Charles Bannerman

Yes. As I said somewhere else, what you get for your £30 (or less in other ticket categories) actually costs around £44 to produce - mainly because of the nonsensical football wages market. Unfortunately there seems to be an assumption in paid football that much of it should be very well remunerated. Why? On what basis? If the play you produce only creates revenue to pay you £450 a week, why should you expect - and indeed get - £800? Many other sports do not have the finances to pay participants at all so don't. As a result many world class performers - who by any measurement are vastly superior performers to footballers, say, in the SPFL Premiership, actually lose money out of what they do. Footballers, on the other hand, often get paid well above even what the privileged economics of their game would otherwise dictate.

Good post Bridge Ender. Something left over? That will become apparent when the accounts appear towards the end of the year. As I recollect, of that plethora of windfalls that came 1-2 years ago, some fell into financial year 14-15 and others into 15-16 which ended on May 31st and will be detailed before the AGM. On the other hand, given that windfalls are neither regular nor foreseeable, you could see some sense in a policy of keeping something back for a rainy day - especially if, as has been correctly remarked, there is now a distinct shortage of assets to sell off. Shareholder dividends? Correct! Not a chance! A "fans' players fund"? What would that involve? I can only infer that it's a fund that fans contribute to in order to increase the player budget. If this is the case, then isn't there something of a paradox between tickets being criticised as too expensive on the one hand and fans voluntarily contributing their cash to this fund on the other. Why not just put ticket prices up? (Rhetorical question in case any of the usual suspects are tempted into yet another rant about the press not having to pay.) Also, is there not something just a bit ironic about the ordinary man in the street voluntarily contributing to a fund and hence taking a hit to their own living standards so that footballers can be paid sums which are - even at Inverness - well above what the vast majority of the population earns? Once again we return to this notion of footballers being paid well above what their ability and market forces would otherwise determine.

Thank goodness for someone who, despite limited available information, understands the fundamentals of ICT finances - that regular income streams fail to fund even basic operation and that the windfalls that HC refers to are required on a regular basis to balance the books. It's also a bit worrying that, with the social club sold to fill the last gap in windfall revenue, it's perhaps not clear how the next one is going to be covered.

Harry, I see what you are trying to say, but what I have been responding to is your reference to "the club's refusal to put money into the team". What I have been saying is that the money has simply not been there to do this. That is indisputable and you cannot "refuse" to put in money you don't have. You, meanwhile, are offering a possible reason for the lack of money relating to contract lengths which is a different issue. While what you say may or may not be the case, it doesn't describe a situation of "refusal" to put money into the team. One important concern here is that we don't know in any detail what factors the board have had to take into account in the process of establishing financial and signing strategies. Even the club accounts aren't required to reveal very much at all and don't, for instance, give a separate figure for the global player wage bill. (On mention of "global"... I see that reports today begin to lift the lid on the magnitude of Ross County's financial backing.) Returning to ICT, yes there is a need for more productive income streams and the one that I hear most frequently mentioned - amid concerns that the Kingsmills Suite is hugely under employed Saturday pre-match - is hospitality. Anyway... I digress. One fairly recurring feature of football seems to be criticism of decisions taken on the basis of very limited knowledge of the real situation and certainly much less than those who made the decisions. In the case in point, financial strategies are being criticised despite virtually no knowledge of the prevailing conditions. Similarly managers' tactics, substitutions, team selections etc come equally under fire despite the critics having no knowledge whatsoever of a whole raft of behind the scenes factors. And then there's the absolute incompetence of any referee compared with any fan in the back row of the stand 80 yards away. But to return to matters financial, I think it's unlikely that Inverness Caledonian Thistle would have done what it has since 1994 on very limited resources if it had been such a victim of financial mismanagement.

I am perfectly aware of that and my point was that Inverness - a very real place - was being misportrayed.

2nd from left, front row - could that be Graham MacKenzie who for years now has been Inverness's Me Angling? He was daft on fishingeven as a kid in Dalneigh.

Ah! Wrong oil tanks!

I have to say that there is indeed a passing resemblance to my early-mid 60s self. The water was sometimes cold but often quite warm. The showers were invariably hot and ran almost constantly!

I think the Ballistic link I was thinking about was actually the 5-1 defeats that season by Morton and Airdrie. I also don't think you can exclude games because of allegedly extenuating circumstances like breakaway goals or end of season. Bad is bad and same division encounters aren't exempt either. If players consciously failed to acknowledge fans who had travelled to a central belt modweek game, and had not ben hostile towards them at full time, then I would be concerned at that.

I've just Googled that one. 1-0 Ayr August 2011. It's the last time Caley Thistle played Ayr. The time before that was in April 2010 when nothing at all was going wrong and it was 7-0 ICT.

No it's not. It's living in cloud cuckoo land. How often does it need to be explained that the money simply isn't there - and if it was, it would indeed be prudently spent on the playing squad? You can't spend money you don't have and if you try to do so, you will soon go the way of Dundee, Motherwell, Rangers, Livingston etc. For the last 16 years the directors of Caley Thistle have - mercifully - been very aware of The Micawber Principle (as stated in Dickens' David Copperfield) and have at least ALMOST been able to put it into practice. "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery." But for the board's long term efforts to live by that principle, Caley Thistle would have long since gone the way it very nearly did in 1999-2000. I just don't understand how some fail to grasp the concept that you just can't go into the player market with closed eyes and open cheque book. You need to live within your means and if you don't you will soon head for the lower leagues or worse. It's a minor miracle that, with the income streams that have been available, Caley Thistle has been able to field a team which has done what it has. To have maintained an almost unbroken SPL/Premiership presence since 2004 on the kind of resources we are talking about is an incredible feat and you just have to laugh at these suggestions that they should just go and spend their way out of any problem. Look at it an alternative way - if you want to be entertained by better players than the club's finances can currently afford, how much more would you be prepared to pay for tickets in order to obtain the improved product? I've already said elsewhere that the cost of running the club under its present, prudent regime is around £44 per bum on seat. Tuesday night the worst result ever? I don't think so. Off the top of my head I could think of a League Cup defeat - at home - by Queens Park, a 5-1 defeat - at home - by Ross County, a 4-0 humiliation - at home - by Forfar at the end of D3 championship season and a complete stinker off the back of the Ballistic night, the details of which I forget. There are doubtless more. Finally... those who have swung from the "Foran is Messiah" euphoria of the Dundee United and Arbroath outcomes and performances to the "Foran is the Devil Incarnate" doom and despair of Partick Thistle and Alloa should either acquire a sense of balance and proportion or a source of lithium!

Looks more like Kingussie or Newtonmore, but it's the kind of complete b*ll*cks you get in films like that. What you have there is a through station whereas Inverness is a terminus.

A conclusion you are presumably able to arrive at as a result of being less naïve than the manager?

Do you not think they are already doing that, and have been for years, with every penny they can safely get?

According to the plaque, this was a proposed redevelopment of Bridge St - presumably one of the proposals from the early 60s. I have to say that it looks slightly better than what eventually went there, but that would be to damn it with faint praise!

When you look at old kit like that you remember how dreadful dentistry was back in the day. Look at the belt driven drill which gnawed away at your teeth VERY slowly!

Looks like the Britannia heading down the Ferry! A bit of Googling suggests that this will be the Queen visiting Inverness in June 1964. I certainly remember getting paraded down from Dalneigh School to the Bught to indulge in an episode of involuntary sycophancy.

The bottom right photo is of the Muirtown chalets, isn't it?

I wonder how many of them were still alive five years later? Alex Main's "Caley All The Way", which has this photo on P33, lists on P34 no fewer than 12 Caley players, committee etc who died in WW1.

That would appear to be the Sea Cadets rather than the Boys' Brigade, although the Life Boys did have similar hats. What's the date? Early 50s maybe judging b the clothes? IBM may be able to date the cars. That would also be consistent with the presence of MacKay's Bookshop which had its own lending library. It became John Menzies and then WH Smiths. The Fifty Shilling Tailors later became John Collier's and there is a BB connection there since Peter MacGregor, Captain of the 1st Company in the early 60s, was the manager of that shop. It has now become The Smelly Shop... you know the one I mean that honks a horrible perfumey pong right along the High Street.

I knew it! I should never have referred even indirectly to the scenario which preceded Inverness football attendances rising sixfold, despite the "But there's loads of boys at my work......" kind of line from the Flat Earthers!

I think this is simply Dougal's latest pathetic attempt to suggest that Inverness people don't support Caley Thistle because they are grossly offended in their tens of thousands at what no more than 250 ever voted against - quarter of a century ago. On the other hand his pronouncements are so ridiculous that you have to think that he's just a long term wind up!

Fans who complain that ticket prices are too high are absolutely right. In terms of how much of their earnings people have to pay for an hour and a half's entertainment, they indeed are. The problem is that the football market is so contrived and artificial that wage costs substantially outstrip what any sensible market should dictate. Look at this back of an envelope calculation for ICT. Operating costs - around £4 million. Attendances - well, without rigorously researching numbers, let's say 19 home games at ballpark average 3700, that's 70,000. Add in home and away cup revenue share equivalent to, say a quite generous 20,000 (very variable) and you get a total of 90,000 paying customers in a season. Your £4 million costs - the biggest component of which is players' wages - divided by your 90,000 bums on seats then comes out at a cost of about £44 per spectator view. That's beginning to make £30 look quite cheap, but of course these costs are subsidised (I thought I would just use that word to see if I can annoy Dougal) by the likes of TV revenues, sponsorship and the commercial activities in which clubs engage to ensure that, against that £44, the likes of £30 is an exceptional maximum and the going rate is a good deal lower.

The concern there, as reflected in 12th Man's observation half a dozen posts ago, is that some club brandings are ultimately subject to that fancy dress pantomime which is the Lord Lyon King Of Arms. I don't know how ICT would fare here but Ayr United and Airdrie have certainly suffered and Ross County's shield looks alarmingly heraldic as well. It's a complete nonsense that public money and legal authority should be afforded to this 400 year old farce which goes back to "In days of old when knights were bold...." I mean to say, in this modern day and age what you can and can't have on your football club badge is still subject to a bunch of old buffers straight out of a comic opera chuntering away with stuff like "per Fess Azure and Or over all a Bar Gules in the Chief a demi-Eagle Sable displayed addextré of the Sun-in-splendour and senestré of a Crescent Argent in the Base seven Towers three and four Gules." This bunch of comedians even have their own Procurator Fiscal to enforce this nonsense! Give me strength!

Season ticket sales is a figure which tends not to be very readily available!