Charles Bannerman

Full commentary on Aberdeen v ICT on BBC Radio Scotland 810 medium wave tonight.

I actually got part of the information for that from the magnificent bound volume of full match reports for the first two seasons which I was given by Ian Broadfoot in 1996 and which I dug out whilst posting last night. It really is a masterpiece of information about the early years of ICT - reports, team lines, subs, scores, scorers, times, attendances etc etc. All you would expect from an Ian Broadfoot production.

I really doubt it is. Out of everyone I know who goes to games not one is an incomer. The crowds in the first season in 94 must have been around the 2,000 mark and it stayed consistent till we reached the spl where it jumped. Seems to have dipped this season though. On Joe's first point - I agree totally. A very large number of home fans at Inverness are Invernessians although, just like the population as a whole, there will also be a significant presence of incomers. And I am not going to follow on and rise to Dougal's bait which Kind Of Blue rightly exposes in Post 26! On Joe's second point, I think he's kind of right, but more specifically - * The average crowd for the first season 94-95 was just 1275, ranging from 491 v Albion Rovers to 2440 and 3562 for the two home derbies. * By D3 championship season 96-97 that had risen to 2500. Here the first three months had been at Telford Street but the early games at the new Caledonian Stadium attracted big crowds, partly due to a novelty factor and especially if they were derbies, title or promotion winning occasions or the official opening. * I don't have averages at hand for 1997-2004 but I recollect that crowds for the two seasons in D2 were a bit lower than 96-97 for reasons implied above. Then for the five seasons in D1 I have a clear recollection that very many of the games would attract 1800-1900, but somewhat more if County or Livi were involved so some averages would also be a bit above this. * RIG's excellent graph earlier in the thread for the SPL years then says it all - a slow start in a season where the first half was at Pittodrie and then a rise to 5000 followed by a slow decline to about 4000 (and a one off drop in D1 in 09-10), with a slight rise this season. However that includes one game against Celtic and the first of two against County and the picture isn't yet complete. All in all... a bit of an attendance rollercoaster for ICT over the years.

It's Freeview Channel 8 but I'm sure there are other possible feeds of Alba. I think I know where I can find out so will check.

I would imagine it will be a case of on air at 3pm, a five minute intro to the game and straight into the football. This is quite normal in this situation and it's also the way Alba do their televised shinty coverage - on air at 4pm with throw up at 4:05. With the capacity of Victoria Park just over 6000 (inc an away end of 2000) and the game being on a holiday, I would hope that the game would still sell out. If it had been a case of selling 7700 in Inverness that might have been different.

BBC Alba and the SPL have today announced that the New Year derby in Dingwall on Wednesday January 2nd will be the first game to be broadcast live as part of a new deal which will see Alba carry three SPL games per season live. This is in addition to a further 35 with delayed transmission (ie the current arrangement) normally airing at 5:30 on Saturdays. Kick off in Dingwall on January 2nd will be at 3:05pm. It has already been announced that the Highland Derby Scottish Cup tie will be live on BBC Scotland on Saturday December 1st.

Given the high profile that Remembrance is given in this game at this time, maybe the OP should just have stopped to think first about how likely it actually was that a top division team like ICT would have failed to mark this - especially when playing a club with as strong a Remembrance tradition as Hearts.

You mean including your good self?!

Oh well, that's been a double victory today for common sense and the creation of a realistically sociable atmosphere in Inverness, and both thanks to the Licensing Board - the lifting of the dreaded city centre midnight curfew and allowing away fans, albeit with restrictions, into the Caledonian Stadium bar. So another step also towards being regarded as a normal community. I often think "thank God for the breath of normality which is Caley Thistle" in this respect since the other things Inverness is best known for are a non existent water creature and the most misunderstood battle in British history. Inverness really needs dragged into the 20th century since the next stop could then become the 21st.

A 5-1 home win over his dad's old team Keith on his debut takes Wick to the top of the Highland League and with a game in hand over Cove. The interesting challenge could come from Formartine who have a couple of games in hand over Wick and are also sitting handily. What price a head to head between Barry and Peke for the HL title?

Scarlet's generation would probably have got a Fatwah from the local Taliban for kicking a ball on the Bught on a Sunday.

Probably by the same mechanism as they employ to kill enjoyment of Inverness as a Saturday night entertainment centre by insisting on a midnight curfew. Police in towns and cities across the UK seem to manage "normal" Saturday pub and club going as a matter of course. But uniquely this seems to be beyond the competence of the Inverness cops and, apart from anything else, it portrays our city to the world as some kind of Wee Free dominated 19th century backwater. So they will possibly also therefore come to the conclusion that the management of two sets of football fans in the same pub will also be beyond the capacity of the Sneck Constabulary.

He didn't start the job until Monday (29th) due to a pre-existing commitment so his first game will actually be at home to his dad's old team Keith this Saturday.

Well maybe you should take a look at them - before you start commenting on the manner in which they are being reported. Because if you had bothered to take a look at the Chairman's Annual Report you would have seen that it is the Chairman himself who raises and highlights the issue that if measures had not been taken to boost the squad beyond what was originally budgeted last season, then the financial situation might have been a whole lot worse in that the club could have been relegated. The quotes on BBC online are directly from the Chairman's annual report - and these are also the quotes used on the back page of the PandJ (30.10.12.) which takes exactly the same line. So if you have an objection to the manner in which the Chairman is presenting the club's losses in the public domain, maybe you should raise that directly with him.... once you get back from Damascus, like

I actually think one of the major elements of what is a multi dimensional problem is the religiously and politically divided nature of society in Scotland's most densely populated west central area. This has created an environment for rival population groups to polarise around two neighbouring clubs which have therefore artificially become large enough to acquire a critical mass which then drags in further fans from right across Scotland. As a result of this unnatural skewing of football support, local clubs such as ICT and many others are under supported within their local areas because of the all too familiar widespread support for the Old Firm, much of it for the reasons stated above. But yes, 40 "senior" football clubs for a population of 5 million is also too many. But then if you further extrapolate that argument, is the location of two top division football clubs within an immediate area which has a population of less than 200,000 also excessive??

This is a little bit of an exaggeration (as nostalgic accounts of football crowds from days gone by tend to be!) but also a little bit "beside the point". The official opening of the Caledonian Stadium v Albion Rovers in November 1996 attracted 3734 while the second game was a the first home Highland derby which had 4562 while the second one in March had 5525. There were also 3000 odd for the winning of promotion and of the Third Division title and around 4000 had to suffer that abysmal performance v Brechin before for trophy presentation in April. So yes, by the very nature of a first season in a new ground with Highland derbies and in that unique situation, crowds were enhanced. But if you look at the bread and butter games of that same period, crowds here were far more commonly on or below 2000. Now even this was great compared with Telford Street, but even this was somewhat helped by the large ongoing novelty of the new ground. Sooner or later, though, the novelty factors would fade away and I am sure that longer standing fans will also remember the years in the First Division where home crowds were typically around 1800-1900. So I really don't think that the example cited is either numerically accurate or represents a suitably comparable context.

So do you have privileged knowledge of how Julia Roberts "plays" DD?

In one respect coming from you, Don, that is questionable praise - but otherwise you are spot on! At an earlier stage in Caley Thistle's history, Ken made some very telling contributions at very critical moments. He wasn't one of the original club directors but midway through the inaugural season 94-95 Ken and Roy MacLennan came on to the board as INE nominees to replace Norman Cordiner and Ken Matheson who really had had enough of the bickering. Immediately he transformed the club's PR at a time when this was sorely needed. A protracted battle with Inverness District Council over stadium funding was on the horizon and Ken was a major player in the essential step of getting that stadium in place. Then in the 1999-2001 period, as Vice Chairman, he was also instrumental in getting Tullochs on board, without which Caley Thistle probably at the very best best would have gone into administration with over £2M of debt and certainly wouldn't have had the wherewithal to win the First Division and enter the SPL by 2004. (And IHE's reference to "selling tractors" isn't actually all that far off the mark because in his professional career as Moray Firth Finance I am sure he has funded quite a few for local farmers!) This is a very sound appointment for Caley Thistle - especially since he will be working in the commercial area and in customer care.

That was also what the Camanachd Association reckoned.

25-19 Ireland but Scottish hopes just about kept alive by a very late bonus point thanks to a second goal from Lochaber's Neil MacDonald.

With a 1:15 start at the Bught and 40 minutes each way, the shinty-hurling should be over by about 10 to 3 so both games should be just about do-able in entirety.

No, but it does seem to be the kind of next step you might expect from someone who wants England to win the World Cup as an aid towards getting a Yes vote in a Scottish referendum and who deserves to be satirised just a little bit for such a daft statement!

So that'll be another insight into to the quality of debate we can expect from the Yes side then?

What a wonderful tribute to the credibility, relevance and strategic thinking of the Yes campaign! I suppose the next thing will be people painting their faces blue before chapping at doors, kissing babies and dishing out leaflets with photos of Alex Salmond.

Thoroughly to be recommended I would say!