Charles Bannerman

Perhaps if you would care to look at bbc.co.uk/scotland/sportscotland or follow the link to it from the appropriate section of this site, you might get an insight into what has been happening. This is a summary of what Graeme Bennett told the BBC - * At the beginning of the season ICT made extension offers to Grant Munro, Ian Black, Don Cowie and Michael Fraser. *Don Cowie, on the advice of his agent, said he wanted to wait until the window. *Ian Black and Michael Fraser, through their agents, turned their offers down. * Grant Munro, who doesn't have an agent, agreed a 3 year extension back in October.

On the basis of what I saw on the news tonight, the pantomime season is well and truly with us. A Germanic old wifie in her 80s with a strange velvet sparkly thing on her head parades around with 30 feet of carpet trailing behind her, helped by wee boys in scarlet suits with white lace. Walking beside her is a doddery old Greek (Danish actually) geezer in an absurdly flash naval uniform. She sits down and starts sounding off about affairs of state in some kind of alien accent which is barely identifiable as English. The folk listening to her are there because a grown man in a black velvet suit and white tights has hammered with a stick on a door which was then slammed in this face. Yes... this is how one of the world's seven largest economies goes about announcing its business for the next 12 months....

Cairns, boy! If you get that homework wrong I'm going to belt you! It IS a 2.5p VAT cut, that is 2.5p for every ?1 of purchase price before VAT.... equating to 2.13% of the full pre-cut purchase price. Or are you presenting some semantic argument about what constitutes "passing on" or some such?

I don't like Rocpool's hash browns.

This is a degree of monopoly which is unacceptable. One of my main personal gripes with Tesco is the Cafe at Tesco Inshes. I have been going there since it was the Cope in the 1980s, it was great then and also under Tesco's direct management later on. However, since they have franchised it out, but possibly not entirely BECAUSE they've franchised it out, it's gone down the tubes so people have stoped using it etc etc. The equipment, which is apparently Tesco's responsibility, keeps packing in but worse still the hours at which you can get stuff are much shorter. For instance after home games I was in the habit of dashing in there for my tea before nipping home, getting changed and out to the Social Club. Now there's no chance of getting a meal at 5:30 - they are long closed. Tesco would probably pass the blame on to the franchisee but in the end, I'm now looking at transferring my eating (and therefore shopping) arrangements to Morrisons.

To three significant figures, 12th man is actually spot on. At 17.5% VAT, the price is 117.5% of the pre tax purchase price. When VAT drops to 15% it becomes 115%.The new price is therefore 115/117.5 of the old one. That equates to 97.87% - a saving therefore of (100 - 97.87) = 2.13% which is exactly as 12th man stated. Caley D has forgotten that the VAT is actually included in the full purchase price. Go on then D.... apologise to the man!!

I would have thought the best CALEY squad must have been managed by Alex Main, Ray MacKintosh, Peter Corbett... or maybe somebody else before my day, or even before they employed a manager.

As it happens Canuck sorted it out for me in the Social Club last night since his family came to Inverness in 1952 so his dad could work there, but unfortunately they closed it very soon after and it became Pickfords.

Thanks for that TBB.

I would imagine that this would be unlikely, given that a Highland League team costs a minimum of around ?50,000 a year to run. There are between 2 and 5 clubs interested. If 5 were accepted that might open up the possibility of 2 leagues of 10 but that would have to be approved by the member clubs. Sandy Stables the Highland League chairman also told the BBC that, although he was in no way pre supposing anything Elgin might or might not want to do, he thought they would be welcome back in the Highland League should they wish to apply.

Can someone refresh my memory here? Lord Roberts' Workshops for disabled ex servicemen used to be down by the river near the old swimming pool - round about where the Friars Bridge is now. So was Pickfords, but did Pickfords move into the LRW premises or were they there independently on a different site? I know it's quite a long time since the LRW disappeared from Inverness so this may be one for those of the SP/ Jock Watt era. In the same area, I can just remember when the 5th BBs built the Eddie McGillivray Memorial Hall just a few yards up river of the Black Bridge but there have been huge changes down there - look at Waterloo Place these days!

It's inevitable that a large number of players (and officials) from both clubs would have enlisted in both wars, and statistically 15% or more of them would have been killed in WW1. The casualty rates were a good deal lower in WW2 but there would have been significant numbers there too. It's a notoriously difficult job to track people from an organisation who served or died in the wars. As it happens a few years ago I made a study of that very subject in relation to former pupils of Inverness Royal Academy where the research had been done during and immediately after the conflicts concerned and there were still difficulties. 60 and 90 years on, this would be a lot more problematic and made more complex still by the fact that a lot of Caley's records were lost in the fire of 1950. As it happens the Hearts story of WW1 was relatively easy to pin down since the players almost en bloc enlisted in McCrae's battalion of Royal Scots and hence were quite easily traced. Possibly the nearest we have in Inverness was the 4th Camerons, a Territorial battalion which went over to France as part of Kitchener's New Army early in 1915 and the 5th Camerons, again a Territorial battalion which formed part of 152 Brigade of the reformed 51st Highland Division after the original was largely captured at St. Valery in 1940 and which went right through North Africa, Sicily, France, Holland and eventually Germany.

Not without precedent in Inverness. The Caley stand burned down in 1950, the Clach one in 1988 and Thistle in 1995! I've been warning the Inverness City folks to look after the Northern Meeting Park very carefully

In general, a pretty accurate and balanced appraisal. Could I perhaps summarise David Sutherland/ Tulloch's input to ICT? * In 2000 ICT was running a debt of over ?2M which, as Scotty said, could have put it the way of Gretna. David Sutherland to a large extent conceived and created the ICT Trust which miraculously spirited away that debt and took over ownership of the Caledonian Stadium. There is no doubt that David Sutherland's influence with the Bank of Scotland and his ability to make guarantees were central to this. * In 2002 cash flow still was not in great shape. Tullochs, in round figures, injected half a million, mainly through share uptake. However Tullochs have always gone out of their way not to become majority (ie more than 50%) shareholders. * By 2004 Caley Thistle were in the SPL but playing at crippling cost in Aberdeen. The very narrow passageway of rapidly upgrading to over 6000 seats emerged, with a deadline of January 2005. Tullochs largely facilitated and funded the construction of the north and south stands which went up in 47 days, bringing SPL football to Inverness, once again saving its finances and achieving its ongoing status in the top league. * David Sutherland has been involved in ICT for 8 or 9 years now. I think we are still waiting for the predictions of the doomsayers to come about. Indeed the overall effect of his involvement has been to ensure the transition of ICT from a First Division club on the precipice of bankruptcy to a well established member of the SPL, playing in its own home city in fully compliant facilities and which has made a profit in two of the last three financial years. Inevitably Tullochs will have quite rightly had a return on their investment - almosty entriely in the form of the goodwill and positive publicity which their involvement has brought them.

I would have thought the answer to the original question on this thread is "No... they're all on the bog."

A wee bit nearer the sea maybe? Nearer the dump? I certainly remember being taken down on the very odd occasion in the early-mid sixties and I have this mind's eye picture of motors thrashing about but that's as much as I can recollect. It was certainly something of an Inverness institution though. Hasn't the Longman changed over the years?! From the old slaughterhouse and Citadel ground at one end through the disappearance of all these old sort of "industrial" units to the Kessock Bridge coming along to the Stadium, to the Tinks site being made permanent, it's all different. And before the bridge there are all these acres of reclaimed land and industrial development flanking the road from the Harbour - all of that made possible by the construction of the Caledonian Stadium. Seldom can ?900,000 of Common Good Fund money ever have been put to better use. I wonder what those Councillors and Council employees who waged such a bitter rearguard action against that decision think these days? Then at the other end of the Longman the road no longer stops at the Government Building (now the DVLA etc) and of course continues on to the Stadium roundabout and the "new" dual carriageway. I think that link went in about 1977 because we used to train with the Harriers from the Spectrum and do intervals on the new and still unusued surface. Nearer towen it's a long time since you would come over the hump backed bridge into Longman road and pass the Railwaymen's Hostel. Changed days indeed. Just a few miscellaneous thoughts.....

Not far from where the Caledonian Stadium is now I think but I can't remember to the nearest yard since the area has changed so much.

Neil MacDonald? Did he not have a brief career with Caley Thistle before going to the Police?

I remember Nero's arrival at Caley was one of the first sports stories I covered for the BBC. I think he was the subject of a goodly slice of Western Isles inspired hype but in reality in the rather larger pond of Inverness and the Highland League Nero turned out not to be as large a fish as people had expected.

I think I might disagree there Alex in that what ended at Culloden was a war, or indeed a series of five wars (1689-90, 1708, 1715, 1719 and 1745) which was entirely internal to the United Kingdom and between two factions which both wanted to rule the country on their terms. From that point of view it's no different from the Civil War of the 1640s, principally called the "English" Civil War but which also had significant ramifications in Scotland in that the upshot was the ousting of Charles I who was king of both countries at the time and his replacement by Cromwell's Commonwealth. Of course what ended at Culloden is actually called "The 45 Rebellion", but possibly in part because those who rebelled lost. In the case of the English Civil War, the rebels won so that may have been why they called it a Civil War instead of a Rebellion. There are also parallel with the American Civil War in that it also was fought between two opposing factions within the same nation, although the causes etc are somewhat different. As for the "monster" don't get me started on the most lucrative con in the history of tourism....

You mean Jimmy Falconer?

You may well be right. I'm not 100% sure it was Wallace.

Oh Chris, old age is setting in Think it was 1978 that he signed for Rangers, then onto Wigan before returning to his rightfull home in 1981.......... i think. That's just about right. Jock Wallace spotted Billy at what I think was a friendly in 1978 and snapped him up and it would have been around 81 that he came back via Wigan.

That was me on the far touchline with the horn rimmed glasses and the Brylcreem. Good to see the old distillery at what was known as the Distillery End before it was called the Comet End. (On which subject, I wonder how Immortal Lidl Ender is doing?!)

Very worthy local organisation. Their exhibitions in church halls and the like are far more illustrative of local history than the stuffed fauna and Jacobites which seem to be the limit achieved by the less than inspiring Inverness Museum.