is producing the DVD, we can't even remember if it started out as a radio commentary game and suddenly became one when it was evident that a huge shock was on the cards. Certainly it was a radio commentary game by the second half because, unable to get there, I stopped my car in the middle of Culduthel Road for Paul Sheerin to take the penalty! I would certainly back up what L_G has said about the alternative to the commentary, although I also haven't heard it myself yet.

I have to say I'm with Mannie and Mantis on this one. The legacy of that game was considerable and something my mind focused on in the course of doing stuff for the Supporters' Trust DVD and the BBC. Apart from the instant international celebrity there was also no small matter of the revenue from that game and two very lucrative follow ups against Aberdeen coming at a time when ICT was financially on the ropes and in dire need of, among much else, short term cash flow. The merger had put Caley Thistle on the map for a number of reasons, many of them the wrong ones. Suddenly, an acrimonious birth was no longer what ICT was best known for. The result, and its four significant follow ups of the Robbo era, also gave Caley Thistle a great degree of credibility within football and I think that included just that bit of extra and useful gravitas during that very marginal entry to the SPL in the summer of 2004. However there was always a bit of a worry for me that ICT might still be in danger of being remembered as a "one result club" and I think there was a tendency in that direction until promotion to the SPL, after which the club's ability to stick in the top tier (for 5 seasons at least) gradually eroded that perception in favour of ICT being looked upon as one of Scottish football's FAIRLY big hitters at any rate. I was interested in Mantis' comment about the quantum leap from the days of ?4 entry to Telford Street in 1994 up to that night at Celtic Park. It reminded me of the degree of disquiet, disbelief even in some cases on the part of many when they realised that it was going to cost that to get in. In fact it was only 9 months previously that people (in their hundreds! :021: ) could buy a season ticket for Telford Street for 20 quid!

The people I figured would know most of the answers would be Caley D, Stevico, Charles Bannerman, and maybe alex Macleod. Just because this four seem to have the most knowledgeable answers when it comes to ICT internal dealings. Oh, reliably informed as well. Folks.... I have over the years, to avoid any clash of interest, consistently declined to become involved in a number of areas on these forums. Those which I avoid here include:- 1) Matters relating to other clubs. (I sometimes make exceptions in the case of Clach in which many ICT fans have a genuine interest and which is not a direct rival of ICT, but only subject to 2) and 5) below) 2) Divulging news such as the Barrowman deal last night before I get it out myself on the BBC. 3) Commenting on players or any other club staff. 4) Commenting on what have become "running stories" relating to internal or indeed external ICT politics. 5) Commenting on any potentially controversial matter relating to Highland Council who are my day job employers. As a result you will see that my profile quotes "Memories" as my most frequently contributed to forum! In the case of 4), a judgement sometimes has to be made as to when something ceases to be a matter of chat on these forums and has become, or has potentially become, a running story. In the case of this "stadium ownership" business, I made that judgement towards the end of last week, at which point I challenged Donald to plead his case in a more public domain than these forums and then withdrew from any further comment. The events of the last four or five days ago appear to suggest that my judgement last week may well have been correct. I am not therefore in a position to make comment on what seems to have become an issue within ICT or a section of its fans, except that I think I could confirm to Johnboy that since around 2001 ICT has not owned the stadium nor the lease for the land and could not therefore offer either as security. And at that point - I hold my peace.

I'm just back from the Stadium. The pitch passed an inspection and the game WILL go ahead subject to the rest of the snow being cleared. The pitch was 75% clear when I left at around 1130.

I have just had a call from Jim Falconer to say that a couple of inches of overnight snow need cleared from the pitch before today's game can go ahead. The pitch is reasonably soft underneath in the bits they've checked so they are reasonably confident the game will take place IF the snow can be cleared. An inspection will then be arranged. The message is get down as soon as possible and bring a shovel or a scoop.

Not advice Donald.... just a challenge :D :)

Apart from on this forum, which still has quite a restricted readership, you do not, however, seem to have been doing so very publicly over these years. If you are so convinced that this is the case, why don't you phone a newspaper and set in motion a story beginning something like "A senior member of the ICT Supporters' Trust is questioning the manner in which ownership of the Caledonian Stadium was transferred when the Inverness club hit financial trouble almost a decade ago....." Or why don't you offer me the story exclusively for the BBC? Or indeed issue a statement to all local media (who would of course all then seek a response from the relevant people)?

Sure thing! I fully understand that Georgeios.

Well Donald.... over to you :moon2:

Queens Park is the athletics stadium beside the Torvean Canal Bridge. It belongs to Inverness Leisure and has been the home of Inverness Harriers for the last 25 years. The infield is not large enough to accommodate a football pitch. The "wee shinty stadium" is the Bught. It belongs to Highland Council and has for decades been the home of Inverness Shinty Club as well as a sub national shinty facility. Politically there would not be a hope in creation of that being given over to football either. In advance of the bypass being completed, and we all know how remote a prospect that is, moving crowds of 2-7000 in and out of either of these venues regularly - along Glenurquhart Road, Tomnahurich St, and much of it over the Ness Bridge and through the city centre - would be an impossibility in any case. Believe me - and I have seen Bruce Hare's original 1993 feasibility study which looked at no fewer than eleven different sites and which I think is still sitting in a box behind me - Inverness is not over endowed with suitable sites for a football stadium. In 1993 there was a struggle to boil the 11 down to a realistic short list of four and before that Caley had had no end of trouble with venues like the Carse, Kinmylies and indeed the Bught area. Opportunities have also become a lot less numerous since the early 1990s. (In fact the only two which were really possible were East Longman and Stratton Farm. INE were despearate to go for Stratton in order to kick start the Golden Mile and indeed I note that development agencies still seem to be fixated with shifting the epicentre of Inverness out to the A96, given Willie Rowe of HIE's recent comments. Anyway, Caley Thistle were desperate NOT to go to Stratton and a battle royal ensued during part of 1994 between club and Enterprise Company which eventually ended with the selection of East Longman. The revisionist in me often wonders, as a matter of curiosity, "what if" they had gone for Stratton Farm?)

Irrespective of the share price, Alex does seem to have taken thinking here out of the traditional box where the financing of football is held to be the responsibility of wealthy individuals through making donations to clubs who are apparently owed a living by them. In answer to Georgeios' query about what was said on the BBC on Monday morning, yes, David Sutherland did confirm to me that he would be making a donation to the Clach Survival Fund which as at Sunday stood at ?8800. It is my understanding that his donation is a modest sum which will join others in a pot designed to keep Clach in buses for away games, rent of Grant Street for home games and around a tenner per player per game for the next few weeks.... and hence Inverness in the Highland League at least for the time being. We are talking here orders of magnitude less than the cost of keeping a recently relegated full time First Division team in operation in a 7500 seater stadium.

I have to say I am with the SFA on this one. I would be prepared to go a very long way to keep trashy Americanisation out of football or any other sport for that matter and this quite simply is what was being proposed here. If baseball or American Football or any other sport which really just the Yanks play seriously but still have World Series in it want to do this, then that's up to them, but it really sounds so naff. It would be timeouts for commercial breaks next. Also, if this proposal had been allowed to go ahead, presumably every game Stirling played would be dubbed "Compare the Meerkat".

What a load of pseudo academic bullsh1t! No... not your post JB but what the folk in that report are saying. It's painfully bleeding obvious that texting is encouraging and fostering all manner of bad practice in the use of English and I really don't have a lot of time for the ramblings of some academic whose first priority is probably to justify a piece of research in order to obtain funding from the relevant body. I would have ONE good thing to say about language practice in texting. The constraint of 160 characters (which I still stick to where possible as a relic of many years on "Pay As You Go") does help develop discipline in conveying your ideas concisely. However I probably make extra demands of myself since I am also one of these people who uses properly spelled words in grammatical sentences whilst texting. I just can't bear to see badly expressed English! But to return this thread to where it started, the Clach meeting is at 7pm on Friday in the lounge bar in the Social Club and their priority is short term cash flow - ie shekels in the coffers NOW!

Yes, it's a completely separate entity which is independently funded and not dependent on the outcome of the current Clach FC situation. It is also likely to become part of the integrated single body which is being proposed for Youth Football in Inverness which in turn is part of an integrated scheme for the Highlands coordinated by Rod Houston, Highland Football Academy manager. MODS.... is it technically possible for posters to operate a spellcheck facility on their posts? (NB I'm not asking on behalf of myself, but 33 years in the "day job" are making me twitch just a bit!)

In which case the Administrator may well suggest that you retreat back into your little burrow four places and eleven points below Clach (who also have four games in hand over you) while he does the responsible thing he is paid to do and waits for somebody else to come up with a more realistic offer.

To answer Scotty's points in the order in which he makes them.... I'm sure Richard did mean Inverness City and therein lies an interesting scenario. Clach are on the verge of the abyss and if they go under, Grant Street is either up for grabs by a new user or the Council make a bid themselves for it (as Peter Corbett has already suggested) and make some kind of community facility out of it. Either way, this potentially opens the door for Inverness City who currently lack a permanent home. City's predicament is NOT the fault of the Highland Council although for some reason a perception has been created that it is. City's predicament is to a large extent a result of themselves ignoring the fact that they were told right at the start that they would have to vacate the Meeting Park for Northern Counties CC late winter but they chose to ignore that and when they were then asked to leave as agreed, they very publicly held their hands up in horror and claimed they were being badly done by. Either way, Highland Council has a problem (which it does not deserve) but a problem all the same - and one which could well be solved if Clach were to fold. As for City going into the Highland League, I think they are very aware that ?50-60,000 a year is the absolute minimum required - and that's before you even start to think about being elected by the league. I am not sure whether or not Inverness United was registered with the SFA but would ask the question if this would be permissible on the part of a club which did not exist (outwith a kids' side)? The other consideration is that any move to call the team Inverness United would have been very short lived indeed because Clach were only part of the merger discussions for 12 weeks in the summer of 1993 before it became a two horse chariot and it was a further 4 months before the name Caledonian Thistle emerged as the title. The name, as I recollect, was not really an issue right through the period of the merger votes and the immediate Rebellious Autumn aftermath. Although doubtless discussed, it only emerged as a bargaining tool in December 1993 when the SFL elections became imminent and deadlock still prevailed. Caledonian FC! Now there's an interesting one! I certainly know that Caledonian FC was allowed to continue to exist as what was called a "constitutional shell" well after the votes to transfer assets in December 1994. This was in effect a necessity because the Caley vote was merely one on the basis of a necessary 50% to invest the club's assets in shares in CT since the 2/3 to invoke constitutional changes was never achieved. So in fact, as far as I know, Caley has NEVER been voted out of existence (but see the end of my comments)! I have a strong recollection of reading through the Caley Constitution at the time of asset transfer (the 50% resolution was proposed by Hugh Grant and Willie MacLean and approved by the Third Battle of Rose Street) and spotting two glaring loopholes which the Rebels strangely never exploited. One of them I unfortunately forget, but the other was the statement in the Constitution that Caley's Registered Office would be at Telford Street Inverness. Clearly that could not continue to be the case, especially after the ground was sold (unless a cupboard in Currys was rented in perpetuity!), but this arrangement needed a 2/3 majority to cease - which was NEVER achieved (publicly at any rate). Stranger things than this were challenged legally but thios one wasn't. I certainly also recollect that the Rebels did briefly plan another legal campaign on the basis of the shell of Caley continuing because I was thrown out of a "public" meeting about it in the late summer of 1995. But as far as I can see, the constitution of Caledonian FC, as it stood at the AGM in 1993, has NEVER been changed in any way - so the club presumably exists. The only chance might be that, after the extended memberships lapsed following the asset vote, the only members left were the Life Members and they may well have done something about that. I must ask Jimmy Falconer about this rather intriguing scenario now I have been reminded of it.

To invoke that well used football cliche, they have now, literally, been reduced to taking "one game at a time". On Sunday the Supporters' Trust wrote to the administrator proposing that they might take over the football side while he sold off the company's assets to meet debts which are a swingeing ?280,000. Gordon MacLure's reply was bleak to say the least, and absolutely central to the situation in which Clach now find themselves this week. He can only allow the football side to continue if there is an ongoing flow of cash to sustain it which is not from the Company's normal revenue sources which he needs to meet debts. In other words there is an acute short term cash flow problem. He has told the Trust that his major concern is that fundraising proposals, many of which will come to fruiton in March, do not address the need for cash NOW and that he could not guarantee that the players would be paid this Saturday. The Trust has secured the several hundred pounds needed to fund wages and a bus to Formartine on Saturday so that will go ahead and Clach should therefore survive at least over the weekend. However the Administrator is also concerned that the Trust also needs to find the portion of his fee required for him to administer the ongoing football side - around ?600-700 per week - otherwise he doubts if he will be able to allocate much more time to football as opposed to disposing of the business. In other words allowing the football to continue is causing an increase in the Administrator's fee which football operations have to find. In response to Mr MacLure's email, the Clach Supporters' Trust has called an emergency meeting for Friday night which will also be attended by James Proctor of Supporters Direct. What effect this will have is unclear but, apart from a vague rumour I heard about some kind of gesture from outside, I am not aware of any further interest in the club, which is why the assets (mainly land) will be sold off over the next couple of months. So in summary, it looks as if they should survive this weekend and thereafter it is on a week by week basis, at least until revenue streams like their Dinner and the Aberdeen game come on stream in March. But let's definitely NOT conclude that all will then be rosy. Surviving until March, and then to the end of the season merely create a little more breathing space.

As far a I recollect, the Second Gulf War started on the ground into the second half of March 2003.