Charles Bannerman

You may very possibly have been unreliably informed once again Miss ICT! As far as I am aware, by far the most likely date is May 4th although I would never 100% believe it until I saw confirmation from the SPL. As it stands, May 3rd looks highly unlikely, given that Celtic have a game two days previously.

To be fair Donald, it was Terry, who had seen the fixtures before I did, who pointed it out to me - and indeed to several others in the media where I expect the issue will be looming large tomorrow. Just another couple of points... Capital - I don't actually think there's a specific pot of money for this televised game. It's just one of those which make up ESPN's tally and their money gets divvied out according to the rules which the SPL will inevitably have for this. I actually suspect that this game and the later one at 4:15 that Easter Monday afternoon are being shown by ESPN quite simply because they have run out of Old Firm Away Days to show. Gringo - I do think you are expecting just a little too much by also asking for a "nearby" fixture on the last day of the season. To be fair, the SPL does have a difficult enough job here without having to make allowances for end of season parties. Having said that, though, I do believe that the SPL have totally missed out on what would have been the most popular fixtures scheduling of the season. Had they fixed a full SPL card for Friday 29th April with the same kick off time as the Royal Wedding they would have given a whole lot of people a golden chance to escape from it!

More likely Wednesday May 4th I'm told, but yet to be confirmed by the SPL. This means three home matches in a week - May 4, 7, 11. Having spoken to the manager about this at lunch time, I don't think I'm out of order telling you now, an hour before broadcast, that his other concerns are having to play in Perth at 2pm on a Monday (with classic TB understatement he suggests there will be "about 10 people there") and the last five games of the season (based on Celtic being May 4th) taking place in 15 days.

The SPL told me yesterday (Tue) that the post split fixtures should be available later this week and that in Caley Thistle's case, that release would include the Celtic game.

Very true, and I well remember how delighted ICT fans were to win this cup in 2003 - as well as how disappointed they were to lose the 1999 and 2009 finals. A big well done to Ross County and it was good to hear Jimmy C in his post match interview give credit to Derek Adams who took the team through the earlier rounds and who was watching the final from the BBC commentary point. I would now like to think that this cup final victory can give Ross County the boost which will finally take them away from any threat of the relegation playoffs, a danger which they should not be facing in any case.

What did John Boyle say? This one could run almost as long as Charlie Christie and Alex Bone at Dingwall!!

BBC reporting that Annabel Goldie has cancelled the Scottish Election on May 5th due to not having enough support to become First Minister. Lobbying the electorate to change their minds will continue however.

You're thinking of before New Year when the SPL pulled the entire Sat 4th December card on Wed December 1st but it turned out that the Inverness pitch was playable on the Sat and the A9 had been capable of transporting 4000 skiers to Cairngorm that weekend. The game was then rescheduled for Tuesday (I think) Feb 15th and it emerged at around lunch time that there could be a flooding problem due to heavy rain. The SPL, who had been advised of the problem at an early stage, refused to allow anyone other than the match referee to inspect the pitch even though there are referees, albeit not still active but of vast experience, including at least two Supervisors, based locally. The match referee didn't arrive until about 5pm and we can only speculate as to whether he was under pressure from the SPL to get the game on since he took an eternity bouncing balls on the surface and running up and down. The game was put off at a time when the United team bus was in Aviemore and their fans were on their way. There are bound to be several people on here who well remember that the TCS pitch, after it opened in 1996, for years had a reputation of never having had a game postponed. In fact I think it was well after the turn of the millennium before the first postponement and these were also very few and far between after that. However I am in absolutely no doubt that the pitch has become more liable to flooding since the USH was installed for the return from Aberdeen in January 2005. Apart from the direct effect of the installation of the pipes, there is also the problem that the surface can only be forked and spiked to a few inches for fear of bursting the pipes. I found the observation by an earlier poster that the USH has possibly caused more postponements than it has prevented very interesting! However I might also observe that this problem does seem to have become more marked in the recent past so, although the USH is a very likely culprit, perhaps some investment is also needed in a surface which now over 15 years old.

I fell asleep at around "choose Feb 8th 2000" and missed myself! Good resume of last 20 years or so, though!

You'll have Big Alec and Wee Nicola after you!

You mean like John Terry? :biggrin:

No, no - take it as it says on the tin. I'd claim to be quite a serious student of the history and culture of our "Suttee" and that includes the "ocksent". In that respect I, for instance, find that there's a lot more than cheap drink to be sampled and enjoyed on a Saturday night at "Tha Collee Klab an' Tha Leejun". Former Inverness District Councillor Dr. Michael Gregson (who was actually a staunch supporter of giving the money to ICT) went as far as writing a book about the way they speak in "Dungwull". It's called "The Cant and the Crack". Oh, and it's been quite warm and sunny here today lol :biggrin:

Brilliant stuff but I'm not sure that the "ocksents" are absolutely classic "Unvarness" as I've known it for the last 50 odd years. There's something just a little too refined about some of the consonant sounds, they come from just a bit too close to the front of the mouth and there's maybe also not quite enough glottal stop. There's also a tiny classic Invernessian inflexion at the beginning and sometimes in the middle of some words, a wee bit like a grace note on the bagpipes, that seems not to be there. In contrast, the phonetics of that brilliant Inverness poem we all had a great laugh at a few years ago are just that wee bit more authentic to me. On the other hand maybe the Inverness accent has evolved a bit since I was a lad and I've also always wondered if what you might hear on the West side of the river (which is arguably closer to "old Inverness") is maybe a wee bit different from the East side where things have maybe been a little more diluted by incomers? But whatever, the "ocksents" on that track do strike me as being subtly different from what I might, for instance, hear down the Clach Park - or indeed by sitting between Jud and Striker in the Caley Club on a Saturday night! :biggrin:

Well said DD! You've called it spot on. The only reason I find any interest in this topic is totally academic since I followed and studied in great detail the entire merger process which is still of that kind of interest to me. Other than that.... * A merger took place in 1994. * Some people didn't like it. Their prerogative. * But all the same it resulted in Inverness being projected from the Highland League to the SPL in a single decade and around five times as many people come to watch football in Inverness now, and in a 7700 capacity stadium, compared with the pre merger days - so who gives a toss!!! "They will none of them be missed!"

Now that sounds really like a quite well informed former Caley fan of 93 who was seriously disgruntled at the time and still has a festering axe to grind. You may not be Buenos in person but you still hurt, initially at what happened and possibly even more so nowadays at the stunning success of the eventual result of the whole process. A phonebox full of refuseniks against what has happened over the last 17 years is a mere pimple on the backside of the recent stunning success of football in Inverness. As the Lord High Executioner almost said in The Mikado: "There will none of you be missed!"

I'd just like to clarify a couple of questions regarding Radio Scotland coverage tonight. As someone stated pre match, midweek and Sunday football is almost always medium wave only because it's not realistic to take over the FM frequencies as well since there are listeners other than football fans to consider. This meant live commentary from Inverness and updates from Pittodrie. On the other hand from 1200 to 7pm on Saturdays, all frequencies are dedicated to football so Radio Scotland can actually go out on no fewer than FIVE different threads in various places - commentary on 810 medium wave, Open All Mics on 103.5-105FM, another commentary on 92-95FM, Caley Thistle games on 92-95 in the Highlands and Islands and Aberdeen games on 92-95 in the Grampian area. The only exceptions are rare such as 6 Nations Rugby and the Camanachd Cup Final. At some points on Sunday afternoon you can get what 810 is producing but in better quality on 103.5-105FM. However David Begg is very likely to be replaced by Gaelic psalm singing at some point since it's their frequency when they have programming on air. The cause of the loss of commentary tonight was that the power socket in the radio area blew. This was possibly because someone further along in the stand had overloaded that circuit with a high power electric heater. The club were right on the ball and produced a duty electrician very quickly indeed but the fastest solution was to run an extension cable into the press box to take power from a socket in there which was unaffected.

You are sure producing them this week Donald!

Yes, I'm quite aware that this is the answer in theory but with the nearest ones sometimes 40 metres away from where the water is falling, that's quite a distance for water to travel over an uneven plastic surface and quite a concentration of it if and when it gets there. Half an inch of rain on a football pitch looks to me like upwards of 20,000 gallons of water. A lot for drains at the side of the pitch to cope with.

So did Jenna Jameson....I wonder if they know each other!!! Now that's a classic!! I have to say, though, that I always feel very uncomfortable seeing any team which is funded way out of proportion with its realistic substance as a club. The ultimate absurdity was Gretna where a village club had millions pumped into it by an unstable narcissist and attention seeker in desperately bad health where it was obvious that the whole thing was an utter house of cards from the start. How on earth anyone could see any merit in the desperately contrived scenario there has always amazed me. However I digress into a completely extreme case. But there are a few other clubs around which clearly live beyond the boundaries of their own basic significance - usually by paying players money which is well above the going rate for where they are. For instance if Strathyjags' numbers are accurate for Formartine then that is absurd for a part time Aberdeenshire village club in the Highland League. I think what begins to happen there is that the players are fully aware that they are being paid far more than the value of thee job they are doing and when that happens, the effect seems not to be for them to put in a bit extra to justify this but to switch off altogether. Indeed there may be a few players cadging off Cadger!

Alex... that one has always intrigued me!

Yes, I remember the the 94/95 season very well indeed - when the average attendance was 1259 (which is a lot more than you would see on average at Kingsmills and Telford Street combined.). On ONE occasion in 94/95 there was an error where many were missed out and it was mistakenly reported at just over 400 which was a long way short of any of the other matches. As I was saying - selective use of statistics. And thanks to Born Caley for setting the record straight. The newspaper report I saw quoted the concert as having taken place "48 years ago" which made it 1963 - rather late indeed for the Beatles only to have attracted 19. But now we learn that this was a much more likely sounding 1960. I gather a local group called the Melotones attracted 1200 at the Strath the same night. I also head yesterday that, unlike the Beatles, The Melotones are still on the go!!!

No, EXACTLY that number voted NO when the merger question was put for a second time on 1st December 1993 and that was the biggest vote against any apsect of the merger that there ever was at any Caley meeting. Let's also remember the circumstances surrounding the number rising to as high as 226 after 50 had voted against on 9th September. Both sides of the debate within Caley recruited furiously for about two months in order to pack as many people as they could into that Rose Street meeting in a desperate bid by both sides for their will to prevail. So really, that 226 is absolutely dead strength among those who felt that way. Anyone within geographical supporting range and remotely inclined not to attend ICT matches was in there. We also know that a great number of these people, and most of them sooner rather than later, have been coming to games. I also wish posters would stop quoting attendance figures on this thread which are totally irrelevant to the subject. Yes, there may well have been "2000 plus" at Scottish Cup ties but, given a core home support of about 500, I find it difficult to believe that too many of this 2000 plus, who always emerged out of the woodwork for the glorious moments, were rabid, diehard Caley fans who felt so passionately about their club that they resolved never to darken the door of the new one. Out of a core home support of about 500, the majority of whom have for a long time come to games, you just can't get a number of refuseniks of any significant magnitude. If you want to add in a figure for Jags refuseniks, then, like everything else, you have to take a proportionally much smaller number. Then there's the suggestion that there are "at least 20" refuseniks at one work place. That reminds me of the story I saw in a paper today about a search to trace any of the 19 (nineteen) people who apparently attended a Beatles concert in Dingwall before the Fab Four became famous(no off topic jokes please!) You could more or less guarantee that 50 of these 19 will, like Celtic fans who were allegedly in Seville, make themselves known! But the absolute bottom line of this whole tale is - the number of refuseniks, however small, actually doesn't matter. Without their presence, ICT rose through the ranks to the top table of Scottish football within a decade and there it remains. Any other arrangement which suited the wishes of these refuseniks would have had no chance of having done so. So in the words of the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado - "they will none of them be missed!"

To revive an old saying on these forums (or I should really say "fora"!) "I agree with Mantis!" You've got it straight from the horse's mouth there.... from one of the many "NO" voters who followed and supported ICT after the deal was done and the club formed. And he is telling you that a large number of the 226 who voted against the merger in December 1993 have become supporters. But of course there's always the anecdotal stuff when someone claims to know someone who is a refusenik.... therefore Inverness is full of refuseniks. In about 2086 (and I choose the date deliberately) we will, with echoes of the Battle of the Somme, be hearing that the last living Caley Refusenik is still in a nursing home on Telford Street, bumping his gums away on a Howden End pie from the stock he took away and froze in October 1996. I really have to commend Dougal who does an incredible job on here getting debate going.... even though it's usually about outdated or irrelevant p!sh. He seems to have a talent for identifying issues which get people posting on here... just look at the length of this thread for instance! He even shows quite a good understanding of some of these issues, including this one, and his last post does state some sense... but also a lot of nonsense although I'm now sufficiently punchdrunk with this subject no longer to be bothered replying line by line. However I would want to give this summary of the contribution of Thistle.... The Inverness merger was essentially an unequal one and finding the right balance of inequality is what created a lot of the problems. At one point it was (correctly) stated that Caley had 70% of the assets, 80% of the membership (albeit only after rabid recruiting in advance of the meetings) and 90% of the fundraising capacity. Thistle on the other hand did contribute £486,000 from the sale of Kingsmills and the proceeds of the sale of their Social Club. Believe me - half a million quid in the desperately tight financial arithmetic of the construction of the stadium was absolutely vital. However the presence of BOTH clubs in the arrangement, even after the departure of Clach, gave it the status of representing the whole of Inverness and not just one of the town's three Highland League clubs. This was a very important "added value" which meant that the joint bid had FAR more clout than any single one could have had and as a result FAR more support was forthcoming from the public purse (£1.8M) and local businesses. It also brought neutrals in because - like it or not - there was always a significant dislike of "the Caley" within Inverness. In consequence, the merged bid which went in front of the SFL in January 1994 was far, far more potent than anything a single team could have raised. The option of any single club bid effectively died on September 9th 1993 when both clubs voted to merge. Although applications did not close until 1st October, no single bid could physically have been put together after that. So it was the merger or nothing. The bottom line is that few people in 1993 would have envisaged Inverness having SPL football by 2004, far less retaining it more or less unbroken for many years. Nor would it have ever had SPL football if Caley had decided to go it alone - which they so nearly did and I believe would have done if the Carse Scheme had gone ahead in 1992. So, ironcially, although the ditherers on the District Council nearly caused disaster at one point, their dithering over the Carse was a major factor in ensuring that Inverness is in the SPL and not just another Alloa, Brechin or Peterhead. EDIT - while I was posting this, Alex was talking a lot of sense in the post now immediately above. In particular, if creating dissent is Dougal's aim, then there is NO chance of him doing that with any of the topics he starts. This one, for instance, is as Alex says merely of nostalgic and in my own case academic interest.

So where does the water which would otherwise cover about 8000 square metres of grass go instead?