Charles Bannerman

Smith Avenue actually runs from Glenurquhart Road to the roundabout on Bruce Gardens wjhere it meets Maxwell Drive. You may be thinking of Ross Avenue (or maybe Harrowden Road or Perceval Road.) I haven't a clue about Culcabock apart from the likelihood that it's of Gaelic origin. There's a book about Gaelic placenames around Inverness by a BBC colleague of mine Roddy MacLean. As for the dualling of Laurel Avenue, that always was a mystery, but on the other hand it did have the beneficial effect of increasing the width of "No Man's Land" at the top end! :015:

It seems that most of the "fields" are in two groups in the Fairfield Road and Annfield Road areas. I think also that both areas were developed at roughly the same time - latish 19th century. Presumably they refer to the vicinity of fields which were in the area prior to development. Calufied Road is different. William Caulfield was General Wade's chief engineer and eventual successor in the constructiuon of military roads through the Highlands between the 15 and 45 Jacobite Rebellions. SMEE, a couple of things. Bill Smith is not the current provost, it's Bob Wynd (so presumably we'll eventually get a Wynd Wynd!). Also, Provost Smith Crescent was named after Provost William Smith of the late 60s and early 70s whose biggest achievement was possibly fronting the campaign to have Eden Court built. The immediate past provost is also William (Bill) Smith. We also have Smith Avenue, but that's been there since before them both - in fact I think it's 1930s. We of course have two ex Provosts by the name of Fraser... Ian C Fraser (Coffin John) and William A.E. Fraser (Billy Butcher). However we also have two Fraser Streets (both pre dating these gentlemen but where else but Inverness could that happen?!). One goes from Bank Street to the junction of Church Street and Queensgate (about 50 yards from Billy Butcher's shop) and the other is off Haugh Road near Chalkie's shop. Then there's Dalneigh where all the Saints go marching in.... St. Andrew, St. Valery (with that spelling it's clearly names after St. Valery en Caux where the 51st Highland Division was captured by Rommel in 1940), St. Mungo, St. Margaret, St. Fergus, St. Ninian, St John's. the other end of Dalneigh, in contrast, is all trees. Laurel Ave, Lilac Grove, Limetree Avenue, Hawthorn Drive, Rowan Road. Laurel Avenue!! When I used to cycle home to St. Andrew Drive as a kid, I always used to speed up at the Dalneigh Road - Laurel Avenue roundabout and take a hard look to my left in case I was going to get chased by the Kirkhams or the Finlays!

At least he keeps up the tradition of a ******** in the place at all times. (I'm preserving your anonymity "ilig"!) BTW Caley D quite rightly sings the praises of the Hilton Chippie (even though his brother does cook their excellent fare!)

Just don't lose your head! :015:

And I thought you just abused your health in the Heathmount! :004:

CRINGE!!!!!!!!!! :33: :33: :33: :020: :crazy07: :019: :009: :009:

This thread seems to make the fundamental assumption that Graeme Bennett doesn't have anything else in his life apart from football.

The keeper was Jimmy Smith.

SMEE, you choose a very interesting time window, since in 1992 I might just have gone for Elgin City if I was being objective enough to ignore the fact that I am an Invernessian. They certainly had the more recent pedigree of being the top club, having held all five HL trohpies at one point in 1989 and Borough Briggs possibly had the edge over, for instance, Telford Street. Ross County were at that time the top Highland League team but weren't far enough on from their spell of debt and amateur status to earn a full nomination. Caley certainly would have been seriously considered as well because it was a very well run club wuith a good pedigree in the relatively recent past and had had a "letter of intent" lodged with the SFL since 1986. Into 1993 the situation changes because in April of that year, Elgin City became embroiled in the Teasdale Affair which did no good at all to a case which was weakening by the day. That then brings your scenario down to a straight fight between Caley and an ever strengthening Ross County. But then the whole question becomes completely hypothetical since in May 1993, INE came up with the merger proposal which was clearly (and has now proved to be so) a much more robust option. Now, given how well Ross County have done in the intervening years (and you can't say that geting to Division 1 and developing a 4000+ seater stadium is bad) I might indeed have been justified in backing an ever strenghtening County against a "go it alone" bid from Caley which I have always suspected would have become another Stenhousemuir, Forfar or Arbroath since it would have stagnated in the absence of the serious money which I believe only a unified bid was capable of attracting. But as it turns out, the merged Inverness bid and the Ross County bid were by far the strongest, and that was clearly backed up by the overwhelming nature of the vote in January 1994.

I would boil my thesis on this one down to two propositions. 1) In all respects, including on the field, Caley was a significantly more substantial entity than Thistle. (On the field, the Jags at best could claim advantage in the early 70s and to have matched Caley in the 86-88 period.) Hence the necessarily unequal nature of the merger. 2) Caley, although generally ahead of Thistle and really right up there, were certainly not, over time, streets ahead of all other Highland League clubs. (This is perhaps a romantic notion which tends to burgeon with a) the passing of time b) the introduction of threads like this and c) a few post match snifters in the Social Club of a Saturday night! :003:) Kingsmills.... I'm pretty sure Highland League clubs very occasionally featured in commentaries before 1992. For instance I sourced a commentary of Elgin City's 1968 Scottish Cup tie at Cappielow (incidentally thay remain the ONLY Highland League club ever to have reached the quarter finals). Caley 108.. I don't think you can take a single result v St. Johnstone (or even the run of three which also included defeats of Stenhousemuir and Clyde) as indicative that by 1992 Caley were enjoying a golden age. Caley won their last Highland League title in 1988. Later that year they were demolished by Jags in the Q Cup replay (which equally I wouldn't recognise as evidence of a fundamental Thistle supremacy) and indeed won very little indeed after that, except the 1991 Qualifying Cup and the 1994 North Cup in their very last weeks. However I would also point to the Airdrie victory in 1990 which further emphasises that this was still a side which, if past its best, could still pull off one offs from time to time. Equally, the Jags' 3-0 defeat of Kilmarnock in 1985 (which is indeed a very rare event of its type) is not evidence that this was a brilliant Thistle team although it was just a couple of seasons short of a period where Caley and Thistle jointly dominated Highland League football. Then in the late 80s there began a joint decline, coinciding with the rise of Elgin, then County then Huntly, to the relative low point of 1993. This I believe is crucial to any understanding of the merger - which went ahead at a time of relative weakness on the part of both clubs but which I believe would never have happened if it had come along earlier or especially in 1987 or 88.

Let's look at the history of the Highland League from the 80s onwards. You will see from the winners' list that Caley won three consecutive titles in 82-84 and then won it for the last time in 1988. During that period there were corresponding wins in other competitions, especially the Q Cup. Thistle had a very successful period in the late 1980s and in 1988 these two Inverness teams had a complete carve up of just about all that was going in the HL. Then they both began to go into decline. Thistle won virtually nothing and Caley's 1991 Q Cup win was about all they had in the 1989-93 period. Basically what happened was that Elgin (under Pele) and then Ross County (under Bobby Wilson) became supreme. Therefore, as the merger negotiations started, BOTH clubs were very much lacking in the success of which they had both enjoyed so much just 5 years previously. I believe that was an integral factor in making even the notion of a merger acceptable on either side of the river. I argue this case in detail in the first chapter of Against All Odds so won't go into the detail here. But as far as the most successful team is concerned, it's a difficult one to call. Older results are less relevant in the context of any discussion of Scottish League entry, and you will notice that post war Elgin won more HL titles than anyone else. Caley were big, but I suggest not as overwhelming as a lot of Caley fans (understandably) suggest.

The last several posts have been very enjoyable to read and very informed. I would, however, dispute a couple of statements. Firstly, I think SMEE (not atypically of ex Caley fans) has got his rose coloured spectacles out. Yes, Caley were a very successful club, especially in the 1980s, but by the time the merger came around, they were very much in a dip in fortunes and had a very poor recent record of trophy wins. In the first chapter of Against all Odds, I argue that one of the main factors which made an unlikely merger possible is that at the time neither club was going through a particularly successful phase. I'm also not at all convinced that Caley AND Thistle would both have got in at the expense of County. A double Inverness application would have split the vote and County scored very highly anyway since the mounted a great campaign. Indeed the fear was that a double application could have ended in NEITHER Inverness club getting in... which seemed a big danger before in very latterly became apparent that Elgin's challenge was much weaker than most had thought. Mantis' version of the Teasdale Affair is, as I understand it, spot on.

?8500 plus VAT for Billy which took it above the 10 grand Jock wanted the transfer to go through for. Am off to dentist so it may be a little time before I can reply in detail to the more recent posts on this fascinating thread.... but I will!

RBC... your suggestion of a brand new city centre social club is an interesting one - albeit possibly tinged with a bit of resentment of the current use of a property previously identified with "them"!? :004: How financially realistic this might be, I couldn't say but a single city centre premises incorporating a Social Club and a club shop would have a lot to commend it. There is one possible down side, however. As I understand it, much of the profit which the SC has regularly made is due to people resident in the Greig Street area whose "local" this is. (For instance there's this old guy like Jack and Victor who sites at the corner of the bar and Fs and blinds incessantly all evening and another one like Young Mr. Grace who needs virtually carried into the top bar.) If that clientele were to be lost, the profitability might be affected. Certainly ICT fans don't keep the place going since it's busy with them only after home games. However this is a completely different issue. What we were discussing was the relative contributions to the merger of Thistle and Caley in terms of assets. We had got as far as - Kingsmills ?486K, Telford Street ?1M. Thistle SC ?150K and lossmaking,Caley SC - unknown but very much bigger and has continued to make a profit. That comes out at around 70% Caley, 30% Thistle. You are not comparing like with like when you compare keeping football clubs and keeping the Thistle club going. Football clubs are kept open at all costs because they are the principal business. A social club, especially one which is surplus to requirement and at the top of a narrow stairs, is subsidiary to the principal business and it is therefore wise to realise its value for the overall benefit of that business. And by the way, you are hearing this from someone who had a lot more sympathy for the Thistle perspective on matter than for the Caley one during that fraught "Summer of Discontent" of 1994. It's just that you have to be realstic about the unequal nature of the merger, difficult though that may be for a fervent ex Jaggie. As far as the Clach Club is concerned, you will be hearing more about that in the Media this week as their overall plans for Grant Street become public.

That Airdrie game is one of THREE Inverness football matches in the last 25 years I greatly regret having missed. The other two were Celtic Park in 2000 and Jags' 3-0 win over Kilmarnock in 1985. Hey... it wasn't like Turnbull Sports to sell dodgy gear was it?! :015: :33:

SMEE... the ?900K was most definitely a grant, not a loan but arguably it was one of the wisest investments ever made by the CGF. As you say, it had the secondary effect of opening up the whole East Longman area in addition to the massive stimulus Inverness has as the base of an SPL club. If you add other money in such as Objective 1 and INE funding, it comes to something around ?1.8M of grants from public sources to Caley Thistle. ?900,000 from the CGF to create a transport artery beneath the Kessock Bridge... or ?250,000 for a 12 minute fireworks display above it. Difficult one to call, that, in terms of relative value! :015: Clach's problem is the club's fundamental non viability in an area of town where economic conditions have changed dramatically over the last 20 years. The proposals for an all weather pitch which will begin to emerge this week are designed to create a new income stream. Heilandee has hit the nail on the head. There is a huge sentimental support for Clach within Inverness but there are precious few who will actively do anything to improve the club's situation... such as go through the turnstiles on a Saturday.

I sometimes wondered if by shunning the "Inverness" the "Rangers of the North" were to some extent mimicing the corresponding rejection of "Glasgow"! There was an elment of Bluenosery down there in places although some Celtic fans as well.

I would place the figure towards the top end of stylo's estimate but not quite as high as SMEE's. The research I did came up with a "typical" combined crowd of around 600, ie excluding the very biggest matches such as derbies and County games.

Indeed James... as they prepared Telford Street for the pre season friendlies just at the beginning in 1994, some of the Caley Rebels painted the whole ground blue and white... excpet for the unrinals in the gents' toilet which they painted black and red!

RBC... I had a lot of sympathy for Thistle fans in the 93-94 period but there is no getting away from the fact that they were significantly the smaller outfit. Kingsmills was actually sold for ?486,000 (after they discovered that they did in fact own it!) and Telford Street eventually went for ?1 million although ?750K was the long quoted expected figure before sale. You mention the Thistle Club. Sale of what became an ICT asset was a perfectly legitimate act and certainly not "asset stripping", given that it was clearly surplus to requirement, making a loss and had been voted to ICT along with the rest of Thistle's assets by a clear two thirds majority at a General Meeting of thistle in December 1994. Sherriff Fraser's judgement in March 1995, backed up by the outcome of the appeal in front on Sheriff Principal Douglas Risk in the July, upheld the legitimacy of that move. And if you want to include the value of the Thistle club, you would also have to include the value of the much larger Caley Club which is still a profit making asset of ICTFC. Therefore the 70% figure is pretty sound. Further evidence - Caley were turning over ?250K towards the end. Jags' turnover was a whole lot smaller and their losses were a very large percentage of that. The Caley Centenary Club had been a huge money earner for them since 1986. The Thistle Capital Club was just set up in 1992 and was really struggling to break into the market. The Centenary Club is still a major earner for ICT. Caley's crowds were a lot larger, their success on the fierld was a great deal more. I don't think you can claim enhanced "clout" just because Thistle may hav e been founded a few months earlier back in the 1880s! Believe you me, I had genuine sympathy for Thistle during the summer of 1994 as they withstood a whole lot of pressure and propaganda as Caley tried to appease their hardliners by applying the squeeze to Thistle. But on the other hand this was in no way anything near an equal merger.

My now 22 year old son used to come with me to Telford St., Kingsmills and Grant Street and later to the Caledonian Stadium. He still has the blue MacRae and **** Caley strip he got when he was 7!

C4L.. Thistle definitely were the less well supported team and very much the junior partner of the merger. It was said at one point (correctly) that Caley contributed 70% of the assets, 80% of the membership (artificially high due to the huge recruitment drive in the autumn of 93 resulting from their merger wrangle) and 90% of the fundraising power. As a result the merger was very much an unequal one and fundamentally this was what all the difficulty was about. There were those on the Thistle side who were not prepared to accept their junior status and there were those on the Caley side who either wanted a more or less complete Caley takeover or for Caley to go it alone. It was only when a balance of power roughly reflecting the relative sizes of club was found that Caley Thistle struggled into secure existence.

You're obviously not aware of the ?900,000 which Caley Thistle, after a lengthy wrangle within the District Council, got from the CGF in 1996. Without that the stadium project could not have gone ahead and it's very likely that the club would have been strangled at birth. Scotty.. I think you have to distinguish between the money given to ICT for the stadium (a total of ?1.8M of public cash) and the debts of over ?2M which were run up subsequently (mainly 1997-2000) as a result of overspending. These debts still exist - it's just that they have been "spirited away" (and I've never been able to pin David Sutherland down on exactly how) by the ICT Trust. I'm not so sure it's a case of "no lessons learned" with Clach. There's a major difference between ICT and Clach in that since 2001 ICT has been able to be fundamentally financially viable, ROUGHLY breaking even. However Clach is fundamentally financially non viable (indeed I feel another book coming on about social and economic conditions in the Merkinch) so continues to be loss making irrespective of tightly they cut their cloth. But one additional factor will be emerging over the next week or so and that is the community all weather pitch which they are attempting to put at Grant Street which could become a substantial source of income. This was revealed exclusively to the BBC on Friday afternoon (sorry... do I sound like Chic?! :014:) and we will be going with it in more depth on Monday morning, including an interview with David Dowling. Clach's rent, by the way, is ?14K - 5% of what the CGF paid ICT Properties for the park. In comparison, the land housing Spartans' ground is believed to be worth something like ?8M and they pay Edinburgh City Council ?350 a year.

So you weren't around 1995-2001 when ICT had to depend hugely on input from the CGF and from Tullochs in order to survive? Do you not know how close to the wire ICT was around 2000 with over ?2M of debt? Clach's debts are trifling compared with ICT's, except that ICT has been fortunate enough for these to be taken away by the Trust. What the Courier story doesn't mention is David Dowling's plan to try to get a revenue raising community all weather pitch at Grant Street. It's also interesting to compare two broadly similar inputs from the CGF.... ?280,000 to buy Grant Street in 1997 and ?250,000 to fund the closing of Highland 2007. The former investment purchased an appreciating asset, attracts a rerntal of ?14,000 a year and has kept a vital part of the Inverness heritage alive. The latter investment......

So who was Chic Allan anyway???? :symbol_question: