Charles Bannerman

Methinks, Caleyboy, that you have an axe or two to grind with Tullochs!

I don't see it that way at all. The common bottom line is this - were it not for external financial intervention, neither club would have achieved a fraction of what it has done. In Ross County's case, the appearance is that there's been a constant, generous financial drip feed of funds which have allowed infrastructure to be built and wages to be paid at such a level that it has been possible to achieve Premiership football in 2012 and then sustain it, including top six finishes and a national trophy win. Otherwise, what might County have become? A Championship - League One yoyo club? In the case of Caley Thistle, the assistance - which may or may not total less than in County's case but has been far more life saving - has simply worked differently. This is because of the critical mess the club got into in around 2000 with its approximately £2.5 million debt. No amount of revisionism will alter the cold fact that if that debt had not been taken away, the club would have gone into administration or receivership. As we all know that debt was removed by Tullochs, the only game in town, who also provided working capital and then upgraded the stadium. The net effect of Tullochs' £5.3 - £6M intervention was, in five years, to effect a transformation from virtual bankruptcy to playing SPL football, debt free in a fully compliant stadium. However, two issues have intervened to alter the perception of that process in the eyes of far too many. Firstly, there has been a failure to realise, or to accept, that Tullochs aren't a philanthropic society although they have accepted a significant net loss by becoming involved with Caley Thistle. And secondly, we are back to the delusion that's too often held in football that the world somehow owes the game a living. Back in 2000, Caley Thistle had hugely overstretched its means. To be brutally realistic, I would also have to add - very reluctantly indeed because he also did a huge amount of good for the club - that this was under the chairmanship of one of the main complainers about the manner in which salvation from a potentially fatal event was then achieved. The club's future existence was secured by Tullochs, but what I seem to be seeing now is some kind of revisionist view that it might have been better after all if their considerable assistance had been rejected and oblivion had been allowed to ensue.

I don't think the home support was great at Hamilton either..... the total crowd figure is 1272.

You mean not totally unlike ICT being baled out by Tullochs?

KOB is correct. It should perhaps also be remembered that the world doesn't owe football a living.

What it needs even more is a greatly increased and sustainable turnover.

So is the possibility emerging of an ICT v Ross County play-off for Premiership status next season, then? IF County were to finish 11th in the Premiership and Inverness were to make their way through the jungle which is the battle to become the single Championship side to contest the honour, then you have the Mother of all Highland Derbies! EDIT... written while Polo Chick was posting similarly above.

The term "investment" implies a reasonable expectation of financial return for the investor. Like it not, and I don't particularly, the realistic term is "subsidy".

"Sorting" the problem is in the hands of the game itself and would require serious reductions in what players are paid at all levels. However I just can't see that happening and fear that football has painted itself into a corner from which there is no escape.

I'm not sure I can agree with all of that. Certainly it is very much business now, one major reason being that football's economics of the madhouse has led to clubs attempting to live outwith their means. This has in turn led to the need for business to become involved, simply to bail out clubs from their excessive spending - in which they are under huge pressure to indulge from the artificial market causing players to be paid well above their realistic value. It's a bit like Marks and Spencer expecting Bill Gates or the Duke of Westminster to make large cash donations to cover Marks' losses resulting from them paying their shop floor staff £25 an hour. It pains me to admit this, but what football fans pay for their product doesn't scratch the surface of the excessive amount that product costs to produce - hence the need from donations from "business".

You are spot on there Huisdean. Over the years, the club has had the goodwill of these major Inverness businesses through leading figures within them. It would be hugely beneficial if they could all pull together to the benefit of the club but, unfortunately, the opposite seems to be the case and long running antipathy appears to be a significant motivating factor in the current spat. One vital consideration in a saga which has now been ongoing for almost 20 years has, however, been largely ignored. In the early 2000s, the club was crippled by a debt somewhere in the range £2.3 - £3M (accounts vary). Without that being "sorted", the club would have gone into administration or even liquidation. The only thing that extricated it from that near-death experience was the intervention of Tullochs, the only game in town, who "disposed" of the debt, provided over £700,000 working capital to ease cash flow and ensured that the North and South stands were built. Some people may not like this fact, but interventions from Tullochs, valued at £5.3 - £6M (again accounts vary) ensured, in five years, a transition from a massively indebted financial basket case destined for the knacker's yard to a debt free club playing SPL football in an SPL compliant stadium in Inverness. The ICT piper has been paid pretty handsomely and I would suggest that he who has done so could have called a much more demanding tune, remembering also Tullochs' donation of 730,000 shares to the ICT Trust and offer of the stadium fabric to the club. I suppose the bottom line question has to be - what would people have preferred? Administration/liquidation in 2000/01 or, 16 overwhelmingly successful seasons later, a question over the car parks, Tullochs' response to which has included a commitment not to leave the club without infrastructure?

Woodwork was actually just about the only thing you weren't allowed to "read" at The Caddy. When they wanted to introduce a single woodwork teacher in the early 60s, apparently the staff over at The Tecky created a bit of a fuss for fear of their monopoly being challenged, the upshot of which was that The Caddy got their woodwork teacher but had to agree not to present anyone for exams in it. However, it does seem that this thread has digressed considerably from Gordy joining the Board.

Then you have the projected loss for the current year of around £300,000.

Long Haul Coll.... there's a nickname before you start.

In the Championship, are you obliged to conform with the ubiquitous and frequently fatuous "SPL rules" - formerly applied to keep out the riffraff - which said you had to use USH? Why spend thousands thawing out a pitch for a game which is bound to lose thousands more by taking place in weather which will keep people away in probably still freezing conditions? Why not instead play the SPFL Jobsworths, whose geography apparently stops at Castlecary, at their own game?

So, in these times of internal political uncertainty, what mechanism exists for casting the 10% of votes to which the supporters are entitled in the event of a poll in the foreseeable future?

Ok... politics in general (except maybe that the Greens sell hairy hand knitted woollen jumpers). One lot are as bad as the other. That's also assuming you can define politics as a "business". The worry there is the relatively high level of integrity you tend to find in business.

The question then arises: do you want them to be represented on the board because they own significant shareholdings - however acquired - or because they have money which you would like them to donate or gift to the club to maintain, or perhaps rather to achieve, its solvency? Whichever way you look at this question, football's dependence on gifts and donations - terms which tend to masquerade under the misnomer of "investment" - is inescapable. I can't off the top of my head think of any other type of business which depends on donations from wealthy individuals to stand between its otherwise unsustainable business model and financial oblivion.

Merely an exercise in capricous Devil's Advocacy on my part Ronaldo ? (Albeit with a bit of realism about football economics in general.) As for the ICT set up, it sometimes reminds me of the Schleswig Holstein question of which Lord Palmerston once said that it had only ever been understood by three people - the Prince Consort, who was dead; a German professor, who had gone mad; and himself... and he had had long since forgotten. So is it perhaps perhaps being proposed that ICT should go the way of Ross County, but with Orion/Weldex money rather than Global's?

Caleyboy.... first, let me become Devil's Advocate. "Investment is secure"? Investment in what? In over half a million ICT shares in exchange for an undisclosed sum to the Hospice, not the club, the large majority of which shares were originally bought by Ian Fraser for £1 each in 1996 and then sold in the early 2000s to Sandy Catto for, allegedly, much less than that before Sandy donated his entire holding to the Hospice. That in addition to 285,000 shares received in exchange for bankrolling the wages of Marius Niculae - cash which may have long since found its way to a bank in Romania. Just for balance, much of Muirfield Mills' influence originates from 730,000 shares donated to the Trust by Tullochs. It's also interesting to note that Caleyboy's main stated criterion for board membership is one which is regrettably common in football - the means and the willingness to subsidise a fundamentally loss-making business which has been obliged to follow the unsustainable industry norm of paying its employees vastly in excess of their true market value.

That depends on your relative take between the McGilvray/Savage statement and the response which Tullochs were asked for over a week ago and which must surely be forthcoming before too long.

They do. The biggest shareholder is the ICT Charitable Trust, controlled by Muirfield Mills, who also have a controlling presence on the Board.

On the wind-up I'm sure, IHE, but you do presumably mean all 6,000 of the 226 who were eventually assembled in the cause of dissent 23 years ago?

It also means that all four directors, apart from being "Inverness boys", are also former pupils of Crown Primary School or Inverness Royal Academy, or in Gordy's case, both. The Crown and the Kaddy..... Inverness's answer to Eton and Oxford - righ'eenuff mun! On the other hand that does somewhat break down when you realise that this makes IHE an Invernessian "Old Etonian". Excellent appointment of Gordy who has a background in the two much needed areas of football and communication.

To a fair extent, you are right, bdu, but I think you also highlight the fundamental, possibly intractable issue of professional football outwith the absolute elite. When you take your well resourced upper English leagues and the Old Firm (well actually maybe not Rangers since they can't make ends meet either) out of the equation, you are left with a substantial rump which struggles to make full time professional football viable. What boards have to do is to maximise ticket revenue - indeed maximise every kind of revenue under the sun - simply in order to pay players at levels well above their realistic market value. Presumably enough market research has been done to show that the price levels in question are the ones which maximise revenue (= ticket price x attendance). The modern day football market directs the vast majority of fan expenditure, and hence club revenue, towards a tiny elite of bigger clubs. The added, artificial effect of Scotland's ongoing failure to come to terms with the Reformation allied with the preferential policies of the Scottish governing bodies pushes this on another step still. This gives us the Old Firm duopoly and then the rest who continue to subsist on the scraps and leftovers. The rest of Scottish football is trying to chase its tail finding resources to pay A - sometimes not very good players B - far more than their market value. This, unfortunately, appears to have been taken to extremes in both categories A and B over the previous couple of seasons at ICT.