Charles Bannerman

Try here.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/s...v_1/8624002.stm (And "The Thing After Your Call On BBC Scotland" is Sports Report :D )

So vote for the Highland National Party on May 6th!!!

So you're conveniently ignoring, for instance, the 1988 Qualifying Cup replay at Telford Street. Caley 0 Jags 3.

This one is inspired by an episode of Heartbeat (set in the 60s) which I was watching last night where a group of kids came across a pile of wartime ammunition. Does anybody remember the odd discovery of items of ordnance about Inverness in the old days? I seem to remember that a few kids used to have the odd bullet at home and these would occasionally emerge in the waste land between St Valery Avenue and the canal. During the war Kingsmills Park was occupied by a number of military units, finally, if my memory serves me correctly, by Polish pioneers, who left behind a number of items of live ammunition. One one occasion before the park reverted to football a group of boys were playing about there, something exploded and one of them was killed. Among the injured was a boy called Bill Reid who went on to become one of the syndicate which rescued Clach in 1990.

Looks more like something from the Parliamo Glasgow dictionary. On which subject, Glasgow Council have proposed the erection of Gaelic road signs within the Dear Green Place. This presumably gets the nod from the idea of signs in the indigenous patois with instructions such as "Goannyturnleftherebigman"

Which party is Yvette Fielding standing for on May 6th? She sounds sort of New Labour but you never know. The Tories let in the most appalling unhyphenated riffraff these days.

Too close to call. Beating Celtic in the cup semi final to become the first Highland team to reach the Scottish Cup final is a huge endorsement in County's favour. On the other side, ICT's won was at Celtic park itself and indeed it kicked off a trend which has snce become a little more commonplace. Berwick and Hamilton did it against Rangers but it wasn't sustained. Since ICT did it in 2000 against Celtic, they did it again in 2003 (and DAMN close to a third time) and so did Clyde. As a result Cel;tic's infallibility has beenn seriously challenged and 8.2.00. set the foundations of that. I was at Hampden today and make no mistake about it. County were absolutely superb, so was the atmosphere and it was just a WONDERFUL day for Highland football. My highlight was interviewing Donnie MacBean... County's counterpart to Jimmy Falconer... and he had tears in his eyes!

The point is that Ryanair are not nearly as cheap as they say they are because it is effectively impossible to travel for their headline price only before they add hefty and quite absurd charges for other things. The latest I heard today was that someone who had paid a tenner to print their own boarding card at home was refused access to the aeroplane because the ink on the card wasn't dark enough. They are effectively a bunch of profiteering cowboys but on the other hand if people are prepared to accept the level of service they pay for then that is up to them. And that's before you consider how a waiter would cope with an in-air emergency or even a crash landing. I don't actually have too much of an issue with other "cheap" operators. I just find Ryanair - and especially the loutish Mr. O'Leary - especially objectionable.

Sorry Donview, can't help you there. However, anecdotally that strikes me as being the case, although possibly not quite as high a success rate as the Grantown Goalie!

Merci beaucoup, tu es trop aimable!

That is correct, but I have to give Ian Broadfoot the ICT statistician the credit for clarifying this in response to a question I emailed him on Monday. ICT's most recent shut out had lasted for 490 minutes (5 full games preceded by 29 mins of the QoS game and followed by 11 min of the Raith game). When I asked Ian about the longest shut out he came up with 514 minutes, the vast bulk of which was indeed under Charlie in the post split phase of 06-07 with a few residual minutes into the first game of 07-08. ICT's longest unbeaten run is 22 games between 2nd November 1996, during a run of away games in the transition from Telford Street to the Caledonian Stadium, and 26th April 1997 by which time the Third Division title had been won. This included a run of 11 straight wins which was kicked off by a 2-0 victory over Ross County on November 16th (the first ever home win at the Caledonian Stadium which some may also remember for Sandy Ross's notorious "assault" on Richard Hastings - the first of two such derby incidents). It ran through to an away win over Albion Rovers on February 15th 1997 which was followed by a 1-1 home draw with Forfar on the 22nd.

Getting on to my treadmill in the gym at about 7:45, I started flicking channels but all I could find was what seemed to be a documentary about the health and welfare of this chap wearing a red shirt with a number 10 on his back. As the camera focused on this fellow going through various examinations of his lower leg, it did seem that 21 guys might have been kicking a ball about in the background. Then the lad eventually trotted off screen and, after some considerable discussion of his departure, a football game did appear to start. Seriously, though, I then watched the last 30 minutes with my son and what a final goal for Bayern, but what appalled me most was the post match. I have seldom seen or heard anything lacking as much in grace as Alex Ferguson's interview, made worse by the fact that it was almost impossible to make out what he was saying due to a combination of him not actually being a very distinct speaker and his constant, obsessive mastication. Then... cue the profoundly disappointed pundits, and what can I say? Clearly a case of warm up mode in advance of the world cup.

No, no, no.... they mean Episode 1 of "The Pacific".

Just for the record, it was actually Andy Barrowman who scored for Ross County although that didn't emerge until photos were looked at and players were interviewed after the match. It would appear that Barrowman hit the shot and it took a deflection, possibly off Scott Boyd, but general agreement - Barrowman goal. County certainly had the better of the game and didn't deserve to go a goal down against 10 men. After that they just battered the QoS goal with increasing intensity until they got the equaliser with 25 seconds of normal time left - quite early in the game to score by ICT standards I suppose. County might well have won it when Jimmy Scott sent a shot way over the bar from 2-3 yards in the 92nd minute and the QoS keeper had at least three great saves.

An extra and unnecessary layer of overpaid politicians and apparatchiks .... wads and wads of useless bureaucracy and red tape.... massive subsidies for French farmers..... getting told what to do by a bunch of foreigners.... I remember, as a kid, when de Gaulle said "non" to the UK's initial application to join the Common Market in 1963, various Highland Division veterans of my dad's acquaintance who had waded ashore in Normandy soon after D Day were very quick to use the word "ungrateful". I sympathised with their point but now realise that de Gaulle was probably doing us a favour. Mind you if the girny old git had realised that he would probably have said "oui" instead.

You should have seen them when Mark McCulloch scored his wonder goal to send the Dundee United cup replay into extra time!

So you're not the only person to be picking Ian's brains today then. My enquiry elicited the information that there was a 514 minute shutout in the spring of 2007 compared with the 490 minutes which were concluded early in Saturday's proceedings and that ICT's record unbeaten run is indeed 22 matches during D3 championship season 96-97. However, to return to the original topic... I would largely go with what has just been quoted on Ian's behalf although numerical intuition hints to me that his estimate might well be at the top of the range. My back of an envelope calculation is based as follows.... * The part season 96-97, with good "novelty factor" attendances in these first days, seems to have taken in around 40,000 from when the stadium opened on 9.11.96. (I have taken statistics from Against All Odds here which quote an average of 2500 per game for that whole season, including the first 3 months at Telford Street although that is the only concrete source I have access to apart from my memory.) * Attendances in the Second Division from 97-98 and right through to the First Division title in 2004 were very typically on average maybe just over 2000 for the league with 18 home games per season and allowing for the return of the Derbies from 2000-01 - although they tended not quite to reach Division 3 levels. * Then you add in cup games and give them a bit of un upward tweak for big ones like Celtic, Aberdeen and the Dundee United replay. * The SPL era then begins with a big zero since the first half season was at Pittodrie. * After that you have 4.5 SPL seasons with typically 4000 plus for around 19 home games each and add an appropriate number on for cup ties. * This season with typically 3000 odd on average has so far probably yielded about 60,000. This is very, very rough, ballpark, back of envelope stuff up but I make the current total maybe a touch above 800,000 (potentially plus or minus a fair chunk)... so I would by no means disagree with Ian. But the time the 1,000,000th fan enters the TCS will be maybe a couple of years away... but will to some extent depend on whether ICT go back top the SPL next season!

With reference to Kingsmills' professional and very relevant warning in post number 9, I would suggest that the bold section of the quote above, when taken verbatim, is actually in breach of just what he was talking about. You just cannot be too careful in this kind of situation. "Is facing charges of being racist and disorderly" or popping in that old saviour "allegedly" might be OK. Quite frankly, though, if the individual has been charged I would suggest it might be in CTOL's best interests to abandon this topic altogether pending an outcome.

Aye... that was some smell in the Howden End in these days! :004:

Yup, between one thing and another and throughout history, organised religion of whatever persuasion has heaped a whole lot of misery on the world, hasn't it?

Is this anything to do with the Inverness TV online channel I saw something about in The Courier a few weeks ago? All I remember is a photo which included Jim Eglinton and a very attractive lady (make of that what you wish! :025: ) but they seem to be doing a lot of TV stuff from around the area?

I have never flown with this despicable bunch of rip off merchants, hope I never will and MIGHT only do so if they were the ONLY means of getting somewhere I urgently needed to access. O'Leary attempts to bully his own suppliers such as airports into dancing to his particular Irish Jig of selling their product to him at knockdown prices to save his costs. Then he advertises flights at "prices" which verge on the fraudulent since, with the extortionate "extras" which are frequently essentials, it costs in practice a great deal more than he would have us believe. Indeed Mr. O'Leary's operation is revealingly reminiscent of the one run by the cowboy builder of the same name in Fawlty Towers.... on mention of which I feel strongly inclined to place a Ryanair 737 where Basil was on his way to place the garden gnome at the end of the episode in question.

O'Leary is a complete cowboy who seems to expect everybody else to reduce their prices to him so he can cut his costs whilst attempting to fool the travelling public into believing that his service is cheap. In practice it is a serial scam but it seems to be too much to hope that the travelling public will see through this Arthur Daley of aviation. Mr O'Leary would appear to have acquired the diplomatic skills of the building site. The unfortunate thing is that he appears to have got a hold of a number of routes which leave the decent travelling public with few alternatives but to use him. Personally, I would prefer to walk and swim.

Indeed... I am reliably informed that the date is relevant here!!

You can also safely show her the paper itself since they don't do Page 3s on Saturdays!