Charles Bannerman

That was the "Ayr United" feeling I also got on watching that fightback. I was astonished when "Doran Cogan" was booked, apparently for "simulation", after what looked like a clear trip half a yard inside the Simmurn box. All credit to Mark Ridgers for a series of fine saves, including the second penalty. What a transformation there has been there from the hesitant, uncertain keeper of the opening weeks of the season.

What's so special about shining the ball that can't be dispensed with? I know it makes the thing swing a bit but why differentiate between surfaces? It almost seems as if there must be some list of things that cricketers are allowed to rub their balls on and things that they are not - banned surfaces rather than banned substances. I suppose it's a case of what's more important to the game - players getting to rub their balls or the elimination of cheating by a simple coat of a substance which, however much rubbing you do and on what, won't budge. This would also save the laundry lady (sexism alert!) a lot of work currently invested in removing red stains from white trousers.

I really don't see too much that's subtle about a game that goes on for the best part of a week and, despite one team gubbing the other out of sight, ends in a draw because it happened to rain! As for the ball tampering business, this is no different from drug taking, diving to "win" a penalty or Russians with dodgy devices on their sword tips. It's deliberate cheating.

Fierce doesn't begin to describe Kevlar, Laurence. It's used in bullet proof vests, in place of steel in tyres and in brake linings and it's especially impervious to impact so I believe could especially well deal with being knocked for six. Also, apart from eliminating ball tampering, there could be cost savings due to balls not wearing out nearly as quickly. However I'm not as sure now about Kevlar balls shortening games as I originally suggested. This was based on batsmen being able to reach targets quicker with a straighter running ball, but on the other hand it might also be more difficult for them to be got out. But then again, if Kevlar balls made it easier to score runs this would surely make the game more entertaining by reducing the frequency of batspersons stopping the ball dead before earning a round of that slow, pedantic hand clapping in response to nothing having happened.

CJT is in the queue. Tomorrow it's a combination of reflections on Saturday's cup success and how completely bogging the sponsor's product has become since AG Barr were bullied by the Nanny State into halving the sugar content because not everyone possesses the same iron self-discipline was your good self.

It could hardly be CJT's fault given that CJT has not existed in any meaningful form for a very long time, but this does show us just one possible role of a fans' organisation that actually does something. Nor is it the function of the media to take the initiative by way of transacting club business. Given also that the function of the newspaper column in question is to express opinions and not to break news, I would have thought that one or two views on the eternal soap opera which has been the perpetual dysfunctionality of CJT would be higher up the list of the columnist's priorities.

I'm not at all suggesting that CJT is the whole answer, nor even a substantial part of it, but it's far from irrelevant. One of the important functions of a fans' organisation is to keep comminications open with the board and to chivvy them if necessary if they feel information is thin or deficient. They have at least a "Tesco role" - every little helps. For instance, I am absolutely certain that someone within a properly functioning CJT would have got wind of the Danny thing a while ago and done the "What's this all about?" bit. This, remember, is a board which has never known being called to account by a fans' organisation since there has never been a functioning one during its tenure. When I heard that there had been some kind of change, I asked around and indeed I have been a bit surprised that this rearrangement - albeit apparently consistent with SPFL rules - hasn't been placed in the public domain, given that Danny's original COO appointment had been well documented.

Obviously I can only repeat what I have heard from a reliable source. Steps to make that known generally are obviously the board's. As far as I can see, Jim's role doesn't go as far as COO since it appears to be confined to day to day non-football operation and commercial activities while Danny, since he seems also to have oversight of first team activities, could possibly be said to be de facto Director of Football. It could also be suggested that if the club had a working and viable fans' organisation, one of the many benefits would certainly have been the fans being kept better informed in a number of ways. What troubles me at the moment is the desire among some fans to find, and even create, things to complain about. The old board got it, and now the new board is getting it. The old benefactors got it and now the current ones are. The old team management got it (OK, no real problem with that ) and the new management is getting it as well. What makes that whole sentiment especially difficult to swallow is that some reactions to difficulties seem almost to extend to schadenfreude. It's possibly not what has gone wrong of late that is the remarkable thing, but that it took so long to do so and also the length of time that things went very right in the face of a raft of fundamental adversities.

My understanding is that SPFL rules prevent the same individual from being COO and Academy Director. Danny has hence moved entirely to the football side, overseeing Project Brave as well as other football matters, so is by no means "gone". The operational side, I believe, is being undertaken by Jim Oliver and there is some marketing input as well. I am interested to note that Phenom appears so well versed with ICT's behind the scenes operations that he is in a position to write them off as "an absolute shambles"..... but at the same time he appears not even to know who does which job nor even who is or isn't in the employ of the club. The practice I spoke about in an earlier post of comparing willies behind the bike sheds in the hope that yours will be the smallest so you can blame your parents for it seems to be alive and well. It always seems to have to be somebody else's fault.

I'm not so sure about that since St Mirren are not one of the teams being directly pursued. Given that points WILL be dropped, irrespective of the final finishing order, dropping them against St Mirren (*) would be one of the less damaging ways of doing it. The games against the clubs in 3, 4, 5 and 6 are a lot more important in this respect - six pointers as opposed to the 3 pointer which St Mirren is. (*) - that isn't to be taken as any expectation of the result, simply an appraisal of the consequences of possible outcomes on Saturday.

I don't want to sound negative, but this is what's probably required to do this:- with 9 games remaining.... pull back 8 points on QoS with 3 games in hand PLUS 9, maybe 10 points on Dunfermline with 3 games in hand PLUS 11 points on DU with 1 game in hand OR 12, maybe 13 points on Morton with 3 in hand. (The "maybe" qualification is where goal advantage may not be pulled in as well) That's a lot of points to be pulled back on a lot of clubs and, as I've said before, all that's preventing me from being even more categorical is the 2010 run-in.... which itself depended on the collapse of just one rival club.

I was taking it as a likely "given" that if there was a big enough collapse for Dumbarton to jump above ICT, Falkirk would have done so as well, but indeed - tonight's outcome also takes ICT a place up the table. And as an aside.... in the wake of winning that cup and tonight's valuable follow up, it's going to be interesting to see what kind of a home crowd turns up for the visit of the league leaders. (Please note that I've just said "interesting" and "what kind" as opposed to making any predictions!)

I think tonight counts for quite a lot in terms of avoiding the relegation play-offs. Combined with Dumbarton's 5-0 defeat by Simmurn that leaves ICT with a seven point and a 19 goal advantage as well as a game in hand. Consequently, Dumbarton would need to score eight more points in their last nine games than Caley Thistle did in their last 10 to jump into eighth place. Even the deficit alone, never mind having to add to it whatever ICT get for the rest of the season, is similar to Dumbarton's average points scoring rate to date. A for the "other" playoffs, the ONLY thing that's stopping me from saying a categorical NO is the last three months of 2009-10, but even part of that was Dundee bottling it and I can't see Qos, Dunfermline and Dundee United all bottling it to the extent required. Also, twinned with the Cup victory, a home win over Dundee United is quite a formidable combination of results which it's hoped can be built on - although Simmurn at home will be a pretty formidable test.

This notion of "legitimate tampering" is beginning to sound a bit like the question of which substances should be allowed and which should be banned as performance enhancing. Where does, or should the dividing line lie? I have no real knowledge of cricket at all, but if differential polishing and roughening of the ball is all that important, may there not be a case for abandoning all restraints on doing this, which could have two benefits? Firstly, it will eliminate ball tampering as the issue which is seriously clouding the game. And secondly, if a differential ball surface is more difficult for batsmen to deal with, then scrapping limits on achieving this would have two major benefits:- shortening games (qv George Bernard Shaw's reference to "eternity") and hence making them less likely to be affected by rain which currently seems to be a major determinant of the outcome of cricket matches.

It seems that quite a few of them have been at it over the years so why not apply a radical remedy in the form of a thin Kevlar coating on cricket balls? Kevlar is an extremely robust polymer which can stop bullets, so a thin layer on a cricket ball should surely prevent differential wear. On the other hand, if cricket is so inflexible that they won't even add on time at the end to allow for anything lost to rain, I couldn't see them coming to terms with this simple but radical solution. to cheating. I just wish there was as straightforward a solution to cheating in other sports by way of drug taking.

I suspect that "chib" is a reference to a knife. It's a Glasgow gang word which tends also to be used elsewhere in Scotland.

The manager drove to York (370 miles), picked up Daniel MacKay (and Kieran Chalmers I believe) and drove back to Edinburgh (200 miles) where they stayed overnight before heading on to Perth (a further 45 miles.... all "ish"). Daniel was asked about it in his Sportsound post-match interview, where one of the questions was "so who got to choose the music on the way back?" to which the answer was "oh there wasn't any music because the gaffer talked all the time". Making that trip in advance of the stresses and strains of managing a team in a cup final shows quite a lot of commitment to tge job.

Stuart Cosgrove on Off The Ball has just recommended a place close to the ground called The Tulloch Institute.

In that case I wish he would just do what the other sponsors do - sponsor the club- rather than turn the operation into an eternal Soap Opera which has now extended to 50 posts, 18 of these from himself, extending across two pages and seven days.

Good Lord! I thought the Beast from the East had brought us quite enough snowflakery! Now it seems that referring to a frequent daily experience - unintelligible nuisance calls originating from the Subcontinent... or even perhaps to such calls as simply being unintelligible.... is considered to be racism. Our freedom of expression seems to have declined a very long way in a very short time since the days of "The Wheels On Your House".

Blair..... are you sure your real job isn't answering customer service calls in a tin hut in downtown Delhi? ?

Is there not an element here of wee boys going behind the bike sheds to compare willies, but with the strange twist of each secretly hoping his will be the smallest so he can find something to blame his parents for? Following a miserable 2016-17 which produced nothing more concrete than relegation and then a big struggle to make an impact in the Championship this season, Inverness Caledonian Thistle is now less than 24 hours away from a National Cup Final.... and what do we see on its fans' forum? Some people still looking for anything at all to moan about and for somebody else to blame for perceived shortcomings of governance - most recently, Cup Final ticket sales - when the focus should really be on the game itself and the chance of a potentially corner-turning cup success. Well done to Huisdean for an excellent post about 10 above this one.

Why didn't they do the sensible thing and restart the game after the rain stopped? One of the fundamental weaknesses of cricket is that, if they HAVE to stop because it rains, they don't rearrange the lost time. I mean, this is RAIN we're talking about. It tends to be fairly common on our planet so allowances should surely be made for it. The frequency with which cricket matches are decided by the randomness of simple precipitation is quite astonishing and the Vera Duckworth Method (which sounds more like a means of contraception!) appears not to be all that reliable. In test cricket they don't even have that and I believe, for instance, that England won The Ashes in ??2005??, simply because rain stopped play.

I hope the letter of requisition is watertight. In 1993 the Caley committee managed to delay a second meeting on the merger for weeks due to holes in the Rebels' letter.

Agreed OCG. I did think the SC final was marketed pretty well in 2015 and of course it carried the extra gravitas of being the SC final. It's absolutely great that the club has got to this Challenge Cup final but, to be realistic, as an occasion grabbing the public imagination, this can't match not only the SC final but also the LC final, three SC semi finals and a replay and arguably also two LC semi finals. However, I do also believe that this final MAY have the potential to have influence disproportional to the occasion, in that if ICT manage to win it, that achievement could help to kick start the overall momentum of the club after a very difficult period since last May. Yes, I agree that winning the Scottish Cup did nothing to build momentum then, but things are starting from a rather lower level on this occasion.