Charles Bannerman

Your personal experience and powers of judgement must indeed be vast if you are in a position to describe the manager's decisions as "naïve".

Do you remember the late Bob MacKinnon, ex-Jags player turned football reporter? Back in the days when match reports were still dictated over the phone to copytakers, post-match in the press box, we frequently used to hear Bob refer to "Thistle" and "Jags" in his copy. I NEVER refer to "Caley", nor indeed "Thistle", in any reports. It's always Caley Thistle or Inverness or occasionally ICT. Well, there was ONE exception when, prompted by poetic licence, I did on a certain notorious occasion wind up a full time report for Sportsound with the words: "Super County go ballistic, Caley are atrocious. Caley Thistle 1, Ross County 5."

The sentence in question:- There are far too many apologists for the "poor misunderstood children" who have been making a disgrace of the club for far too long - and having also read Pump Fake's latest post, also while I have been writing, I am tempted to include him in this category. is about the apologists. I don't think it's too difficult to back up the proposition that pumpfake is an apologist for the behaviour in question. His own posts are more than sufficient for this purpose.

I hereby confirm that, for the first time ever, I have given Dougal a "green dot"?

I think we've had this debate already. The game is pretty well universally opposed to fireworks, smoke bombs and other, related Neddish behaviour. In addition to that, you ask the wrong question. For goodness sake, fans have been complaining quite enough about the "match day experience". Wee knuckle-draggers letting off these things quite clearly detracts from that, so QED. I'm also interested that there seems to have been undue focus on fireworks and smoke bombs to the avoidance of the rest of the culture of loutish behaviour which has become more and more associated with a certain section of the ICT support. I mean as vandalism of a bus, violent behaviour at Elgin and the threatening of other supporters at home games etc (Old Caley Girl has just posted to this effect as well while I have been writing.) There are far too many apologists for the "poor misunderstood children" who have been making a disgrace of the club for far too long - and having also read Pump Fake's latest post, also while I have been writing, I am tempted to include him in this category. These wee Neds need sorted and hopefully the guilty ones now will be.

Or, as Mr Barraclough would have said to Mr MacKay: "I think you're being unduly harsh on a very well meaning group of young men."

Agreed ... and agreed. One of the reasons I volunteered to write the book was to get the story out there so everything could move on. However there remains a tiny and overstated rump of refuseniks who unfortunately, and especially on here, emerge from their blue and white phone box on Telford Street and their even more thinly populated black and red one on Kingsmills Road to persist with vastly overstated claims that this remains some kind of controversial issue. And of course we need memories of the continuous thread of traditions of Inverness football which goes right back to the 1880s and remains unbroken today.

JM... if you look back a few posts, you will see what I have said about blue, black and red all having been there for over 20 years.... and about the unfortunate similarity with the Rangers strip. One very similar example of how two clubs have come together and retained their joint past is Sampdoria which is the product of a 1946 merger between Sampierdarenese and Andrea Doria, and also retains features of both partners' names. The main difference is that although Sampdoria and Inverness Caledonian Thistle both have blue, black and red as their colours, ICT has realised this joint heritage visually on the strip in a far more imaginative and unifying manner. Sampdoria also have a bit of white and, although white was part of Caley's colours, its status seems to have been lost at the time of negotiations although it has in practice been present ever since. That was very possibly because the many on the Caley side were far too busy stressing about "blue".

Unacceptable behaviour on the part of a small group of individuals purporting to support Inverness Caledonian Thistle, but in practice simply using the sport and the club as a medium for public disorder, has been a festering sore in the nether regions of this institution for too long. I can only commend the board for pledging to take action which will doubtless also be very well received by the overwhelming majority of decent and genuine supporters who attend matches, and all connected with the club.

The title Caledonian Stadium is perfectly neutral - in context - and hence suitable. The problem is that Caman is taking this in isolation and not as part of the more comprehensive and complex package which the merger became. I don't know how familiar he is with the merger process ("Against All Odds", its official history, is available online on this site) but the most important fundamental was that it was an unequal merger. Caley were considerably bigger than Thistle, but the clout of the two as a combined entity was far in excess of the sum of their constituent parts. Indeed it was said at one point during the merger that Caley were providing 70% of the assets, 80% of the membership (a questionable figure given that this reflected Caley's major, effectively artificial twin recruiting drives for internal reasons) and 90% of the fundraising capacity. Inevitably, the shape of what emerged from two years of difficult bargaining had to reflect that considerable disproportion. That deal included the club name (initially Caledonian Thistle until the "Inverness" was added to honour pledges made to the Council), the title of the Company (Inverness Thistle and Caledonian) and the stadium name. It took until the beginning of the second season, 1995-96, for the strip to reflect disproportional representation of the two in the form of an agreement for 25% black and red to be incorporated into the "predominantly blue" original. The delivery of this was a masterpiece, because everyone expected a "Sampdoria" black and red band round a blue strip. However what materialised was the complete integration of fairly broad red verticals and narrower black ones into a strip which had blue as its main colour - a visual representation of a union rather than two separate colour schemes cobbled together. I initially wanted to call the book "Blue, Black and Red" and that was actually the working title I used during the writing, but I was overruled by Dougie who wanted "Against All Odds", which I have for long also preferred myself. (The ONLY other thing they overruled me on was calling Ian Fraser "Coffin John". So revered was "the Coff" after his £300K plus investment in 1996 - shares which eventually found their way to the Hospice and hence now to the McGilvrays and Alan Savage - that they joked that they would only call him "sir"!) What I have said therefore effectively overtakes Caman's question which is not the relevant one. What I referred to was what the club colours were, not what were involved in this season's choice of home strip which has blue and red. All 3 have been involved there on plenty of past occasions and he will of course also note that this season's away strip has a great deal of black in it. Hopefully, between one post and another tonight, I have given some background into how the club is as it is. It is also like that to the ongoing contentment of a number of those associated with it while those otherwise minded, especially all these years later, really don't rock the boat to any extent at all.

Maybe they asked Caley Jags Together? (Or is that sniping from the sidelines?)

I do actually have some reservations about responding in more detail to this post because the last thing I want is to have to repeat for the umpteenth time that any discontent about the merger almost 25 years ago was far, far more than counterbalanced by the dividend of the club being formed so, almost quarter of a century on, the comparatively small number of original discontents has shrunk by natural wastage to an insignificant rump. However, it is necessary to re-establish that "un-dingable chiel" in order to eliminate arguments against celebrating Inverness's long football heritage, of which Inverness Caledonian Thistle is the most recent and, despite current setbacks, by far the most successful chapter. Organised football in Inverness even predates the mid-1880s when the merger partners were both founded. Over 100 years later, two clubs which had accumulated hugely proud histories in the intervening period joined forces to create an even more successful one which is merely the latest instalment of what has been a continuous heritage. All of this needs to be celebrated and recognised. And, as Huisdean has said while I've been writing, there are those around (probably far more than the unco-offended) who still want to celebrate the entire heritage. It makes no sense at all to suggest that the earlier part of this continuous heritage should be airbrushed out of history to appease sentiments predicated far more on imagination than actual substance. So... 1 - Caledonian Stadium? What's wrong with that? It's what the stadium has been or was designated to be called right from the start and it's not a title which very many people around actually object to. (PLEASE nobody come up with the "But there's loads of boys at my work who say...." excuse. We all know that of the 600 who used to turn up between Kingmills and Telford St, 6000 still refuse to attend the Caledonian Stadium.) .... 2 - Kingsmills Suite - as previously stated this has already been usurped by The Daily Sheep. So is someone going to object to that as well because it will create offence among those offended by the manner in which Aberdeen Journals treated its staff during the 1989-90 PandJ strike?.... 3 - the combined effect of the Thistle and Caley photos and the growing number of ICT ones is to give a complete illustration of Inverness's football heritage. Or is the suggestion that Pittodrie should remove all pre-1983 photos since it's a well known fact that football was only invented in May 1983 ..... 4 - only someone who (A) knew the cabinet came from Telford St and (B) had a chip about that would really give a toss..... 5 - arguments about "too much blue" or "25% black and red" are relics of the 1990s. Blue, black and red are the club colours and have been since its second season. Again, very, very few give a toss any more about the background to this. The main issue you hear about the colours is that the amount of blue is unacceptably close to Rangers. And if Caman wants to sweep away relics of past history, perhaps the twin Thistle and Eagle components of the badge should therefore be first in line..... 6 - ICTFC is an acronym which stands for the full club name - a composite of those of the two merger partners. Why retain that, then if the rest is to go? There really is no need to re-visit the day before yesterday's conflicts in an attempt to address a problem which barely existed after about 1995, is now a distant historical memory and which supports a far stronger case for itself being airbrushed out of history rather than the very good things that took place in Inverness football before the mid-1990s.

Until I have enough time on a proper keyboard "Nonsense" will have to suffice. (Other than remarking that the Kingsmills Suite has already been usurped by an Aberdeen local newspaper.)

Fat chance of getting motorhome owners to cough up to stay in a place like that when they can freeload in random places across the Highlands like the Sports Centre car park. Damn nuisance, these things

That appears to assume that all 200 in there - if it was full - would be new business and not just people who shifted from the North/Main stands to the West.

That is quite an important piece of information, as part of the necessary clarification of the process by which a decision would be made about placing the 10% in the event of a shareholders' poll. CJT office bearers? CJT board? CJT general meeting? I would hope the last of these three.

Cheers Shorty.

Try the Philosophy Department at the likes of Edinburgh or Oxford Universities. They have long traditions of examining the question of whether God exists so may be able to help with CJT. The only difference is that God doesn't have a 10% stake in ICT - which began to become quite evident during last season.

What would you suggest that would match or better the Centenary Club's take? And in what way is the Centenary Club inaccessible? (These are literal as opposed to rhetorical questions.)

I don't know how possible it is to remain anonymous if records of shareholders are kept by Companies House. I suppose it would be possible to attribute ownership to some entity whose title doesn't give away anything about who is involved. Intuition is steadily pointing me in a direction away from Savco or the McGilvrays being involved here. It's also worth noting that, following the EGM, around 600,000 shares remain unallocated but could be activated by the Board.

I'm not sure. Question number one would be - is there actually going to be some kind of power struggle? Here we seem to have to balance Alan Savage's insistence that there's not with Dougie's very quickly articulated statement about looking for two directors. Then if there is, who lines up with whom? You seem to have a fairly clear insight into how the club has functioned over the years and therefore presumably of who has been on side and also out of sorts with whom since about 2000. It's about as complex as the system of European alliances that preceded World War I. So I suppose that begs the question - is anybody going to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand? I think one significant question may be how much of that 500,000 has been taken up by Muirfield Mills and allies? If it's a lot, then that would further strengthen an already relatively solid position. However, the supporters' 10% is also very unclear and, quite frankly, I think it's a disgrace that a significant quota of votes which dates back to the original Thistle and Caledonian joint members' club should now be mired in such uncertainty, apparently under the control of an organisation which, at best, is hopelessly dysfunctional.

Caleyboy... these are two very good questions. I believe the "Supporters' Society" may be the generic term, possibly in the Articles of Association, for what currently is, (or more to the point may or may not still be) Caley Jags Together. The Articles provide for this body to have 10% of the total eligible vote in any poll - in other words votes equating to one ninth of the total number of issued, voting shares. That makes them the fourth biggest player in any vote but, as is fairly well known within the club, this body seems to have been anonymous for a very long time, to the extent that a lot of people aren't even clear as to whether it still even exists. I don't think many people would dispute that such a body (or lack of one?) having the capability of exercising such influence is not a good place to be in at all. For a start, who in practice would actually decide how the 10% would be cast in the event of a vote, and how representative would these persons (or person??) be of the parties whose interests they are meant to be serving? You often hear claims that "supporters" should have a board presence. Well if CJT is representative of supporters, they are doing that claim no service at all. As for the 500,000 new shares, very few people will know and I'm certainly not one of them. Eventually this will presumably come out in the wash in Companies House records, but how many people and who they are anyone's guess. The McGilvrays?, Savco?, Muirfield Mills? I also note than in his PandJ feature quoted elsewhere here, Alan Savage is claiming that the Muirfield Mills syndicate has gone up to 10 people. If that's the case, might this 500,000 represent contributions from new members of MM? What this does do is to make ownership of 12.8% of the club for the moment uncertain. Add that to the anonymity of the controllers of that further 10% and the water remains a little muddied.

Well, unless he trawls back to something I posted here on CTO about 5 days ago, Alan will need to get a copy of tomorrow's Highland News where I have given updated figures in my Sportsview column. What it says is that the potentially rival forces at ICT line up as follows (1% is the equivalent of approximately 39,000 shares.):- Muirfield Mills 27%, McGilvray family 12.5%, Alan Savage/Orion 12% (12.8% if you include Graeme Bennett's holding), Supporters' Society 10%, David Sutherland and "associates" approx. 5%, Roddy Ross 4.4%. The rest is made up of around 520 other parties with stakes ranging from holdings in the small five figure range down to 250 (0.0045%!) which is by far the most common holding, reflecting the popular desire of fans at least to have a token say in the club when the first share issue appeared in 1996. This does NOT include the destination(s) of the 500,000 new shares (12.8%) announced recently.

As I recollect, Kenny was Executive Chairman which I don't think Graham Rae is, nor were any of Kenny's predecessors.

Scarlet, I'm not an expert on these things, but I believe that a CEO is a more elevated position than a COO. I think the COO is principally a "fixer" in charge of making sure that the process of business operation is ongoing, whereas a CEO has a more strategic role.