Charles Bannerman

This is pretty standard form. The Edinburgh local media, who obviously have extensive contacts within Hearts, have clearly got a whiff of something down there - as happens everywhere, including here where you frequently see moves reported in our local media before the club concerned, which is constrained by contractual procedures, announces it. More often than not, these stories are correct, but sometimes they come unstuck - in which case, as with the numerous complete red herrings you see when managerial vacancies occur, nothing more is ever heard of it.

And IF there's not going to be an announcement, what then? An announcement that there's not going to be an announcement..... setting an interesting precedent in response to future red herrings?

That would be a very sensible idea, given that even the existence of an announcement is simply speculation while on top of that (with varying degrees of seriousness) further speculation about what it's meant to be about has ranged from administration to the colour of the strip to cut price pies. On the other hand, some of the spin-off discussion about fundamental viability has been quite interesting!

Caleyboy has clearly been addressing the same question as I have - and with the same dilemma over "want" as opposed to "deserve". Does the Inverness public "want" a full time football club? Well, given that maybe half of them won't even be interested in football and many of those who are will follow teams from outwith Inverness, the number of people in Inverness who actively want full time club - possibly from the level of following the score on Saturday nights or even Monday mornings upwards - probably isn't that big a slice of the population. In other words, to be brutally realistic, most people in Inverness couldn't give a toss about Caley Thistle - and that also reflects what I've seen on the streets over the years trying to assemble ICT voxpops. It's actually quite difficult to find enough people interested enough to comment. So does the Inverness public "deserve" a full time football club? Well to deserve one, you have to want one first and then you need to behave in a way which morally justifies your desire. But given that most people aren't interested, then the question doesn't actually arise. I used to think that Inverness actually didn't deserve a full time football club because of the lack of support for a body which publicised the city, brought some trade into it and, for instance, provided a road to open up the harbour etc. However I've changed my view on that over the years, in that the founding fathers of the club put it there to promote football in Inverness, not to create collateral benefit - however much they used that to gain brownie points in the early years. So, in conclusion, a relatively small number of people in inverness want a full time football club but, while the concept of deserving one becomes redundant, you do have to wonder if there are enough of them to make this a sustainable, viable option?

That's a very well argued post, much of which I would agree with, but maybe in my earlier one I should have been clearer about what exactly I meant about Ross County. One of the central doubts I now have is whether the inner Moray Firth has the capacity to sustain two major football clubs, even when one is nourished substantially and long term by a benefactor. There wasn't much of a problem back in the 90s in D3 but I think that at the level of more recent years, something was bound to give. But as it happens, a second thing may be about to give in the next few weeks. So it's not a matter of measuring success as being "better" than County, it's now a case of "this place ain't big enough for the two of us" and irrespective of any desire to avoid comparisons, the reality is that to some extent, both clubs are competing for the same, scarce local resources.

Whereas you yourself retain a spirit of benevolence towards all involved in the governance of the club over the years?

I'm not so sure about that, Fraz. Over the years, there have been regular derogatory remarks about the recent donor of £250,000 who is still the man dismissed as "the builder", and also much cynicism about his former business concern whose £6M has, over the years, variously staved off financial collapse, bankrolled progress to the SPL and provided the wherewithal to comply with its requirements. Now the flak is turning to the MM-controlled board, MM having donated over £0.5M, including £150,000 over the last year as part of the summer bailout. If the club is looking for "investment" - a useful euphemism for donations - then it really is going to have to hope that prospective "investors" don't scrutinise CTO or listen too much to "the word on the street", since they will be presented with plenty of reasons to place their money in places which will give them much less grief. It's understandable that people are disappointed about relegation and now also that the playoffs suddenly look so much more unlikely. However a lot of the focus seems to be on trying to criticise what has been got wrong rather than highlighting the great amount which has been got right over the years. It's my belief that it was a minor miracle that ICT reached the SPL in ten years and a major one that it stayed in it for 12 of the next 13. This is because I believe that what we have is a product which is fundamentally loss-making in its market environment. In other words, especially with a heavily subsidised competitor 15 miles up the road and with increasing competition from other activities, not enough people are prepared to part with around £20 to sit outside in the cold watching an hour and a half of entertainment of quality which is no more predictable than in the rest of football - and that's before you even consider the added difficulties of being 150 miles detached from other sectors of the market. This is the intractable situation that successive board have wrestled with - and largely done a good job of staving off for as long as possible. Edinburgh and especially Dundee have had difficulties sustaining two top flight football clubs in recent years. Glasgow could well be losing one of its three and Aberdeen has at times sailed perilously close to the wind with its one. So where does this leave the two clubs so close together in the sparsely populated inner Moray Firth, on the extreme periphery of national football? (One very possible answer to that question now being "playing Highland Derbies in the Championship") As we approach the 25th anniversary of the election of Caley Thistle and Ross County to the SFL, I have been benefitting greatly from hindsight to the extent that I am now wondering if it was all that good an idea after all that both local clubs got into the league; and also - although I still believe that it was the "least bad" solution in the mid-90s - whether the siting of the Caledonian Stadium has now for some years been a significant liability?

Fair point. I can certainly think of one previous board member who donated £250,000 to keep the club afloat several months ago - and that despite the abuse he got from some off the back of the £6M he previously arranged for his former company to subsidise the club by over a period of years. What must be said of the board which was in place on relegation is that, despite acknowledged mistakes, they did their honest best to keep the club in the Premiership despite its fundamental lack of capacity to earn enough to do so. But it's strange how credit so seldom seems to be given for that.

Jock, the only journalist that I know of who did this kind of thing was "Scoopie" Fraser, but I think that may have been more to do with Hilton Athletic? On the other hand, the 1950s are a bit before my time.

.... or has somebody's uncle's pal bumped into Gordy Fyfe in the golf club car park again? Look, I'm not saying this is not going to happen, but what we have here is a completely unsubstantiated statement, offering absolutely no evidence as to whether there's going to be "an announcement" nor, if there is going to be one, what the nature of it is. The club going into liquidation? An offer to "invest" £5 million? Or a 10p reduction in the price of stadium pies? But yet, on the strength of what's therefore no better than blind conjecture, speculation is instant in areas including that administration is imminent - right down to a detailed examination of its points implications. I'm not ruling anything in or out. I'm just questioning the wisdom of going too deeply into the implications of something for which there is no evidence. And I see that the board are getting it in the neck from one or two quarters. Goodness me. After what's been said about Tulochs etc, it seems that for some, simply NOBODY is good enough to give their own money to bail out Caley Thistle's fundamentally loss making position and hence to subsidise the cost of season tickets.......

So are you Derek Adams in disguise? (Sorry... maybe not the best time for levity, but I couldn't resist it.)

Robert... are you sure about that? http://www.scottishrugby.org/fixtures-results/?competition=123795 Glasgow Accies have 88 points from their full programme. Highland have 87 and Newton Stewart 82, both with one to play and Highland have the better points difference by a margin of 52. So I reckon that there's still one permutation that could deny Highland promotion which is for Newton Stewart to win their final game with a bonus point, taking them also to 87 and for Highland to lose their last game (both at home to fifth placed St Boswells) without getting a try bonus, and for these results to wipe out Highland's points difference advantage. That's a pretty formidable array of adverse circumstances, especially with Highland's last game at home to opponents 200 miles distant who have already failed to fulfil an away fixture, but still theoretically possible. But I agree, to win the league, Highland will need more than one point this Saturday since Accies have a slightly better points difference - ie a win or a draw, which I think is worth two points in rugby.

...... Discuss. Sounds like a very valid question for a UHI Final Honours exam in ICT Studies. The final sentence of a very perceptive post from Kingsmills.

No, I was there - disguised as a barmaid and listening in.

https://shytechocolate.com/about I did have initial suspicions that this might be a wind up, but one or two cross checks confirmed this product to be genuine. It seems even to have its own Twitter designation, which is #EATSHYTE. This, apparently, is a Canadian product and outlets include at least one in Toronto, so Scotty will have no problem accessing the stuff. The various sub-sections of the website are:- "Know your Shyte", "Contact Shyte", "Shyte shows" and "Where to buy Shyte". (I understand that the last section listed there was written for the company jointly by John Hughes and Richie Foran.) This product will soon be readily available in the UK..... in supermarket aisles beside Onken dairy products.

...... and then, modest to a fault, Dennis would escape through a fire door to avoid having to talk to the press about his five star performance!

Is "next Wednesday" the 18th (admittedly more likely on the 14th to be "this Wednesday") or the 25th? Just in case it's the former...... BUMP?

So I am led to understand - but those of you who were patient enough to wait for another six years.......

You could start with Inverness Thistle's 29 postponements v Falkirk at Kingsmills in the Scottish Cup in 1979.... and that still went ahead!

When a pitch inspection is declared in Scottish football, I womder what the Pass/Fail rate is?

I think I would agree with caleyboy here (assuming that the likes of Christie Senior or Kevin MacDonald are to be considered as from a separate, pre-ICT era?)

I don't know Johndo. They are limited company in which case no manner of "we were so busy otherwise" excuses can really be accepted. They are totally and absolutely constrained by companies legislation with which they have failed to comply. If you presume to be the board of a limited company then you are obliged to comply with the appropriate legal requirements - which simply has not so far happened. PS - donview tells me you were round and about earlier with your lovely wife and, presumably thanks solely to her , your doubtless equally lovely daughter - and I missed you.

Gringo, I'm afraid I'm in the other 0.01% on that one. I think the headline is memorable enough to have been identified as recycled from the local press immediately the Sun used it in 2000 - only around four years after the suggested time of use. In the autumn of 1996, a few weeks into Pele's reign, there was indeed a spate of high scoring wins but I have no recollection either of this being used by the Courier or the HN, nor of anyone speaking about this over the ensuing years. My understanding is that The Sun had the headline in waiting in the form of "Super Ally Goes Ballistic...." for McCoist to do serious damage to Celtic in an Old Firm game but were moved to take it out of cold storage for 9th Feb 2000.

It is indeed! I think this is probably the least unfavourable outcome in a situation where any chance of fulfilling the statutory requirements of the original requisition disappeared last midweek with the original indication that the meeting would take place on the 18th. I think I should perhaps take the opportunity of this hiatus to explain why I have been pretty persistent on this issue - from a time long preceding the Board's declaration at the end of February. I believe that one of the major strategic issues facing the football club is - and always has been - the development of support. The obvious need for this ranges from the balance sheet to the feeling the guys get when they walk on to the pitch on a Saturday. Nuff said on that familiar matter. Two major assets in any campaign to develop support are, in my view, the Social Club and a successful supporters' organisation. In the case of the Social Club, I took a good swing at that on here and in my HN column back in January which didn't go down too well in some quarters but very well in others. The intervening progress will be acknowledged in the paper on Thursday but, at the time, one of several problems in Grieg St was that you needed to feel you were entering a Caley Thistle branded Caley Thistle social club and not the Orange Lodge. Now you do because this has changed very much for the better under Alan MacDonald's stewardship in recent months. As for CJT, it was bad enough having a perpetually inactive supporters' organisation but in my view that got a whole lot worse when the inertia became institutionalised with the appearance of the Board late in February. The EGM motion offered the opportunity for that knot to be cut and the holding of this meeting is vital in terms of getting this body up and running. Apart from CJT holding 10% ICT voting rights, an active supporters' organisation must be in operation before the start of next season which is less than four months away. This is why pressure needs to be maintained in order to develop support as much as possible in advance of what looks MOST likely to be a pretty credible push to return to the Premiership at the second time of asking. So, if action is taken tomorrow to rearrange this meeting it can be held on Thursday 26th April if the original requisition is considered still to be legally valid or on Thursday May 10th if it's considered that both the 28 and 14 day processes have to be repeated. Yes, I think it's that urgent.

I reckon Hawkeye is bang on, but it looks pretty complicated! If ICT win all their games, they finish on 59 points. Against that.... St Mirren and Livingston are away and clear and If Dundee United (who don't have to play ICT) win all their games, they finish on 64 points. So it's not in ICT's hands to catch these three. However..... If Dunfermline win all their games, except ICT, they finish on 58 points. If Morton win all their games, except v ICT, they finish on 56 points. If QoS, who don't have to play ICT, win all their games, they finish on 52 points. So I agree with Hwkeye. ICT winning all their games would guarantee finishing above Morton, QoS and Dunfermline, but not necessarily DU, but that's enough for 4th. However I also agree with Hawkeye..... whether that is possible is a different matter.