Charles Bannerman

Scotty's average figure is correct and precise (to the nearest 0.3 of a fan). It so happens that SoS agrees with Scotty's official figures.

In inaugural season 94/95 the average was 1275. In 95/96 it was 1579. Both of these seasons were entirely at Telford Street. The first half of 96/97, which included the opening of the Stadium in November 96, yielded 2300. It was 2676 for the second half (with the winning of promotion, the Third Division title and the trophy presentation - don't say that just the OF attract glory hunters!), giving an average of over 2500 for that whole season. (Ref "Against All Odd" pp128 and 132.) Into Divisions 2 and 3 these averages dropped, partly due to the loss of the novelty factor, partly due to less frequent victories and also due to the disappearance of derbies for some years.

Thanks Stevie. Overnight I've checked out the same statistics from a different source and the only other points that I'd make are, as you've shown, there are only TWO non County crowds of above 3500, both of them for special occasions, and also that even these were a result of the combined effects of the title and the novelty of a new stadium. Interestingly there weren't even 3500 for either the clinching of promotion or the title in earlier recollection of the average for 96-97 is a bit low - it was nearer 2500, including the four crowds of above 3500. I also have a memory of a crowd of over 4900 at Telford Street in January 1996 for a postponed New Year derby. There was much of an SPL card on that night two but Inverness produced something like the third biggest crowd of the night.

No you didn't. Typical averages in 96-97 were, off the top of my head, around 1700-1800, boosted to there the 5000 or so for Highland Derbies and by rather bigger crowds for special one off occasions like the opening of the Caledonian Stadium and the presentation of the Division 3 trophy. There was a temporary upsurge when the stadium had just opened, such as something like 2400 for Montrose but I doubt if there were much more than perhaps three occasions, all one offs, outwith County games when the crowd was above 3500. I don't have a copy of my book at hand just now but I'll check and update or make another post tomorrow.

CH2... if you can remember the railway bridge falling down - you're getting old!

Maybe it's the ambiguous way in which I entitled the original thread (which I've changed) but it's usually rather OLDER memories than the current year that we have on this thread.... such as roller skating in the Islands... Frankie Jew's....the Suspension Bridge etc etc....

Look folks... it's December 15th already.... anyone want to start off this year's epic?

Burnetts pies? Would these be the ones Jimmy Chisholm allegedly played football with on the bakehouse floor before putting them back on the trays?

Believe you me... the amount of good that Colin Baillie has done in this community in sport but also in other spheres such as Boys' Brigade over the last 40 odd years is incalculable.

Moomkin... I would have provisionally to disagree with you on what's quite an interesting legal question regarding a number of Royal Academy assets. I'm quite sure the changing rooms at the playing fields are Royal Academy property although used exclusively by Millburn since 1979. This is because they are War Memorial changing rooms funded through various post 1st and 2nd World War subscriptions organised by the Royal Academy. What I'm not entirely sure of is whether the ground itself was actually IRA property or belonged to the Council when the IRA moved out. The War Memorial fund started after World War 1 when the IRA bought as a Girls Hostel the former Boys' College on the corner of Ardross St and Glenurquhart Road as well as the ground behind it which became the IRA playing field. During the 1930s the County Council took the place over to become County Buildings and the War Memorial girls' hostel shifted to Hedgefield on Culduthel Road while the playing field moved to Victoria Drive. Then when schools in Inverness stopped live-in pupils in the 80s, Hedgefield was miraculously taken over by the Teckie College and not a word about ownership of premises whose financial origins lie in a private fund at Inverness Royal Academy. Similarly in the early 60s, Millburn Junior Secondary got partial shared use of the IRA field, use which increased when Millburn lost its own grass area to extra buildings. When I retire I think, with the help of the Freedon of Information Act, I'll spend time researching the legal ownership of all these premises. Colin Baillie, despite the hardman image, is a diamond geezer with a heart of gold who has mellowed substantially with age. I'm afraid there's no chance now of a fresh souvenir picture. The place is blitzed!

In the case of ICT, the stoiy of how the shirt colours came about is perhaps even more interesting than the colours themselves!

Gerx.. so Baillie kicked you in the face TWICE!?

Have any other former pupils of the Royal Academy (or Millburn for that matter) journeyed up Victoria Drive over the last couple of weeks? "The Field" is now in the process of being dug up! - I understand to build a new Millburn. It's the passing of an era. Since as long ago as the 1930s Royal Academy pupils had their games periods on that field which from the early 60s was shared with Millburn Junior Secondary who then took it over exclusively after the IRA moved out in 1979.(As an aside, before the 1930s the Academy Field was on Glenurquhart Road where the newer part of the Highland Council Offices - aka County Buildings - now are. The older part of these buildings used to the the IRA girls' hostel.) Football over beside the Distillery in an era when you could be half drunk by half time with the fumes when there was an east wind. The big rugby pitch parallel with what used to be the Highland Printers building. The small rugby pitch beside it and the hockey pitch in the remaining corner beside the old tin shed where the hurdles and other equipment were kept. In the summer it was all replaced by the running track where I have so many memories of painful training sessions and winning the 1970 and 71 school sports championships amid the smell of creosote from a newly marked track. In that very hot summer of 1976 the back straight became incredibly undulating when the grass dried out completely. And the changing rooms - a War Memorial for 39-45. I was at school from 65-71 but I went back into these changing rooms in about 1996 when my son was playing in a primary tournament there and they smelled just the same - that sort of foosty aroma with just a hint of mature leather and a whiff of disinfectant from the toilets. I also found the sink in which I used regularly to be sick if I had overdone that afternoon's interval training session.... probably in that case taken by Baillie. In 1967 we all got injected thanks to Dodo Sinclair. Poor Dodo (who was a contemporary of mine at Millburn and whose dad Butch was the last person I remember who played for Citadel) fell and cut himself and became very ill with tetanus. The field had previously been part of a farm and the bug had hung around for a very long time. The upshot was that both schools in entirety got the tetanus jag. So many memories of that playing field which is fast becoming a battlefield now that the bulldozers have taken over.

Latviaman ... the diving champion.... do you not mean Barry Wilson?! Seriously, though, you're maybe thinking of Brian Phelps who I don't think came from Inverness. There was a guy from Inverness in the early 60s called Maurice Campbell who was a pretty good diver. I remember him giving demonstrations off the 3 metre board at Glebe Street. On one occasions he did a dive with his younger cousin... Maggie ?Reid? (used to scare the **** out of us anyway) from Dalneigh on his back. Remember the hit or miss nature of the wee cubicles.. whether or not you would get one with the whiff of the last occupant's foot odour. The pong of cheesy feet mixed with chlorine is a very subtle one... despite the wee sinks at the shallow end in which to wash your feet. These must also have been days of limitless cheap energy because around four very hot showers ran all the time in the men's alone. There was also the cold one on the opposite wall and it was something of a trial to go from ages in the hot one straight into the cold. My main memory of the shop was the Puff Candies and the Cow Toffee which must have done untold damage to so many teeth. There were also the "baths" (hence the popular name of the premises) in an era where many people still didn't have a proper one at home and could come there.

Thank you Scotty. As an assiduous chronicler of the merger, I have always insisted on observing what was agreed in the dying days of 1993, even though my first experience of football was at Telford Sreet. I can also say that, with only one exception, I have NEVER referred to "Caley" in any report. That exception was imposed on me when I opted for a particular final line for my Sportsound report on a certain 5-1 scoreline which read: "Super County go ballistic, Caley are atrocious."

I take it this thread should really be entitled "Caley Thistle Song" but does anyone remember in the 1960s (and maybe later) a thoroughly cringeworthy Caley song to the tune of Mairi's Wedding and under the name of "Come Away The Caley" which boasted such emabarrassing inanities as: "Parkhead, Brockville and Dens Park Found our football was no lark"? HELP!!!!! (On the other hand the pre match music in these days did include Andy Stewart and Jim Reeves!)

CMIB... it must be the stage of life you're at!

Laura... I just can't believe that any Santa on whose knee you may have sat could be as old as 91! Ticket prices.. in the mid 60s the cheapest I can remember is 1s for the front stalls on a Saturday afternoon but that may have been the La Scala. The Playhouse might have been 1s 6d. I think balcony prices went up to about 5s or 6s for an adult. This was the alternative when Caley were away from home. At the time it cost 9d to get into Telford Street, not that we ever paid!

Social Club?!

That's the building on the corner of Academy St. and Margaret St isn't it? I only remember it as Simpson's the electrician's and a cheapie store.

Thank you Mantis. As Captain Mainwaring would say ..... I was waiting for someone to mention that. And here's a bit of ICT trivia. Although Charlie Christie was the first player to 100, 200 etc appearances, he was not the first to 50. It was Mark McAllister. Charlie had a period of injury during Caley Thistle's first season 94-95 which initially left him a little bit behind in the appearance stakes.

If you think it through there were so many fine part timers (ie never full timers) at Caley Thistle. Calder, Christie (who, despite his full time employment with the club was, in effect, a part time player if you also exclude his time at Celtic), Ian MacArthur.... Paul Cherry was part time since he ran his own finance business, the legendary Herchie as mentioned, Mikey Noble, Brian Thomson... indeed so many of the side which won the Third Division title in 1997, and outwith that Paul Ritchie is the first thought. I think I would have to give top equal to Christie and Calder (football's answer to Alf Tupper!) with Ian MacArthur possibly next but I'm also so sorely tempted by many of the others I've listed. All time top part time eleven anybody? (Only players who never latterly went full time.) Calder, MacArthur, ??????, Hercher, Noble, Cherry, Robertson, Thomson, Ritchie, Christie, Ross. I'm struggling for a left back, given that Hastings is ineligible. (Vetle??!!!... NOT!) I'm also asking Herchie to play in central defence. If I didn't I could possibly put MacArthur there which would then leave the right back slot blank and also possibly force Herchie out of the team which I'd be very reluctant to do. Gringo - I think Teasdale has too long a full time pedigree at Dundee and ICT to be eligible. Memories of so many of these guys at Telford Street!!! (By the way I do admit that this is very similar to the D3 championship winning team.)

Sandy.... as one of the local media "behind glass in a heated box", could I just perhaps point out that you forgot about the O'Brien's sandwiches? Delicious! ICT look after us very well and I think we reciprocate. Can I also point out that this "story" appeared in the news and not the sports pages of Tuesday's Sun? Sports journalists on newspapers not uncommonly get thoroughly fed up with their news colleagues pressurising them to connive at raking muck within football clubs. I certainly don't want to comment on the Sun's story, apart from remarking that it is fundamentally and dramatically inaccurate in a number of respects. But what I can say is that the minute the Sun appeared on Tuesday, the spontaneous and virtually unanimous reaction of the LOCAL media was not to touch this with a barge pole. (The local media, by the way, Sandy, are the privileged eight or so sandwich munchers with our personally allocated seats "behind glass in a heated box" who gererally have an excellent and mutually beneficial relationship with Caley Thistle and who have reported on/ photographed the club and attended twice weekly press conferences for years.) My final comment on this sorry issue is thoroughly to agree with the first ten words of Sandy's last post. This thread now seems to be the only thing that's keeping this unfortunate pot boiling. Drop it for God's sake!

Well you learn something every day! I certainly wasn't aware that the Empire started life as a cinema, although I did know about the theatre in Bank Street since my father was a kid in the town when it burned down and he told me about it. Indeed I'm not sure if my grandfather wasn't in the place that night. I do remember the Empire (not as a cinema!) being pretty basic while the La Scala (ironically, given its role as a flea pit) was a bit more ornate, although not in the same league as the Playhouse. I also remember one or two visits to the Palace where I saw Lorna Doone and a Jimmy Edwards "Whacko!" film. (An interesting change with the times there. "Whacko!" probably wouldn't be given a certificate these days since it would be deemed to have content relating to child abuse.) The theatre wasn't the only building to burn down on Bank Street in that era. St. Columba High Church also suffered that fate in 1940. On the subject of multiple conflagrations, all three football grandstands in Inverness burned down within less than half a century - Caley in about 1951, Clach in about 1989 (!) and Thistle in 1995, after Kingsmills had closed as a football ground.

Perhaps I can clarify the matter here. All of the newspapers you are talking about are owned by the same company, Scottish Provincial Press, to serve their local areas on a broadsheet/ tabloid basis. Within SPP there is the Highland News Group which are all tabloids and all edited in the same room - the HN which serves INVERNESS, the North Star which serves Ross shire and the Lochaber News whose catchment area is obvious. They all have the same editor and sports editor (Paul Chalk) and a few common pages but the football in particular is directed towards the local readership. The arrangements for broadsheets are a little different. The Courier and the Ross shire Journal are based in Inverness and Dingwall and are completely independent of each other. They are quite rigidly directed towards their local areas and indeed just about the only anomaly is that the Courier carries a limited amount of Ross County coverage. But they are completely separate papers covering their own areas. I therefore don't understand why an exception should be expected to be made in the case of this cup victory (about which I am very pleased for Ross County btw). People in Inverness, wanting to read about truly local football and indeed other sports as well would be rightly annoyed that their opportunities were being reduced by a large football report about a nearby team. I don't imagine the North Star or the Ross shire Journal would have carried much when ICT won the Challenge Cup in 2003 and quite rightly so. There was reference above to the fact that I covered the final extensively on the BBC. Of course I did. Ross and Cromarty is a significant part of our transmission area which covers all of the Highlands and Islands as well as Moray. On the other hand I would imagine I would get quite a few complaints if I started giving large chunks of air time to Aberdeen FC, the team next door. The local media is just that - local - and there are designated catchment areas.