Charles Bannerman

Scarlet.... I think the Lifeboy leader you remember was George MacKintosh. He was still leader of the 1st Lifeboys when I joined in the 60s and for a while after that although he's been dead for about 20 years. He never seemed to have a job as such and lived off some kind of private income which meant that he effectively did BB stuff all the time.

Whilst being run by people with ranks like "District Commissioner"? :015: Very, very good, Sahib, carry on up the Khyber!

In that case I'll set the 4th Company on you! :003:

Every time I spot Jackie Sutherland on a match day guarding the doorway which links reception to the tunnel at the Caledonian Stadium, I remember my days in the Boys' Brigade of which Jackie was captain of the 7th and latterly the 10th Company. The BBs used to be an old Inverness institution but have been very much in decline in recent years. When I was a kid in the 60s (and my father was captain of the 1st Company of which I was a member) there were 12 active companies in Inverness as well as one in Drumnadrochit. I think one started in Balloch soon after. Football always played a big part in BB life in Inverness and a number of players started off in BB football. Billy Urquhart was in the 5th Company, Davie Milroy the 9th (of which Rodwill Clyne was Captain for a while) and I think Charlie Christie was latterly the 9th as well or was it the 10th? On the coaching side, John Beaton started off as a BB boy and then an officer. There must have been lots more BB boys who went on to play in the Highland League etc. Indeed since Jeff MacDonald was a member of the 5th in my time, then so probably later on was his brother Kevin who went on to do the FA Cup/ League double with Liverpool in 85/86. I'm sure a few users of this forum are ex BB boys from Inverness. Does anyone remember the short lived 11th (St. Marks) Company that was based over the road from ther Thornbush Inn? I'm sure there will be many who remember Scoobies, legendary Captain of the 5th Company. And if you played the Ferry Boys from the 4th at football, you were always scared to beat them since you would probably get chased home if you did. Life Boys anyone? And who remembers Gordy Bus as a young BB officer? What about trips to the BB Camp at Carrbridge when you would look out for the German's Head at the Slochd (I still do!) and chants on the way of "Gordy Bus (clap, clap), Gordy Bus (clap, clap)" PT Competitions? Drill Competitions? Drill for goodness sake! When I look back on my time in the BBs mainly in the 60s, it just seems incredible that we used to dress up in Army uniforms from the 19th Century which we used to have to clean and polish with Brasso and respond to this guy bawling out orders which were designed to get troops into line of battle before the First World War! "Kumpanay.... kumpanay, atten....SHUN. Tallest on the right, shortest on the left, in single rank.... SIZE!" We used to have to sit exams in this stuff for the Queen's Badge! I sometimes wonder if some officers of my time as a Boy (always with a capital B) were simply reliving their youth and their time in the war or on National Service. To a large extent I think the BBs were conceived as a means of training young lads to go on to guard the Empire (whilst the Boy Scouts thought they were RULING the Empire! :015:) It's a bit of an outmoded concept now which has probably contributed to the decline of the BBs (my own Kumpanay hasn't existed for years), but I'm sure there will be others with memories of it too.

Would that have been the game to mark Kevin MacDonald's transfer from Caley to Leicester?

I think old Salvadori's first name was Salvatore. The son was Vaaro. Was the daughter not Laura? She would have been a good deal older than I am. I remember the cubicles well. Used to sit in there eatuing the excellent Salvadori ice cream with the raspberry sauce watching the telly. For some strange reason I have a clear memory of being in there and watching a German called Bungert getting heavily defeated by an Australian in the Wimbledon final of about 64 or 65.

I thought thast might have been a photo of Caley's very last goal v Jags in May 1994, except that... was that not an Urquhart header, BU looks FAR too young in that photo and the hairstyles look rather "80s". And it won't be the 1988 Qualifying Cup Final Replay. :015: So which game is it?

Who needs Mike McCurry? Reporting Scotland have just interviewed a blind man from Larkhall.... who is presumably the referee! :004:

I did.... including an extensive and revealing conversation with Deryck Beaumont!

BC... beg, borrow or steal (but not from the ICT Shop!) a copy of Against All Odds. The whole merger story is there... warts and all.

I don't really think you have opened old wounds inasmuch as the only people likely to take offence at reference to the merger this long past the event are the rump (and believe me, there are not nearly as many of them as some urban myths suggest!) who refused to have anything to do with ICT from the start. If people want to discuss from time to time the important sequence of events in the history of Inverness which ultimately brought Premier League football to the Highlands then I think there's nothing wrong with that.. as long as folk still remember that the way ahead is forward. If the Buenos "Chicky Allan :026:" Hornells of this world take offence then tough... but they should feel free to discuss the issue at their next Battle of Rose Street Revivalist Meeting which I understand is to take place in one of the telephone boxes which have recently been declared surplus to requirement. (Perhaps someone could let off a large commemorative firework during the proceedings. :015:) Regarding Kingsmills' comment about the proportion of fans who have no former allegiance to either club, I would suggest that even his estimate of one third is on the low side, given the number aged under about 22, the number of incomers, the death rate among former Thistle/ Caley fans over the last 14 years and the fact that both clubs enjoyed massively smaller crowds than turn out nowadays. Perhaps a larger proportion of the older HL fans log on here? I also wonder if, in the wider community, some people who claim to be "lifelong Caley or Jags" were in fact of the armchair variety whose loyalty was based on the time they queued for tickets for games against the likes of St. Johnstone and Kilmarnock whilst gleaning results from the Football Times. I have to say that the extremely subtle sarcasm :004: in the reference to the Thistle court action had me giving that post a double take too for a few seconds! Just in case anyone is in ANY doubt, the Caley Rebels indeed grabbed most of the headlines and there were far more of them than there were Thistle refuseniks. But one Thistle fan - Martin Ross who was 18 at the time - did obtain an interdict in June 1994 which seriously restricted what Thistle could do with Kingsmills Park until the case was decided by Sherriff James Fraser in May 1995 (and Ross then lost his appeal in the July). This legal action not only starved CT of assets for a year but also put Thistle so far on to the diplomatic back foot that it very nearly forced them out of the merger and Inverness out of Scottish League football. I could argue (but I won't go into it at the moment) that Martin Ross's action brought the merger scheme closer to disaster than the Caley Rebels ever did. By the way, Martin Ross was then liable for costs for that action, which I believe ran to about ?10,000. I have repeatedly heard it alleged that he departed Inverness without paying them and have never been aware of any subsequent payment having been made.

Who does Mark Yardley play for these days?

So does that mean the poor Icelanders had to use the notorious Kingsmills Park Away dressing room? :015:

Not to mention that Caley Thistle's major shareholder is also a Hilton loon, and an ex Jags fan. On one occasion he told me that when he was a lad he used to have to stand on the terraces at Kingsmills because he couldn't afford to go into the stand. :015:

I tend to be a bit backward at coming forward, but if the younger generation want to find out about how Caley Thistle came about there's a book available.... I don't know if there are any copies still left in the club shop. In response to those on both sides of the previous divide who reckon they were "robbed" I will simply quote the statistic that at the end of 1993, Caley contributed 70% of the assets, 80% of the membership (OK after something of a freak "recruitment" campaign by both Caley's pro and anti lobbies) and 90% of the fundraising capacity. Hardly an equal merger, but not grounds for a monopoly either, and that's the way it turned out. Wonderul comment about that Old Folks' Home which is the ICT Social Club.... and not a little truth in it too. :015:

:rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao: You know there's a message in this thread. There is now a whole new generation of Caley Thistle fans who are young enough really not to have any clue who Thistle and Caley were. Indeed my 22 year old son was only 7 when the merger started and is probably one of the youngest people to remember the separate clubs (and he still has his little blue MacRae and **** strip at home! :003:) The day isn't far away when it's going to become like searching for World War 1 veterans and we'll be trawling the old folks' homes, looking for those very rare survivors who stood on the Howden End or patronised the black and red pie shed.

I'm not obviously in a position to check all of these but I do wonder about the "appearance" ones in the first attachment. As it happens I've been across the leading appearance and goals figures over the last couple of days in connection with something I'm doing on Barry Wilson so that set me wondering. According to Ian's latest stats following the Gretna game the top three are Ross Tokely on 438 total appearances, Barry Wilson on 336 and Richard Hastings on 334. The figures quoted above are a good deal higher (474, 364 and 346) and that may also be the case with other players (eg Charlie Christie is 314 and not the 371 quoted there) although I don't have time to cross check. Could one of the "sub on" figures have been added to the real total in error or something like that?

Or possibly the working class man has decided to dispose of his income in other ways... such as Sky TV which is becoming an increasingly popular way of watching football. I often sit in the stand at Grant Street and observe what must be among the highest densities of Sky dishes in Western Europe... 11 crammed into the short distance between penalty boxes along the back of the houses in Kilmuir Road! As it happens I'm just back from a wee tour around my old stamping ground in Dalneigh and the first thing that hit me in St. Valery Avenue in particular was again the sat dishes of which there are dozens. I could also guess that many of these are hooked up to large screen plasma TVs. etc. I think it's perhaps more a case of how the so called "working class man" chooses to dispose of his income which in relative terms has increased greatly over the last 30 or 40 years. Since I don't actually have to pay to get into football matches (even though it's because I'm working) I won't develop my other point which, as diplomatically as I can put it, would have been that, even though admission prices are frequently branded as "ridiculous", they still raise only a fraction of the cost of entertaining the people who have to pay them and the rest is heavily subsidised.

There was actually a faster one (12 or 19 seconds I think) in the first friendly on the Italy tour in 2006. I was at the game and saw the goal but I think the reason I'm not sure about the time was that the crowd was also an all time low, even for ICT, and I can't remember which was the 12 and which the 19.. or was it the score that was 12-0? That game actually produced ICT's fastest goal, smallest crowd and record score, friendlies included. But yesterday's goal is joint fastest in a competitive game.

mmmm - BBC and other sites listing at 37 seconds, official site listing it at 31 ........ wonder if it is joint fastest goal or second top ? Definitely 31. I looked at my watch the instant the ball hit the back of the net, had a quick word with Fiona about it (see herearler post) and then went out to check with Ian Broadfoot who had the same figure. This is Caley Thistle's joint fastest competitive goal which Ian has now confirmed as 31 seconds by Craig Dargo v Celtic on 18.12.05.

BIG ISSUE!!! :015:

I can exclusively reveal that in 1972 IHE actually received trials for but was subsequently rejected by Inverness Thistle. The long term psychological effect of his rejection by what had hitherto been the love of his life (made all the more acute when they signed Milroy) was utterly devastating and had two fundamental long lasting implications for IHE. Firstly, in a subconscious attempt at denial of this rejection by Thistle, he went to a Caley match at Telford Street, discovered the Howden End and decided from that day forward to pretend he was a Caley Fan. He was so obsessed with this pretence that he became notorious throughout the Highlands for the implacable and uncompromising manner in which he pursued it at grounds the length and breadth of the Highlands but especially Kingsmills Park (and Borough Briggs). Also, and this suddenly struck him when he was watching Mr. Benn on the TV one day, IHE realised that he could live out his fanstasies by dressing up in other people's clothes. In particular he discovered that the pain was eased when he put on a Thistle tie (and indeed the variation on the garment concerned to which he refers above is, in practice, a kind of sunconscious "dirty protest" about his earlier rejection.) But there is a more positive ending to this tragic tale in that IHE also pledged to dedicate the rest of his life to helping other poor people scarred by similar mental afflications, and does so to this day as faithfully as his real persona is a totally dedicated Jeggie.

Photo 84 is a LOT more scary!!

November 1985. Jags went 2-0 up on a snowy night before Celtic came back to 2-2. It was Roshie Fraser's last game in charge before Lofty Black took over.

British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons.... known as BAAPS!