Charles Bannerman

This is just revisiting arguments of 2012, but certain myths perpetuate. It's simply a blatant case of having been allowed to have their cake and eat it. You cannot claim club and corporate are one and the same thing when it suits you and then claim they are different when it doesn't. Rangers went out of business in disgrace whilst millions in debt to a huge range of bodies and individuals. The injustice was the company in question being allowed to dispose of its assets to another body which previously didn't exist so anything and everything it did or created had to be new entities. These assets, if there was any justice in the world, should have been sold off to pay the debts of the dead institution. Selling Ibrox off as bright green ASDA Govan would have been wonderfully ironic! What is totally wrong is the inconsistency that the debts, by way of which a large number of titles were won by the dead institution, were allowed to be cancelled while a club bearing the name of that dead institution was allowed to short circuit the rules for admission into the SFL and, to the detriment of the likes of Spartans and Edinburgh City who were left in the queue, be fast tracked in. They have to make up their minds. Are they a new body which was given preferential treatment by the SFL or are they the old one, in which case they should still be liable for their debts. One thing which hasn't continued to the same extent as before is the triumphalism and hubris - mainly because there really hasn't been much for them to be triumphalistic or hubristic about. Here's hoping tonight keeps things that way and that they remain Rangers as opposed to the more reverential and sycophantic "Rrrrangers". I have never held the view that they were missed - in fact Armageddon was great! - and I certainly won't be there tonight, although I will watch the game in the Social Club.

... of which how much is being used to pay Joey Barton?

I actually didn't feel the need at all for the word to be censored - the problem is that we seem here to have a Politically Correct website which was hence the source of the censorship. When I tried to use the unedited word, it was subsequently posted as "*****". Hence, in order to convey my meaning, I was obliged to adopt the normal bypass procedure of using a small amendment. On the other hand, I've seen worse censorship. Some years ago I referred on an athletics site to an eminent coach by the name of Frank Dick (*) and it actually provided a substitute word... hence referring to "Frank Thingy"! As for the reference in question on here, I was merely describing one species which is even more anti-social than misbehavers at football matches - that bane of civilised society which is the Boy Racer. (*) EDIT - it can be seen from the appearance, unaltered, of the original, that while this site's host appears to have a problem with a standard anatomical term, it finds a colloquial equivalent for same perfectly acceptable.

I really am quite bemused at the constant whining we seem to get from what I would imagine to be our younger supporters but, which failing, certainly the less mature, who appear to believe that there is some extra virtue in going to a football match and making a complete &rse of yourself in the process. On the other hand, if that's what they want to do then I'm quite happy to let them carry on - as long as they don't detract from the enjoyment of others or behave in an anti-social manner or break the law. On the other hand these people should also be tolerant of those who would prefer not to make the said &rse of themselves and who have actually grown up. They should also realise that they will eventually get to, say, approaching 60 and look back with some embarrassment on their previous demeanour....apart from the odd sufferer from Peter Pan Syndrome who will continue to behave in such a fashion even though they are approaching 60. As for the young team, it seems to me that these kids are simply undergoing an anti-social rite of passage and, as time goes by, will steadily morph into acne-ridden little garden gnomes in baseball caps, peering over the dashboards of sandwich boxes on wheels with pen!s-substitute exhausts as they thrash them about the city streets.

It's a pretty sad state of affairs when any reference to Inverness football in the early 90s has to be sniped at as an alleged reference to the m****r. This thread has now drifted away off topic, mainly due to misleading photos which weren't even of Highland League matches being used to imply that Highland League crowds were much greater than they actually were. And that was before the next bright red herring of attendances for Elgin City's all time most famous Scottish cup campaigns in the 1960s. The point I was making was that Highland League attendances spent a number of years dying on their backsides and, in the case of Kingsmills and Telford Street, to appraise that we clearly have to adopt the end point of the early 1990s, by which time things had become pretty thin indeed. I am sure there must be some recognised clinical diagnosis for a fixation with looking back to an earlier phase of your life with an exaggerated fondness and delusionally inflated perception of just how good it was. "Hovis Syndrome" might suitably apply. "Who mentioned profiteers?".... YOU did IHE. Take a look at the penultimate paragraph of the post five above this one! Then we have very interesting views from dougal and dougiedanger respectively about the ethnic integrity and ideological soundness of "real" fans of Inverness football. First we have DD who seems terribly concerned about getting "the right kind of chap" through the gate. Only the ideologically sound. Only the "Inverness minded" perhaps? Then we have Dougal, who for all we know may well be an Albanian or an Eskimo who has never visited Inverness in his (or indeed possibly her) life. Dougal is clearly very concerned about the Aryan credentials of people gaining entry to Inverness football matches. Given that this time round, measuring nose length wouldn't provide an indication of ethnic Invernessian purity, might he instead be proposing placing "real" Invernessians at the turnstiles who would only admit those with "acceptable" vowel sounds...... "righ'een naff". Clearly the xenophobic, parochial tribalism of the old Inverness football remains alive and well.

IHE has now got me wondering if it's really worth arguing out my point myself when he does this much better on my behalf. What's quoted above is further valuable evidence that people turned out in numbers for the novelty of the Scottish Cup - even more so in the 60s than in later decades - in complete contrast with Highland League games which rapidly descended into ghost town status. By the early 90s there was barely even a second man to watch the dog while the first one went for a pee. Highland League crowds were dying on their backsides and this was evident to all but those who, oozing with contrived self-righteousness, choose to retain refuge in the delusional, over-inflated bubble of what they considered to be a golden age of their youth. Profiteers? Which ones would that be? Not at ICT judging by the club's historical accounts and at Ross County it's well known that the money travels in the other direction ie inwardly. I suspect that IHE is talking about the people whose responsibility it is to raise money/ secure charitable donations (aka "investments") so that ticket prices can be subsidised at their present levels through non-football activity.

Progressing, just after KO due to parking problems, right through the Howden End from the front gate to the stand where I was one of several sitting on the ground beside the dugout, gave a pretty good insight into how packed it was. So yes, I actually saw the Howden End in its entirety, and hence probably in more detail than most Howden Enders, which is why my recollection is so clear. I had no ticket (cue the usual carping at that) - I just turned up with....how many more extras with some similar need to get in? But the really big unknown was how many succeeded in "joopeen in", for instance over the unused gate between Howden End and stand. It would be unwise to attribute to HL days at Telford Street the same degree of security,sophistication of stewarding and crowd control as the Premiership-experienced modern TCS. It's also worth remembering that come the cup tie v Rangers just 4 years later, Telford Street was no longer considered adequate to host such a game, although Rangers had also visited in 1984.

Why? Because inside the ground it was so packed that the feeling was that more than the limit may have been allowed in. This was an era when a Scottish Cup tie at home to St Johnstone was still a huge novelty attracting hugely larger crowds than for Higjland League matches. Nowadays a similar factor operates, but with much larger numbers, but the comparison is between the Premiership and the new novelty of a Scottish Cup Final.

The first quoted sentence there is they key truth, but one which the Flat Earthers choose to ignore.... probably because it's far more difficult to perpetuate the myth that former fans stay away in their droves once it's shown that they were never there in droves in the first place. And the second absolutely goes without saying (although I'm glad DD has said it!)

Best of luck with your audition for the next Hovis advert.

The only thing the "above picture", which is on the previous page along with two other instances of similarly disingenuous nonsense, does is to illustrate the fantasy world that some people are still living in. The "above picture" isn't even of a Highland League game. It is actually of the Scottish Cup visit of St Johnstone to Telford Street early in 1992 which of course attracted a capacity crowd, but of the huge crowd, the huge majority were the glory hunters you always get at games like this. Similarly the photo below the post in question, which IHE doesn't discourage us from believing is also a HL match, is actually the 1984 cup encounter with Rangers which again attracted a capacity crowd for the same reasons. (This of course may be one of IHE's wind-ups, but the "RFC" on te visiting team's shirts is jus ta tiny giveaway) Meanwhile, the swarms of fans walking past Howdens are those attending one or other of these one-off cup ties.... not a Highland League match where crowd numbers were dying on their feet by that time. It does strike me that there have always been some from the former Caley side who have stubbornly harboured the delusion that that club was some kind of footballing superpower as opposed to the big fish they were in the little pond of the Highland League. This "Billy Big Time" delusion unfortunately tended to be prevalent among the Caley support and was not always to that club's advantage. Indeed it very nearly cost Inverness the opportunity of Scottish League football.

You will probably also remember what was probably an even worse mudbath right at the beginning of 1996 when Tommy miraculously got the pitch into a playable referee-compatible state within 48 hours of the lifting of the prolonged freeze that previously had Inverness down at -20C. This allowed the Scottish Cup defeat of Livingston which led to the subsequent elimination on the road of "self subbed" Steve Archibald's East Fife ...then Stenhousemuir thanks to a masterpiece goal from Brian Thomson and hence onwards to Rangers at Tannadice.

I often wonder, in an era before Elfin Safety extended its officious influence absolutely everywhere, how many were actually in there that day? February 1992 I think. Certainly the atmosphere was electric and all I could get out of John Beaton in my post-match interview (John was still "co" with Doc at that time) was a constant repetition of "typical Caley tradition"... that was all he could say. And yes, Scotty makes another good point there - we have had two generations of Polworths and Christies over the last three decades or so, with the younger of the former and the elder of the latter still there while Danny has just made a return. And of course Tommy Cumming and Jimmy Falconer just go on for ever......

Another stat I seem to remember is that Dougie Imrie scored for Hamilton after something like 39 sec of one of his earlier returns to Inverness!

DC that's what I've been hoping for too and, with the Dundee game being a 3pm Saturday kick off on a nice day and with the team on a decent run, I had hoped for quite a big crowd. But in the end it turned out to be under 2900 which was a bit disappointing.

I'm genuinely curious about what RiG means about people knowing there's a game on if it's in Aberdeen or Edinburgh but not in Inverness? DD is correct in saying that Inverness had 3-4 clubs for over 100 years, and he is also probably right in saying that the "new" club needs to energise people more. However the comparison between the 100+ years in the Highland League and what has transpired since isn't a completely valid one for two reasons. Firstly, habits have changed in a world which has gone from watching football in a ground being one of a very limited number of leisure activities to it having a huge number of counter attractions, not the least of which is watching football on a TV. Then there's football's economics of the madhouse where players are paid way above their realistic market value which forces ticket prices way up which further contributes to these changes in habit. At ICT you can add a cold, not very accessible stadium (which was still the best site on offer at the time) as a further contributor to the current Perfect Storm scenario. Then secondly there's the fact that, compared with the last days of Thistle and Caley in the Highland League, around five times as many people come to the Caledonian Stadium than collectively attended Kingsmills and Telford Street. Highland League revisionists with rose coloured spectacles will of course tell you that these grounds used to be regularly stowed out but the reality is that, by the early 90s, this most certainly wasn't the case. I would therefore suggest that Inverness is possibly MORE of a football place now than it previously was, certainly during its latter, mundane Highland League days. Look also at Grant Street now, which is lucky to get 200 if that. I think that one component of the "crowds" issue is that, against all these factors such as TV, ticket prices etc etc, the population and economy of the inner Moray Firth simply isn't big enough to sustain comfortably two Premiership clubs and the kind of crowds you would realistically need to make them good going concerns. And I don't actually see a solution to this because there is NO WAY that any combination of forces between ICT and Ross County is ever going to take place. However this also is a problem right across Scottish football. For instance they are mob handed in the Angus area with Forfar, Brechin, Montrose, Arbroath etc. Meanwhile Dundee, even with the Thompson millions on one side, clearly struggles to sustain two Premiership clubs and indeed has barely done so for the last decade. But again, that's not very likely to change as Scottish demographics continueto be unable to support the number of clubs competing for resources - especially when two of them, artificially inflated by West Central Scotland's religious, political and social problems, suck in such a disproportionate slice of these said resources.

According to one of this morning's papers Dundee have been to Inverness eight times and have never won. Maybe they are the new Hibs?

An even more extreme example of this is in the Highland League where players will go to certain over-resourced clubs for sums which totally dwarf their effort and ability levels as well as those at which they are playing, rather than play in the lower National leagues. I'm not sure, though, if enough recognition has been given in earlier posts to the possibility that Ryan Christie might actually have the potential to play a major part at Celtic Park within quite a short timescale. The unfortunate presumption seems to be that the move was some kind of mistake motivated purely by some cynical motive on Celtic's part.

I'm sure a great number of ICT fans would think the same, but this does beg a couple of questions. Firstly, is the manager still looking for (ie have the budget left for) a midfielder? And secondly, if he was/did... I'm never very sure how clubs go about sorting the wages of loan players but in the event of any hypothetical loan deal, what chance would ICT have of being able to pay more than a modest slice of what Ryan is presumably now on at Celtic?

Surely what matters here is the ball. Heading for goal, Draper is in front of the defender and attempting to keep possession of the ball. The defender comes across him from behind and also grabs Draper by the upper arm with his left hand. That has to be an infringement, but whether it was a penalty or a free kick marginally outside the box is a very tight and difficult call. I'm not sure on that one, but I do have to wonder if the referee, right in front of a South Stand full of baying Celtic fans, may have bottled it. And if one green bottle should accidentally fall.... well that's ALWAYS a penalty to Celtic!

Does your mummy know you've been posting your passport photo online?

Well I would if I could because that looks to me like an admirable way of getting these wee neds to shut up!

Johndo - once your audition for Still Game is over, maybe you should bow to the inevitable and come to terms with the fact that you will very soon be 60!

I trust the "94" isn't a reference to your year of birth, since your rather simplistic conception of what constitutes football support would seem to indicate the maturity level of an adolescent far below the age of 22.

You'd better watch out, Row S. These wee neds have Human Rights, don't you know, and taking photos of their anti-social and possibly criminal behaviour may have invaded their right to privacy. Then there's the danger you may face of being locked up and placed on the Sex Offenders' Register for taking photographs of minors.