Charles Bannerman

Now that CMIB has raised the issue, I think I'd want to add that I'm getting a bit tired of it as well. If you're going to do it, just do it. When Blair first posted on this forum some months ago, I was mildly chastised by one or two fellow posters for what was a mildly abrasive initial response on my part. Their reaction wasn't wholly unreasonable, on the original premise that Blair was just a young lad making a point about the club...... as opposed to the Slavic, Putin-supporting Oligarch which he has now revealed himself to be. Hence I now feel slightly less inhibited. (So here's hoping that Poloium-210, tabun, sarin or dodgy umbrellas aren't among Blair's merchandise! )

A Ballinluig breakfast or mixed grill for me But to return to the issue of sponsorship, why don't you just phone 01463 222880 and ask to speak to Danny MacDonald, the Chief Operating Officer?

On January 29th 2000, my media ticket got me within yards of the fluttering guttering..... and the pick of 20,000 spare Celtic pies!

Are you SURE you aren't one of Vladimir's Little Helpers?

In the first case, I see that the SFA haven't got any more efficient over the years..... and in the second, I didn't realise that Alan Savage had been sponsoring football for that long!

I see what I've done, Snorbens. I should have written "AFTER 1930" rather than "in" and from there quoted, without looking at the list again, the first two winners Citadel and Thistle as 30 and 31. The source was this www.nozdrul.plus.com/zfeweb/scotland/qcup/finals.html which, if I'd actually read the year, which I did for Clach's two wins, does in fact quote 1934 and 38 for them. It doesn't, of course, detail when in the season the final was played. You'll note that, outwith Inverness, Elgin also won the original North contest on a couple of occasions in the 1930s.

I have done a bit of Googling since my earlier post and it seems that the Q Cup was a national competition up to and including 1929 and there were in facto no Highland winners there. In 1930, it became a North and a South competition and up until the War, the North final always seems to have been a HL team versus one from the central belt like Rosyth Dockyard or Penicuick Athletic. During that pre-war decade, the North Q Cup came to Inverness four times - Citadel (1930), Thistle (1931) and Clach (1934 and 1938). I'm not sure if there was then a North v South playoff final which Citadel and perhaps Clach and Jags won as well? After the War, a new Midland Q Cup seems to have left the North one as the HL + Golspie arrangement which the current generation know and loved up until the "All In" which began in 2007. I seem to remember that for a few year after that the competition continued as some kind of non-Qualifying challenge cup.

Absolutely! I was taking "local" as Inverness but Elgin's achievement was indeed inspiring.... especially to a wee Moray boy called Steve Paterson who followed every move of that campaign from the Borough Briggs terraces. I remember attending the 25th anniversary celebration of that cup run at Borough Briggs in 1993..... ironically just before Elgin unfortunately disgraced themselves with the John Teasdale match fixing scandal, ruining what was also their centenary year.

Laurence... for a very long time before the Scottish Cup was made "all in" a few years ago, Highland League sides had to qualify for it through the Qualifying Cup. For a time this was a national competition (which, off the top of my head, I think Inverness Citadel won in the 1930s) and then became North and South, with the late four in each progressing. Though this, Inverness clubs often qualified for the Scottish Cup and frequently - especially between around 1984 and 1992 - did very well. By the way, the Arbroath v Bon Accord score in 1885 was 36-0.

The other founder members were the long defunct Citadel, Union and the Cameron Highlanders - all also Inverness teams. Thistle were the inaugural champions. I believe that a team called Ross County also started, but disappeared after a few weeks, to be re-formed in 1929. I also believe that the only club ever to have scored "nul points" is Elgin City.

There is only one thing that's worse than hubris...... misplaced hubris laced with irony.

A wise and measured response to a comment straight out of the "Pride of the Highlands" and "Always in our shadow" stable.

It's quite clear that these Protestant and Catholic communities can no more peacefully coexist in West Central Scotland than they can in Northern Ireland. Without going into historical detail, I would find it difficult to describe 60 years of Jacobite rebellions as the Reformation going "fairly smoothly". Then, after that, you have the continuing marginalisation of the Highlands by the central belt which, in football terms, left the Highlands outwith the SFL until 1994, hence adding in all the disadvantages of a very belated start.

Once again you put your finger on an unfortunate symptom of the fundamental problem - which is the Old Firm. They are of such a size and have become established/ imposed themselves on Scottish society to such an extent that they also have the media running after them - which in turn only compounds the problem. Some of the toe-curling sycophancy I've seen towards OF managers at post-match media gatherings beggars belief. It all keeps coming back to that root cause of Scotland's failure, after 500 years, to come to terms with the Reformation. This has led to the continuation of rival religious groupings which have in turn adopted two football clubs as their focal points. The resulting clout these clubs receive has made them magnets also for much of the rest of the population Aided and abetted in addition by the media and the football governing bodies giving them what they want, this leaves scant pickings for the rest of the clubs - especially in economically marginal areas like the Highlands which have been attempting to sustain two upper flight clubs in a situation loaded against that.

In fact, if you look at the attendance figures alone, last season the Old Firm accounted for 62% of the total Premiership gate while the two Highland clubs had just 4.7%. If, even adding in the lower leagues, just two clubs are accounting for such a disproportionate amount of Scottish football's turnover, then that really doesn't leave much for the rest

Regrettably, your pay-off line there is the key to the entire scenario. Celtic and "the new team from Glasgow" are hoovering up so much of Scotland's football cash that precious little is left for the rest, and Celtic's "European munificence" is really only p!ssing into the wind in return. This two club hegemony further marginalises already marginal areas like the Highlands. Hence ICT, despite considerable financial assistance over the years, has passed the limit of punching above its weight while County, despite what's very likely a much greater level of subsidy, are now also finding their Premiership future in severe jeopardy.

So what now? Re-name this thread "Dundee Derbies Next Season"?? There's actually a serious message here - if Dundee is not that far from having no teams in the Premiership, what price the inner Moray Firth? Edinburgh didn't cover itself in glory fairly recently either.

I must say that my attitude to "glory hunters" has softened a bit. Even as recently as the 2015 Cup Final, I had a bit of an ambivalent attitude to the unprecedented presence of around 15,000 in the Inverness end - glad to see that level of backing for the club, but also a bit resentful at people turning up only for this extra helping of self-gratification. Now, I tend more to believe that everyone is free to buy into attending matches at whatever level their interest determines. With ICT there will maybe be a few dozen who attend every game, home and away; a few hundred who never miss a home game; a couple of thousand season ticket holders who attend most home games; a few thousand attending half a dozen or more games.... up to 15,000 for a Scottish Cup final. Nobody in a "more frequent" category really has the right to play the Self Righteous card and criticise less frequent attenders. Then there's the large majority of the population of Inverness who have no interest at all in watching ICT, many, possibly even most, of these with no interest in football at all. Where the final of a national cup for lower league sides (that's a definition, not a dismissive term) comes on that spectrum remains to be seen.

Caleyboy, I sometimes wonder if you have more agendas than an entire volume of Highland Council Minutes??

I'm not sure that the numbers totally support that conspiracy theory, given that the Muirfield Mills interest alone already outnumbers the Mcgil/Savco holding by about 3:2. But even if this were the case, DFS now has about 300,000 shares - approx 8% (I'm not rigorously checking numbers at this time of night) while MM control about 1.3M (ballpark 35%) and Mcgil/Savco has around 900,000 (knocking on 25%). Then, in a pretty splintered situation, you have the Supporters' Society we're not sure if the club actually has or not, holding (or perhaps not holding?) 10% of voting rights - more than DFS who is now around the 6th biggest shareholder. However that 10%, the 5th biggest clout, is in a state of total uncertainty. On the other hand if it's felt that the club would be better off without that £250K.......

Don't worry about the indirect answer, Huisdean, because you raise a very valid issue.

Ironically enough, Balmacara (the "new Balmacara", I think) was the most playable pitch in shinty last Saturday and hosted the only game that went ahead.

A further straight question - if you were on the current board, what would your attitude have been to accepting the £250,000 personal donation from "the builder" which is part of the £450,000 received in recent months to keep the club afloat?

Straight question - what would your alternative strategy have been to raise the £6M of other people's money that's been needed to get the club to where it's been over the last 25 years.

I should perhaps instead have said - this HAS ALREADY DEVELOPED into the mother of all fixtures backlogs!