Charles Bannerman

Certainly the word on the street was that there had been a delay, with speculation that this may relate to the status of a sub-clause in the original agreement, in view of the stands being donated rather than sold. Remember also that more than half the voting rights MM control are by virtue of Tulloch because Tulloch donated their 730,000 shares to the ICT Charitable Trust which MM controls. MM now also has a 100% presence on the Board, which now numbers just three people following the resignation earlier this month of Ken Thomson. I only discovered that Ken had resigned when I made one of my periodic trawls through the Companies House files this afternoon. This is the sixth resignation from the ICT board since April. My visit to the Companies House website also revealed no indication yet of the allocation of the 500,000 new shares whose uptake was announced in August. It was said at the time that the transaction should be complete by the end of September. This was a slice of the 1.1M new shares made available for release at the SGM early in August. I also found no indication in the CH files of the transfer of the Hospice-owned shares to their new purchasers, although I'm not sure if that information should necessarily be there yet. There's a document dated February where the Hospice are the declared owners and nothing has been updated yet. This may not be significant.

Now that I'm back in the house..... all I can say is that I find playing around with numbers faintly recreational!

Given that almost two thirds of the posts are in the Caley Thistle forum which has more than five times the posts in the second biggest forum, I'm not sure that reducing the number of forums. The % breakdown of forums is Caley Thistle 64.7, UK Football 1.4, World Football 8.2, Rumour Mill 2.9, Other Sport 0.3, Gringo's PL 5.1, Serious Topics 2.4, General nonsense 11.8, For Sale 0.2, Tech Support 0.8, Old Inverness 2.3, Classic Music and Retro TV (to the 1dp quoted) 0.0. The only rationalisation I can see is to incorporate UK football, World football, Rumour Mill and other sport into a single forum (total 12.8%) perhaps called "Non ICT Sport" or similar, but even that's a bit diffuse.

All (I think) of the new ones were Kaddy Rats of my vintage.... assuming that Dave Burgess is a member of the family that I think he may be.

I would pretty well agree with that. The original MM consortium were fairly well known and, further to straws in the wind that they were going to be expanding, it's good to know who are involved. I also agree that a football presence with an established pedigree is overdue on that board. Graham Rae does indeed state that they have no agenda but it remains to be seen whether they may become obliged to adopt one. When the McGilvrays and Alan Savage announced their purchase of the Hospice shares, Dougie McGilvray stated that they would be looking to have two directors on the Board. This prompted instant speculation about a possible power struggle. among the quite fragmented factions who have significant holdings in ICT. These, let's not forget, include the strategically vital 10% voting rights of Caley Jags together - of whose existence I am aware of no more evidence now than several months ago when their apparent Dodo-like status was first mooted. Anyway... there's also another aspect of a possible power struggle that adds potential spice. As Graham Rae says, MM have indeed made significant investment, but the bulk of their numerical clout is a result of their control of the ICT Charitable Trust and hence of the 730,000 shares donated to the Trust by Tullochs and which are inextricably associated with David Sutherland.... that well known nemesis of Messrs D. McGilvray and Savage.

I could probably imagine anything, now that Syrian refugees have been accommodated in the "safety" of Alness. Frying pans and fires come to mind.

You'll be wanting a Young Team Day next.

Where do they do these days, now that the Portland Club is a mosque? Also, I am not aware of any crank organisations ever doorstepping the Armistice Sunday parade which is a far higher profile recognition of our armed forces than a football match.

So who do you think you are? John Hughes or Richie Foran?

Is it not time this one was laid to rest? The club has certainly done its best to do so - and I thought the manager did a fine job of trying to defuse it on Thursday. There really are far more pressing issues to get exercised about.

Scarlet.... many years ago both ICT and County had cheerleaders. The County ones even had their own chant, one line of which went (in the broadest "Dingwall")...."Foootbullursh ur seckseee!" It did make the toes curl somewhat.

Is it true, or an urban myth, that there was one occasion when the Half Time Harriers returned from the Corrie slightly late to find that, in the interim, Jags had shipped five goals?

I've just been listening on the radio to a description of the horrendously complicated format of some new European league which, in Scotland's case, will apparently create a much more convoluted process through which to fail to qualify for the Euro finals. One main purpose of all this is, apparently, to create more hours of football which are sellable to TV channels. However, the obvious corollary of even more televised football will be the punters having even less inclination and funds than at present to invest in turning up to see games live at places like the Caledonian Stadium.

The thing about Dougal's fishing trips is that many of them actually raise issues which are worthy of discussion - hence the tendency for the threads to proliferate - but, predictably, Dougal's spin on the questions is so nonsensical that this also leads to multiple red herrings. (If you pardon the not so mixed metaphor!)

I find myself somewhere in between Ancient Mariner and bdu here (which could have similar hazards to ending up in between LP and SK!) On the one hand, throwing up in the course of training for sport often comes with the territory. It can be part and parcel of the game if you want to get into condition to performand there's nothing remarkable about it. (Colin Baillie has made this his life time's mission among rugby players! ) But on the other hand, the ICT squad maybe only throw up in the mornings. By the time the afternoons come round, they will have recovered and been fed and could be good to go again - perhaps in the gym. The need for recovery in advance of a competitive outing isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with at least some double sessions. BUT... it's becoming apparent (or alternatively this has been clear since at least the Foran era) that the first team squad and coaches have internal tensions, in which case it's perfectly possible that the manager felt that some kind of communal social activity might help to soothe things. (Personally, if faced with a three line whip to undergo the abject tedium of playing golf, I would instead much rather to undergo the Training Session From Hell and happily throw up copiously at the end of it, but that's just my preference.) I don't have a detailed picture of the Caley Thistle players' training schedules, although in general I get rather bemused with how little training footballers appear to do compared with some other sports (or indeed full time footballers compared with people in other sports with day jobs). However IF (and we have no evidence to the contrary) the manager is maximising training loads during the week, THEN if an additional golf outing helps to soothe tensions, then this is well worth trying.

Fly Maybe..... Twice this year I have booked Flymaybe flights, once to Belfast City and once to Birmingham and they then changed the times, rendering the flights useless and messing up the trips. Flybe are useless. The Caley Club bus would be much more likely to get you to the stadium as planned for a home tie against Falkirk.

Wot game was that, then?????

I believe that the factors governing attendances across football are many and complex and that ICT is suffering from a not uncommon Perfect Storm. I think the biggest driver of declining attendances is that, across the game, going to a football ground and paying to watch two teams which are considerably inferior to what you can watch on TV is no longer a flavour of the month activity. So, for instance Scottish Premiership crowds in the 3000 bracket are not at all uncommon. It also looks to me as if attendances here also permanently suffer from a definite novelty factor. In the first season at the Caledonian Stadium, heading towards a Division 3 title, there were several in the 2000 - 4000 bracket. That didn't include derbies which went above 5000 and in that specific case, the novelty factor soon became very evident and Highland Derbies in the Premiership latterly and consistently attracted far fewer fans than in D3. Similarly, the 2000 - 4000 also rapidly declined, and once playing even in D1 had become established (around 2002 perhaps), home crowds of 1800-1900 weren't out of the way. Fast forward to the novelty of the SPL and we are again back up to 4000+, and 6000+ for bigger occasions. But before long, even the OF were failing to prevent large gaps in the stands and run of the mill games were down to around 3000-odd. Inevitably, a drop down to the Championship is going to have another negative effect since second tier football in Inverness is now old hat, and of course the recent less than entertaining fare has added another factor, along with the failure to win. This is a far cry from the novelty of SPL names rolling into Inverness on a fortnightly basis and pushing for that first ever top six place. It becomes even more difficult to attract home crowds if you have to charge around £20 for all of this, but that is the kind of sum needed to maximise ticket income. The fundamental problem here is football's overall willingness to pay players way above their market value. Given that 2-5 Scottish clubs pull in a huge percentage of Scottish football support, the residual economics just don't leave much scope for full time football in this country. Clubs, especially in peripheral areas also continue to be badly affected by busloads of football fans heading off to Ibrox and Celtic Park. Then when you look at the 930 attending ICT v Peterhead on Saturday, you can add to all of that the reality that the Irn Bru Cup isn't something people really want to pay money to watch - unless there's something vaguely special like Falkirk v Dunfermline. At 4082, was the only one of the eight attendances above 2000. Despite the handicap of League Two opposition, 930 was actually the fourth biggest of the eight numbers, and then you need to take into account that "official" cup attendances always SEEM lower than how full the ground feels. OK... that's a pretty long winded way of saying that at ICT at the moment, a recently relegated team which is not playing well in a league which isn't an attractive product and which everybody has seen before isn't going to be able to pull in crowds which might make the prospects of full time football look terribly viable in the longer term.

I'm probably as bad as anyone at rising to Dougal's bait, but would still observe that, given the complete mince in most of his OPs, it's remarkable how long some of the threads he starts actually get. It's just that the temptation to knock down the patent nonsense you're inevitably confronted with becomes quite strong.

I could live with that. One's own ones never smell nearly as bad as other people's It's interesting also to notice how Jock's voluntary exile appears to have conferred upon him some kind of intellectual and moral superiority which has passed by those of us who haven't had the imagination to do the same. On the other hand, I don't seem to notice similar traits other exiles such as Scotty and Kingsmills.

Precisely! And I asked how you proposed that this could have been possible from within the dugout?

The very last thing I want to do is to make any judgments at all on a hugely unfortunate incident which could not have happened at a worse time for a club already under unfortunate pressure in several respects. However, WITHOUT PREJUDICE, one or two objective observations are required. Firstly, it's disturbing to see so many concrete "conclusions" being arrived at on the basis of incomplete evidence. What do we have? Still photographs which give an indication of what as happening at the moment they were taken and which COULD hence be misleading. Anecdotal and possibly prejudiced allegations of verbal exchanges, past and present, which at best are circumstantial. Indeed, and remaining on a non-judgmental theme, I wonder how many posters who are complaining about these alleged verbal exchanges are also equally scathing about "sweetie rustlers" in the crowd? (I merely state this to highlight a potential irony.) Then I have a question on a practical matter. How does Ancient Mariner propose Kellacher might have "got physical first" from within the dugout? Next up, another question. Can Jockdoonsouth give us assurances that he is approaching this issue entirely objectively and has no anti-Kellacher agenda in any way, shape of form. I would also remind Jock that Scott Kellacher was also on Celtic's books as a teenager but is still by no means the only coach not to have first pursued a long term, high level playing career. Jose Mourinho and Craig Brown come to mind to start with. It would be a mistake to look at what I have said and conclude that this is a "pro-Kellacher" statement. I have merely made objective observations and asked objective questions in an attempt to bring back to the middle ground a thread which quite clearly began with an anti Kellacher agenda and progressed (not the best word, I admit) to the stage where Original Poster clearly lost it. PS - the single operative word of what Fraz posted while I was writing reminds me that altercations like this, regrettably but still not justifiably, do tend to happen in football, including at globally energetic premises not far from here.

Aw for goodness sake Kingsmills Surely not?

I'm sure it would but unless travel outwith Scotland is heavily subsidised by the sponsors, I don't think it would suit the purse string holders!

Dean MacDonald, Robert Eagle, Martin Glancy?