Charles Bannerman

Thank you gents! I've got you now. What threw me was Eastgate and the Crown in the background. I thought that part of the photo was of further out Millburn Rd which messed up my angles and projected me to nearer Falcon Square. The photo seems to have been taken with the corner of the former Pet Shop at the photographer's left elbow, with the by then burned down Playhouse just behind him.

I'm just not getting this one at all. Where the woman is walking I think I'm seeing "Mitchells" (ironmonger's) or Mitchell and Craig which I think were indeed in Hamilton St. However it seems very wide for Hamilton St and I'm not sure how you could see a car park (Eastgate?) from Hamilton St. Are these buildings mid-right the beginnings of Millburn Rd? I'm just not getting a perspective here and can't see it as Hamilton St looking back towards Academy St either.

And give elginloon his due - when he says: "Whats so special about inverness that makes you slag off the town of elgin i think its the fans you hate more than the actual town unless the town run you out the place but doubt that on saturday with the supposed amount of police that are meant to be there" he's at least not one of these people claiming that the place is a city.

I thought Anier had been employed as a player, but elginloon seems to be suggesting that he may be the new head of the Singing Section Can anyone give us official confirmation of Mr Anier's status at the Caledonian Stadium?

Yeh dammit! Why does this site cancel the "Edit" facility after a relatively short time? This morning I spotted last night's syntactic aberration and tried to change it from "Being an Elgin supporter...." to "Since he is an Elgin supporter...." but the thing wouldn't let me.

Yup, all the cup clichés are beginning to appear from the woodwork..... clichés which used to emerge when Thistle or Caley were drawn against one of the country's bigger sides but different days now.

Being an Elgin City supporter, I am sure that "elginloon" is a modest chap..... with much to be modest about! To maintain the Churchillian theme, as a football club, Elgin City is very much "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma". For years, conventional wisdom suggested that if any Highland League club ever got into the SFL it could be Elgin - although a fair bit of that was predicated on the claim that (at the time) they had a "nice stand". But then, when the opportunity came along in their Centenary Year of 1993, they completely blew it on being stripped of the Highland League title after the John Teasdale/ suspension rigging/ betting on the outcome saga. Eventually they did get in, though, and I for one hoped that they would progress at least some of the way that Caley Thistle and Ross County by then already had and we may even have got a three way North rivalry. Now it might have turned out better if the Porn Magnate had after all managed to take control of the club, but the unfortunate reality was that, despite some well-respected managers, Elgin remained lodged in the bottom league.... and worryingly often at the bottom of that. One of the factors which always seemed to be holding them back was that the club so often came over as not at all at one with itself. Internal strife always seemed to be hovering in the background and from time to time - such as with the Rangers Ticketgate affair - tended to burst into the foreground. This season may indeed promise to break the norm of serial failure the club has experienced since it entered the SFL if they can reach the League Two playoffs for the second time in something like 17 years. Eliminating recent Scottish Cup winners from this season's tournament would therefore be an unprecedented achievement for a club which has considerable experience of the unprecedented. Because, apart from being the first North club to reach the last 8 of the Scottish Cup (1968), they are also the only club to have been stripped of the Highland League title and also, in an earlier era, the only Highland League club to have scored "nul points" come the end of a season!

So that will be 1300 tickets for ICT and the remaining 13,000 for the home support?

And every single one of them, plus their sons and grandsons, all still boycotting the TCS in gross indignation at subsequent events!

I remember going through a similar exercise in about the March of the season back in D1 (2010) and coming to the conclusion that the turnaround required was just too big. I was, of course, very wrong in advance an incredible run and Dundee bottling it.

Oh well! Should be relatively jolly in the Social Club tonight!

12th man, you were perhaps being a bit too selective when you chose only to quote the words "Yogi with a team that reached Europe and won the Scottish Cup, was a result of the quality of the players he recruited " whereas if you had instead chosen to extend your quote to the entire sentence "It has become increasingly apparent that much of the success of the Butcher era, which had enough momentum to provide Yogi with a team that reached Europe and won the Scottish Cup, was a result of the quality of the players he recruited" a different interpretation may have emerged. Now I do agree that there would have been no scope at all for ambiguity at all if I had said "the players which Butcher recruited" or "the players which he (Butcher) recruited" . In hindsight that would have been a better way of putting it since the last named person before the "he" is indeed "Yogi" rather than "Butcher". But, given that "Yogi" is in a separate clause interpolated into the statement linking "Butcher" and "he", and that the full sentence doesn't seem as ambiguous as the part of it you selected.... I maybe just got away with it! So to avoid any ambiguity - in my view, much of the success at ICT of John Hughes, whose own signings were less than impressive, originated from players recruited by Terry Butcher.

Another very good post Captain and I'll highlight just the quoted passage. It has become increasingly apparent that much of the success of the Butcher era, which had enough momentum to provide Yogi with a team that reached Europe and won the Scottish Cup, was a result of the quality of the players he recruited - despite the constraints of a budget which was as generous as the Board could afford but was still pretty small by Premiership standards. The anomalous figure here is Steve Marsela who appeared to be given the credit for much of the recruitment but who, notwithstanding, had the reputation of being quite a destabilising and disruptive influence within the club. I know that a number of fans thought he was wonderful, but speak to better informed sources and you would be given a radically different picture. I am sure Butcher's contacts must have been very influential here, but we also have this seemingly hugely influential role played by an extremely controversial figure. It's a strange one.

12th Man... I've taken that into account but what we are talking about here is finance to help stave off relegation within the next four or five months. The Tulloch offer to donate the three stands to the club is still no more than an offer. All we know about so far is a single, exploratory meeting between the parties. So, unless actual events are way ahead of the public record, any agreement to transfer, IF there's going to be an agreement, never mind physical transfer and discontinuation of the rent, would appear to be some way away yet. The reason for my capital IF is simply a brief, throw away remark at the AGM (I think from Kenny) which seemed to hint that the accountants may be suggesting that the move may not be as unqualified a benefit as it seems. There is, however, the potential at some point in the future for a transfer to secure annual cost savings possibly in the ballpark of £100,000, or more than 2% of turnover. Regarding the possible "collateral" road you mention, these stands may actually be what you meant by "the ground". So I think we should clarify that this offer appears only to be of the bricks and mortar of the North, South and Main Stands. The market value of these structures in terms of collateral against any borrowing is quite unclear, but some time ago David Sutherland was quoted as suggesting that the market value of the fabric of a football stadium was unlikely to be very great. However the big question here is how prudent it would be to go back down the road of building up a debt which, 17 years ago, nearly closed the club down. What the Tulloch offer conspicuously DOESN'T mention is the land. That belongs to the Common Good Fund who have leased it out until 2093. I am not at all clear as to who actually holds that lease. Conventional wisdom originally suggested it was the ICT Charitable Trust. However that theory needs a second visit, now that it emerges that the Main Stand is also Tullochs' to give away and not the property of the Trust, which appeared to acquire it around 2001 as part of the deal which absolved the club of that earlier debt.

The next logical question in what could be a very long, drawn out exchange would appear to be "And where is that suddenly going to come from?" But to cut a long exchange short, I would imagine you would propose some means of deriving more cash from tickets, merchandise and the centenary club and also wealthy individuals gifting the club money in order to subsidise what are otherwise fundamentally loss making activities. In the first category, I am in little doubt that the Board has already been doing all within its power to maximise these and other sources of earned income. I'm just not sure where the magic wand is going to come from suddenly to create hike in this. The market has probably already been drawn upon to the maximum extent possible. And we've visited the latter case already. The expectation that wealthy individuals will or should subsidise football activities from their own funds simply is not a reasonable one and would not happen in any other line of business. But still, this does happen in football, although such arrangements are positively Faustian. Principally they only last for as long as the benefactor is prepared to keep throwing money at the situation and when that dries up, the consequences are devastating. I need only mention Gretna, Rangers and Nairn County for starters. But yet, to date, Caley Thistle's fundamentally loss making status over the years has indeed been alleviated at some points in this way. These include interventions by Ian Fraser, Tullochs and also the six figure sum donated more recently by the Muirfield Mills group. One other solvency measure has been the sale of the Social Club. However you always get back to the situation the club is again at. The overwhelming reason, as is the case across the game, is that the player market is so crazily inflated (a process encouraged by large donations) that wages are hugely out of proportion with their recipients' true market value. That is the absolutely fundamental anomaly of professional football.... the elephant in the dressing room. So what do you do? Cut the wage bill to balance the books? The system then responds by leaving you only with players who will ensure a fall down the leagues and further reductions in earnings. Cut ticket prices to get more people into your ground? The system then responds with an insufficiently elastic demand which at best means no increase in ticket revenues but more likely a decrease, so again you are worse off. It's a bit like the Battle of the Atlantic during WW2. There's a big area in the middle which your defence forces can't reach rom either side and ICT, despite the Board's best endeavours, is looking right into it at the moment.

Using what?

Thank you Kingsmills. I felt entitled/obliged to respond once and briefly to Dougal's initial red herring but would really much prefer to examine the role and performance of the ICT Board, not only at the moment but on an ongoing basis across several years. Just as I warmly endorsed an earlier post from PerfICT, I would similarly want to commend the recent injection of realism from iamthecaptain1.

Delighted you were annoyed Dougal, and that you rise to the bait as beautifully as the most rabid of Rangers fans do when it's their turn!

Some years ago on this forum we used to talk about "the nail - hammer interface". PerfICT's post above rediscovers that absolutely admirably!

I don't think that even the most ardent conspiracy theorist could put that down to the ICT Board which was the creation rather than the creator of the scenario in question.

I would suggest once (1999).... arguably twice (2008). I am pleased to see an element of sanity appearing in this thread through reminders of how marginal an event the survival up here of a football club in the top league, standing on its own two feet, actually is. I do realise that it's a bit late to be evoking Festive analogies, but Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" appeals. "The Ghosts Of Seasons Past" - epitomised perhaps by the Distillery End enclosure and the Kingsmills Pie Shed - could be usefully remembered by those who can and asked about by those who can't. "The Ghost Of Seasons Future" will always be shrouded in a veil of uncertainty until the very last moment.

The first quoted passage pretty well summarises the case for what ICT has done, both for itself and for Inverness as well. As such, this also largely represents any case FOR any suggestion that whether or not Inverness "deserves" the club IS a relevant consideration. There's no doubt that ICT has played a major role in highlighting this city and that's before you take into account questions of direct economic impact, including the road opening up the Harbour. In the second passage, is there perhaps a hint here of the proposition that football should be exempt from the usual laws of economics, marketing, supply and demand? The club is there, it's difficult to conceive of anyone who doesn't know that, its many achievements and its ongoing life are well publicly documented. This has resulted, over the last dozen years, in crowds which started at an average ballpark of 4000 but which are now descending towards 3000. That clearly demonstrates the current demand for the product on the basis of how it is marketed and the huge number of factors which will determine whether people feel it is worth the time and expense to attend. I do think that one significant factor is that our quite sparsely populated and remote area may be finding it difficult to sustain two Premiership clubs in the longer term. I don't quite buy into the scenario that Ross County are doing better than ICT by drawing similar crowds from a less well populated area. (They may or may not be marketing their product better but that's a different issue.) I think Inverness is a big factor here in what are two largely overlapping catchment areas. To a lot of people who live in Inverness, including some Invernessians (if you see the distinction) there's not the same partisan divide as many perceive. I therefore look on this as two rival clubs competing for what is significantly a common market - which isn't big enough to sustain them both. However Ross County are to some extent insulated from some of the economic realities by a benefactor, although that statement shouldn't evoke any outbursts of self-righteousness from ICT fans. After all, ICT was more or less bust in 1999 and six years later was playing SPL football in an SPL compliant stadium, largely thanks to various interventions from Tulloch. For me the emerging picture, in a market place where TV and other factors are a significant deterrent to attendance, is that the Inner Moray Firth is struggling to sustain two Premiership clubs in the longer term. Unfortunately, the first historical analogy which comes to mind is that of the USA winning the Cold War because its much greater spending power helped it to strangle the Soviet Union.

Mantis... to indulge in a bit of devil's advocacy, there are also many people in the town - possibly the majority - who don't really care very much if Inverness has the club or not because they support other ones or basically aren't interested in football. It could be argued that the absolute case for having a club is no stronger than the sum total of the desire for that outcome. If attendances compared with the latter HL days are anything to go by, it could also be argued that the town appreciates what it now has a lot more than it did before. There is, of course, a pretty strong counter-argument to all of that in the national and international exposure that Caley Thistle has given Inverness as a community, but on the other hand I'm sure that wasn't all that high on the agenda of those who founded the club and who overwhelmingly did that for football purposes. ICT many would say - and other clubs as well - live or die on the size of the market for what it provides.

I'm not the one calling for "investment", by which I think you probably mean what this term normally seems to mean in football - people with money donating large amounts of it to football clubs in order to subsidise their loss making activities, principally due to paying players sums way above their realistic market value. At some grounds you really do need to think hard about how much of the ticket price is in effect subsidised in this way.

Very rational response. As I write, I am listening to Off The Ball where Stuart Cosgrove, with the insight of a fan of another sparsely resourced provincial club, is making equally rational observations on the ICT situation. This is too complex an issue to examine with less than 6 hours of the year remaining, but the ease with which some fans part company with reality can be quite alarming.