Charles Bannerman

Wonderful "pub"licity for the owners of the premises.... invent a Poltergeist!

Look... just to put some folks out of their misery, the following, which appears on the SFL website but which I have also gleaned directly from the League, is the situation. * ICT ARE in the draw because they were in the First Division last season. * They (and Ross County) are among the 15 seeded clubs from last season's 1st Division and the top half of the Second. * ICT are therefore guaranteed a draw against a club from the lower half of the 2nd Division or from the 3rd. * The draw takes place TOMORROW FRIDAY 28TH at what will soon no longer be called Almondvale. As I understand it, the 15 winners here will join last season's bottom 7 from the SPL in 11 second round ties. The 11 winners here will join the top 5 from the SPL last season in the 8 third round ties. Thereafter we reach the quarter finals.....

Having just returned from Hamish's funeral, I thought I would just pen a few words. Regulars at the Social club, and many, many more ICT fans, would have known "Wee Hamish" who died last week at the age of 71. Although he also played on the wing for Clach, Brora and Elgin, he was Caley through and through, having coached as well as played at Telford Street. Following the formation of ICT he became a regular in Section C of the Main Stand and there was also his continued presence in the Social Club post match. During the merger he played a brief but vital part in the realisation of ICT through his involvement with one of the motions which eventually sorted out the assets question. There was a huge turnout at the funeral in the East Church this afternoon and a large number of those present were from the Inverness football community. It is not the purpose of this post to give a biography or a tribute, which Hugh Crout did admirably in the church - merely to mark the passing of an ICT and Inverness football stalwart.

Yes, a great deal of point although I'm not entriely sure if there is a second physio now. The functions of a doctor and a physio are very different and they complement each other. A physio is a specialist in the direct treatment and management of injury which is not really a significant part of a doctor's training at all. A doctor, on the other hand, is needed to cope with medical matters which might range from concussion to stitching and which, correspondingly, are not within the remit of a physio. Therefore both are required. The treatment of medical and injury issues in football has moved on a long way from the days when a wee man, often propelled by tiny, lightning quick steps, would dash on with a huge black bag, produce a can of freeze spray, and say "you'll be OK now son." Such people often called themselves "physios" but in reality often really weren't and "physiotherapist" is now a term protected by law. As far as I am aware, Caley Thistle's highly qualified personnel are Fiona Hogg who is the physio and Ian Smith and Deryck MacLeod who are the club doctors. There used to be a time when Ian and Deryck would alternate between team duties and being available for any emergency in the crowd but I'm not sure if that still applies. Rumour has it that IHE is also used in a professional capacity in the North Stand.

So Corran ferry ain't good enough....we'll try Lewis ferry.....what next Kessock?? According to that, the Bronsons seem to have been rather far travelled, even by the Beckhams' standards! :)

I know it was a long time ago now, but I would still point to Caledonian FC's massive problems finding a new location at places like The Carse, Kinmylies and the Bught area in the early 90s and also the Percy Johnston Marshall report of 1993 on a possible site for the then proposed merged club. Bruce Hare looked at something like 13 different sites which very easily reduced to a short list of just 4 which in turn equally easily reduced to East Longman (the current site) and Stratton Farm because so many were not suitable. Stratton Farm was hugely unpopular with fans and the embryonic Board at the time and I don't know whether that land is in use now anyway. If anyone has a copy of Against All Odds, the question is discussed in detail in the "Finding A Home" chapter. I saw Torvean Quarry mentioned earlier on in this thread among other suggestions, but Torvean was one of the very first to depart the fray in the Hare report. Indeed I would suggest that anything between the Ness Bridge and the south west (A82) extremity of Inverness is a non starter because, in the absence of a bypass, getting traffic in and out of there is a nightmare. For instance the Race for Life a fortnight ago caused prolonged gridlock. Indeed I suspect that for the same reason, anything any distance from the A9/A96 would be equally problematic.

That's so unlike you....

And when we were kids, we used to think the top end of Laurel Avenue was rough!! :swear02:

More likely he's old enough to have been at Dalneigh when John MacLeod was the headmaster there! :D I, unfortunately, can go back even further than that at Dalneigh so I become Helen St. Andrew-Matheson. Not great that one. My kids do a bit better since they would be Ellen Cullaird-Mackie.

So you lived along the road from WTW then? :D (Unless it was Broadstone Avenue which would have placed you next door to Baillie!!)

The music is specifically an item called "O Fortuna" from a cantata called "Carmina Burana" by the 20th century German composer Carl Orff. It initially shot to fame in the 60s and 70s when it was used to advertise Old Spice after shave.

Strange... Kendal is one of the last places I would expect people like that to go on holiday and conceive a child......

So what is this... some kind of Real Life "Shameless"?

This is possibly one for Pimple, Canuck and one or two others who would be owners of bus passes if they were still here, but does anybody remember the European Cup Final of 1960 at Hampden which ended with the above scoreline? I'm just a bit too young to remember the game itself but have a clear recollection later in the 60s of the edited highlights on these clicky-clicky-clicky celluloid film projectors being very popular at the likes of BB Christmas Parties after you had completely pigged yourselves on Skinners' sausage rolls, Morrisons' buns or Andersons' cakes. I was only reminded of the anniversary by stuff I've seen in the media over the last 24 hours but it was a famous game when Ferenc Puskas scored four for Real. I wonder how much money Puskas, the best player in the world, was on in these days?

So was your sister's husband Pat Young then? And was it next door to Scotty's barber's shop that the hoover place was rather than him becoming the next tenant after Scotty? And exgrover... would Scotty Bernardi's barber's shop therefore have been where they eventually built River House in the early 60s to allow the Tax Offices etc to move from Longman Road? Charles, My brother in law is Malcolm (Mac) MacKenzie, he and Pat Young worked with the Hoover company at the same time and eventually left and started their own businesses. My brother in law's shop was next door to Dunky Holme's barber's shop on Huntly St. I believe Pat Young moved into Scotty's barber shop premises when Scotty retired. Got you now!

I am not going to deflect this very worthy thread by raking over for the n-th time the usual speculative and highly anecdotal evidence on this theory. And of losing a few was the price to pay for a club which has achieved what it has since 1994 then, as the Lord High Executioner said in The Mikado... "they will none of them be missed!"

Oh dear... this weary old myth surfaces again!! Look - before the merger, not enough people in Inverness gave a toss about either Caley or Thistle to create any significant body of dissent in relation to a local population of 60,000. You are talking about (tops) two or three hundred people who didn't like something that happened almost 20 years ago - and most of them have either left Inverness, are dead, or have joined the fold.

I would thoroughly endorse what Kingsmills has just said. Apart from the fascination of following the birth and development of ICT over the years, I have also had the pleasure of reporting on the fairy story which has been Ross County since 1987 when they were ?250K in debt, amateur and working out of a " wooden shed" in Victoria Park, right through to the amazing revelations which we have seen this season. It's almost exactly 17 years since the SFL decided to create two vacancies and on this occasion at least they did the decent thing and let in the two strongest candidates. What ICT and Ross County have achieved in the intervening years has been absolutely amazing and fully justifies their election back in January 1994. Tomorrow's Cup Final is the very last act in what has been a phenomenal season for football in the Highlands. GOOD LUCK COUNTY!!

1992? That's strange because many years ago when I used to put "copper" coins into concentrated nitric acid for O Grade classes, I discovered at one point that some coins were not all copper but rather a grey metal beneath a thin copper layer. These coins were also magnetic so the grey metal was very likely iron. Trying a few coins like this suggested that the pure copper ones were pre 1984, at which point copper coated iron appeared to be introduced.

I don't know why that nickname doesn't stick.. fits him perfectly You should have seen Colin Mitchell when he was a kid in a Caley strip!! :021: Well done David and this is rather a nice idea on the part of the East Kilbride paper too, isn't it?

I don't see what all the fuss is about. Picking up from Starchief's last comment, in the mid 90s Labour finally recognised that they had been unelectable for at least a decade and said "Right (literally as it happened!) Comrades, what do we have to do to get elected? Tell you what, we'd better pinch a few of these Tory policies since they seem to have worked OK at the ballot box for them. But no more of this Comrade mularkey... and we'd better scrap Clause 4 when we're at it. And we'll throw in a few phrases like Social Inclusion just to kid on the Left Wing that we're still Socialists." And hence a lurch to the Right, from which emerged New Labour which isn't really all that different from the Tories especially since they have at least lost some of their dreadful excesses of the Thatcher era. In fact the most left wing mainstream party in Britain nowadays is the LibDems and the rest of that vacuum has been filled by various Citizen Smith concerns who have provided entertainment and little else. And for the far right in the wake of the Tories' modest leftward lurch, there's always UKIP. (I'll leave the BNP out of it since they are utterly beyond the pale in any situation.) Fast forward now to last Thursday when NO party was given an unqualified mandate for its manifesto and policies by the UK electorate so if we are going to get a Government, whoever is going to be involved is going to have to make concessions and adopt compromises. And what's so very wrong with that since none of them has been given a full mandate in the first place? Also, what's the only alternative to what has happened? Put together an unwieldy "Progressive Alliance of discredited Labour and the LibDems which has to give completely disproportionate influence to all the wee local single issue rump groupings (one of which is so Regressive that it wants to turn the clock back more than 300 years), and which is guaranteed to fall apart very quickly under a Prime Minister who was not even a party leader in the run up to last Thursday. Simply you cannot please all of the people all of the time in a situation where the vote was distributed as it was on Thursday. Prioroty number one, especially in the current economic climate, has to be the ongoing government of the country and this is the only game in town. It might leave the Toffs with the upper hand but that's the only game in town at the moment in advance of the possibility of another election within 18 months.

Mmmm.... intimate interest in ballet, eh? No other embarrassing confessions to make then?

Oh well... so much for the "mighty hand" which Big Alec claimed Fate had dealt him even as he emerged with SIX of the 20 seats he blustered that he'd get. And I'm not hearing much of the Scottish Jig music he boasted Westminster would be dancing to in the event of a hung Parliament!

I only have the most fleeting memories of River House's predecessor which would have been demolished maybe about 1961 when I was still quite young. My father worked in the Tax Office which moved from Longman Road (where DVLA etc are now) into River House when it opened and had the Inspector of Taxes offices on the top two floors.