Charles Bannerman

Finmack and Gringo very much echo my own concern. On the day John Robertson was unveiled as the new manager and on other occasions, the Chairman made a definite commitment to improve communication and extend openness. Since then, the huge, pre-existing need to do this has actually increased but absolutely nothing of substance has emerged - apart from (at least?) four spectacular Public Relations own goals. (An utterly crass statement about season tickets, the incredibly poor handling of the sacking of Duncan Shearer, the totally unnecessary highlighting of Porngate and the equally unnecessary highlighting of the Ross Draper transfer request leading to the embarrassment of two conflicting versions of same going head to head in the public domain.) When the commitment to improve is made, the need to do so increases but still nothing is done about it, it is inevitable that, in its search for an explanation, fans and the public will include worst case scenarios among their thinking.

Do you mean along the lines of the noise created or along the lines of the capacity that all three Rose Street meetings had to make critical decisions?

That is essentially what he also told the BBC - that the notion of the transfer request was instigated by the club and not by him. On the other hand the club's version appears to be that the transfer request was instigated by the player. During today the respective parties have offered these two completely contrasting versions of the same scenario.

The amount of silly money flying around some parts of the Highland League might actually make progress there quite difficult!

On the day John Robertson was appointed, there was a pledge from the Chairman that communication would, as a priority, improve greatly. Clearly this hasn't happened, despite the ever increasing and obvious need for it to do so, so what has been preventing the delivery of a very public commitment?

In the interests of balance, the disparity of resources could perhaps also be pointed out, but I don't think that detracts too much from the point being made.

.... probably including any of the 33 out of 33 that Inverness College seem to have managed to get to fail their Higher Media Studies over the last two years. But for the moment to turn to Chris's OP - what a swingeing and well articulated condemnation of a summer of chaos within a club which just two years previously was displaying the Scottish Cup and playing in Europe. Apart from the extent of the decline, its rate has also been eye watering. The only part of Chris's precis with which I might differ is on players and management. Given the extreme lack of funds, I'm not sure if appointments and recruitment could be expected to be any better. I retain an element of cautious, albeit necessarily limited optimism in this department. We really must also wonder just how close to the wire - electric fence even - finances have got in recent months; and to what extent has paying silly money to poorly motivated mediocrity been responsible? Returning now to public relations and communications , I despair no less - indeed even more now - than I've done for several years. This is something I've been trying to make clear to them for a long time but I've seen neither the capacity nor the will to do anything about it - nor indeed even any concept of the need to win friends and influence people and the attendant role of communication. Quite frankly, a few cheesy, happy clappy tweets (and even these have now disappeared) don't begin to pass muster here. Communication and PR have been dreadful, awful, pathetic, abysmal and God knows how many other adjectives out of the same stable. Worse still, the deficit has been obscured behind a firewall of happy-clappy complacency. Chris rightly highlighted Seasonticketgate, Shearergate and Porngate. These are all toe-curlingly embarrassing foul ups of the highest order but are also simply the continuation of a long established trend. However the most revealing feature of this thread has been the rate at which it has grown even within a couple of hours. It's telling as well as distressing, to see so many Caley Thistle fans who are regular, articulate and respected posters on this forum spontaneously echoing what the OP has rightly said. When you get such unanimity among so many contributors with proven track records for commenting on these things, you see in the starkest of terms the situation the club is in and the deep concerns of its supporters. As for the Draper issue, not only is this another reflection of the relative status of the two Highland clubs, it's also the latest example of Roy MacGregor being in a position to rub Caley Thistle's noses right in it. And having had to endure "Always In Our Shadow", "Pride Of The Highlands" etc, it's difficult to criticise him for this.

"Scottish football in protectionist self-interest shock!"

Was the Twitter account really closed down solely because of Porngate or was there something else as well?

There are a few things I'd like to see Tich McCooey on trial for Seriously, though, he would make a decent announcer.

As I recollect, the receiving club pays £350 a week if the player plays but £850 if he doesn't?

Funny you should say that! I was on automatic pilot yesterday when I found myself turning on to the A9 at Inshes, having forgotten to take the riverside route to the stadium instead, to avoid what was expected to be a fair DU travelling support. At around 2:15, I hit the back of a queue, still well over half a mile short of the stadium roundabout. I had been fearing the worst but, although it wasn't exactly speed limit stuff, I never actually stopped once until the final set of traffic lights off the roundabout into stadium road. In fact the queue moved at a pretty constant 10mph or thereby, so it only took around 5 minutes to get that last kilometre or so, round the roundabout and into stadium road. The biggest delay there was getting stuck behind cars queueing to get into the away car park, but certainly that single experience does seem to suggest that the roundabout is working a fair bit better these days.

OCG... my recollection from 1994 was that the prospect of a CT "reserve" team in the HL wasn't even an issue and that the HL would have said no even if a request had been made. This did concern me at the start because it would have meant that Inverness's historic links with the HL (eg six of the inaugural seven teams in 1893) would have been completely severed. Clach's decision to go it alone, certainly for me and I believe Inverness as well, therefore solved a problem. On a colts team in the HL now, I'm not sure they would be too keen to extend to 19 or 20 teams for fixtures reasons. On the other hand a multiple intake, perhaps to 24, would allow two divisions of 12, with the added bonus of eliminating the kind of mismatches we see too often, since all the weak teams would be in D2. As long as someone with more money than sense then doesn't start throwing sillybucks at a lower light in D2....

You are attempting to convert my relative into your own absolute!

Caleyboy's post above went up while I was typing my last one and this, although stated somewhat less generously, is entirely consistent with my understanding.

The two proposals - to increase the available share capital from £3.9M to £5M and to remove the rights of pre-emption of existing shareholders - were both, totally predictably, carried unanimously. Shareholders were also told that there is no specific buyer "in the frame" for the newly created equity, but the move is being made now rather that wait several months to the AGM so the club could be in a position to move quickly should such person or persons emerge. It was also confirmed that the shares donated to the Highland Hospice have not yet been bought by anyone - which means that slightly more than one third of the club's available equity is currently up for sale. The formal business of the meeting was followed by a question and answer session. Danny MacDonald was introduced to shareholders as the new Chief Operating Officer, as subsequently announced on the club website this morning. The club also wants to have a Colts team in the Highland League and are taking the necessary steps to try to bring this about.

Whereas the Latin for "last season" is "annus horribilis" (as opposed to "anus horribilis" which means a bad dose of piles.)

scottishhighlands.... your response is completely out of order and extremely ill-considered. Manfer actually provided an extremely sensible and practical answer - especially given the circumstances in which the club's information and PR arrangements have found themselves for some time now.

It will probably last longer, now that the Old Firm are no longer visiting.

Of course it was, and it was hence followed up with what was referred to as "fun devil's advocacy", just to see what people's reactions would be... which have been quite interesting

OK... a "fun thread" which probably articulates fantasies that a lot of football fans have indulged in from time to time. So let me lace it further with a bit of "fun devil's advocacy". At a time when inequality and poverty are high profile issues, how would you justify something which, among other things, would cause a small number of football players who are already paid above their realistic market rate to earn even further above that market rate? Rather than take steps which would increase inequality and doing nothing to address poverty, would the money not be better and more morally invested in bettering the lot of the less fortunate in society?

My first thought here is that the numbers which have been stated in recent posts lack substantiation so you do wonder to what extent they may be products of the rumour mill. But, even in the Premiership, numbers like these - if even remotely accurate - would indicate a club which was paying players way above their market value for the situation the club was in.

That nothing has been done to make the Inverness scenario any better makes the persistent gulf all the more disappointing. I'm not sure whether or not the tale is Apocryphal of a member of the public arriving at the front door of the Caledonian Stadium many years ago and being asked by a club official "What the f*** do you want?" In the case of McKay, the termination of his loan at ICT followed immediately by County flashing the cash and buying him simply rubs Inverness noses in it. The last couple of months have been notable for County very conspicuously doing things which Inverness have failed to accomplish. County have always understood the notion of public perception far better than ICT and are now taking the opportunity to drive home their advantage so they are perceived as the dominant football club in the Highlands across a wide spectrum of criteria.

Of course in these days it was still safe to go to Damascus for your holidays and the subsequent trip there would appear to have been the most interesting since the 1st Century AD.

It's my understanding that, if you don't count the Social Club which was sold to Graeme Bennett's pension fund in around ?2010, the club hasn't had a major asset base since the bricks, pitch and mortar of the stadium were handed over (initially?) to the ICT Charitable Trust in around 2001.