Charles Bannerman

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:

I think it might have been around 1978 that Billy went to Rangers. My own first memory is an obscure one. Caley 8 Brora 0 at Telford St. around 1964.

You two are now beginning to lose me a bit! I do remember old Bridge Street, but just. I was about 8 when it was demolished. I certainly remember the British Linen Bank (remember their linen paper notes?) which was indeed near the snooker hall on High Street. That brings me on to bank mergers. There was the British Linen and the National Commercial Bank. I'm sure the National Commercial became part of the Royal Bank which became RBS. Did the BL go in with Clydesdale or BofS? Or did it become part of the Royal as well? Ah... and the Wednesday half day!

He was incredible and I've always wondered who he was! His arm movements and the specificity of his gestures were just amazing. There was no doubt where and when he wanted traffic to go but I remember him when I was a young kid and I found it a bit scary... although perhaps not as scary as hesitant motorists did! :crazy07: I think he used to do the odd stint on duty at the Caley Park as well. Another cop I remember there on Saturdays in the mid 60s was a chap we called "baby face". Several years later I spotted "baby face" with a large amount of "scrambled egg" on the peak of his cap, indicating quite a degree of promotion!

Agreed wholeheartedly! I think Clach have a very important part to play in the structure of football in Inverness. It's just a pity that so many of the people who complained so loudly when the club almost went out of existence in 1990 and almost went to Dingwall in 1996 don't turn out to support them.

Scarlet O'Hara... that's very kind of you! :015: (Come to think of it I forgot to pass on my regards to Rhett Butler and the Loan Arranger's sidecick Tonto). DJS... I predominantly agree but would just make one "chicken and egg" query about the Highland League. By "Caley and Thistle got out at a good time" I suspect you mean thus escaping the straitened circumstances which the West part of the HL at any rate is experiencing now. On the other hand it could be argued that it was the departure of Caley, Thistle, Ross County, Peterhead and Elgin City (but most significantly the first three) which was a major cause of the difficulties which the HL is experiencing. It's a hypothetical question I know because departures into Scottish League football were inevitable once they (belatedly) decided to open out.

My feelings entirely, especially with regard to the spoiling of a great day for Huntly. a year later, Pele must have been wondering what he had let himself in for. SP - next time you see Custer, ask him to pass on my regards to Buffalo Bill, the Lone Ranger, Doc Holliday, General Wolfe, Davy Crockett and all my friends among the 49ers.

Complete with machine gun towers and perimeter guards? :015:

Oh dear me! :crazy07: Caley4life.... a red white and blue Holland flag with the words "Loyal Army"... just stop and think about what that implies three times over for goodness sake! (If you want a hint.... it's quite the wrong team!!!) In any case, blue, white and red are not Caley Thistle's colours... there's black in there too!!

I could guess that footballer's wife might be first in the queue to sign up for that!

Or as one Caley wit said in the Muirtown on the night of the merger meetings when it was announced that Jags at the Rannoch Lodge had gone for it by 3 to 1... "Surely they didn't have as many as four at their meeting!?"

Geez! How long did it take the Pony Express to get as far as you!!!? :004:

I think Caley 100 has sorted out the question of what was the fourth set. I'm sure it was the three I referred to in the late 50s when I was very young. I then had a recollection that a fourth set appeared on Culduthel Rd soon after, and Caley 100's post seems to confirm that.

I seem to be getting the January 12th version of the site on the front page on both computers I use, ie the lead story is the Hibs cup tie. Something similar also seems to be the case on the forum.