Charles Bannerman

Legendary stuff! That's the first time I've actually seen that famous altercation between Murd and McGrain - who should have had a straight red in my view. But at Celtic Park? Not a chance! By pure coincidence, in this week's Highland News I will be remembering with affection the great Scottish Cup campaigns of that decade before ICT came into being. Apart from Jags beating Kilmarnock and playing at Celtic Park we had Caley beating Airdrie, Clyde, Stenhousemuir, Stirling Albion, Berwick and playing Rangers, Hearts, St Johnstone and St Mirren. Correct me if I am wrong, but did all that lot not take place between 1984 and 1992? These were great days for Inverness football at a time when Bobby Wilson's Ross County also had some great results.

Scoring four against Liverpool is quite an achievement for a team from a Morayshire village stuck there between Elgin and Forres.

I'm not much into the various "zillions" but we do have the same answer because I get (to five significant figures) 1.2576 x (10 to the 22) or 12576000000000000000000 different permutations. Put in different terms, that's about 1800000000000 times the population of the earth, or alternatively, roughly the number of "air" molecules in an "empty" beer can. But that's only the odds against that particular set of matches. If you want them to come out in a particular order, you have to multiply by a further 16! (factorial 16) which is 2.09 x (10 to the 13) or 20900000000000. That gives 2.63 x (10 to the 35) or 38 million million millon millon times the population of the earth, or quarter of a million times as many molecules as are contained in the earth's entire stock of sea water! Did I ever teach you? And have we gone off topic?

All these Highland League clubs getting in without having to go through the Qualifying Cup is confusing me! In old money the round of 32 (to me the best day in Scottish football) was the third round where the top teams came in for the first time. I don't know what the hell round is what these days but will try to work out something for 32 just for the hell of it when I get home later tonight. The number will be massive!

A really bad shout on my part that day! I decided that Thistle didn't have a snowball's so went to watch a cross country race in Forres instead. I was coming back up Kingsmills road just as the crowd were coming out of the game. I would my window down and asked a Jaggie the score. "3-0" "Oh well, never mind lads. There's always next yea!" "3-0 FOR THISTLE!!"

Round 4? The last 16? The numbers are enormous! I make the probability of any particular eight game draw coming out in any order to be 1 in 43,243,200 - in other words more than three times less likely even than winning the 6 number Lotto. And the chances of that draw coming out in a particular order are 108,864 times less even than that - roughly 40 billion to one! Round of 32 anyone?

I agree. One way of looking at this is if you take the 1/1680 for these four pairings to emerge in any order and then allow for the probability of the order which is 1/4 for the 1st one being 1st, 1/3 for the second coming next of the 3 that are left, then 1/2 for the third one and of course 1 for the last one, that gives a further 1/(2 x 3 x 4) = 1/24. 1/24 x 1/1680 = 1/43320 = 1/8! (factorial 8 which is 8 x 7 x 6...x1) So Rasczak on the one hand and PerfICT and myself on the other have been stating probabilities of two different outcomes - the relevant pairings happening in any order and these pairings coming out in a specific order. The former is 24 (or 4!) times as likely as the latter. It's also interesting to note that 1680 = 8!/4! and also = 14 x 10 x 6 x 2 as stated in my earlier post. In response to CMIB's query about what I used to teach... it was Chemistry but relatively few people seem to know this! I have been taken as a teacher of Maths, History, PE and on one occasion David Currie even introduced me on Saturday Sportscene as an English teacher!

Blimey, what were the chances of that? 1/1680 - the same as any other draw!

The Royal We? Is that something the Queen pays for with funds from the Privy Purse?

Aerosol Day Johndo, Johnboy, Scarlet Pimple and Mantis I just thought that "Aerosol" was a slight mis-spelling

I'm with PerfICT on this one. The probability of ICT drawing Spartans/Berwick is 1/7 so at home that halves to 1/14. If that happens then, with six teams left the probability of DU drawing Celtic is 1/5 which becomes 1/10 at Tannadice. If that also happens then, with four teams left the chances of Falkirk and Hibs are 1/3 which becomes 1/6. Now only with Raith and QoS left they are bound to draw each other - probability = 1 - but that becomes 1/2 for Starks Park. To find the probability of several events you have to multiply the individual probabilities together. 1/14 x 1/10 x 1/6 x 1/2 = 1/1680. The overall general expression for the probability for a draw involving an even number of "n" teams coming out in a particular way will involve something called a product operator which will give you a sequence of terms to be multiplied together. That sequence is (2n-2)(2n-6)(2n-10)...... and so on for n/2 terms. So when n = 8 as here we have (16-2)(16-6)(16-10)(16-14) Which gives us (as above) - 14 x 10 x 6 x 2 = 1680.... or actually 1 over 1680.

You'd better watch. He'll set his QC on you

I concur...was thinking Magic Roundabout might be a fun one to use. Disagree totally because Dougal might think it was in his honour On the OP... the principal business of a professional football club is to perform on the park and the principal purpose of its communications department should relate directly to that. In my view, nonsense about players' beards and so on is totally irrelevant. I do wonder if the OP is a wind up and perhaps the quote from it which epitomises its downright silliness is - Any rubbish is better than no post. On the other hand this was presumably the principal thinking of the orifginal poster when he started the thread.

At last! Someone with a sensible and realistic take on the pitch. It's January, Inverness had been dumped on extensively by rain sleet and snow for days, there had had to be an inspection before the game could go ahead, the groundsman had to work wonders to get the game on at all. And people in earlier posts are moaning and using all manner of extreme adjectives about the pitch! Give me strength! What do they expect? There were two options. Play on the kind of ptich you normally get at the end of January or put the game off on the Saturday morning. Which would folk prefer? Anyone unhappy about the pitch should look at some old videos from the 70s and 80s.

Former Jaggies might dispute that! But do you think this Billy may also come back to Inverness?

Disagree. I saw him in the Union Square Nando's along with Hayes and Rooney setting fire to an ICT scarf. So it was YOU who also saw Butcher, Malpas and Marsela in the Heathmount on their way to Dingwall to accept the County job back in September?

Unlike the Board of Directors, you are obviously fortunate enough to know how a club with a £3 million turnover and a bedrock 3000 fanbase can hold on to such players by outbidding competitors who at least double or triple both these numbers. What do you want to do first? Email the Chairman with this magical secret, or tell your fellow posters on here? Presumably you have decided to email your secret to Kenny Cameron first FJ, hence the delay on here. We are all waiting with bated breath to find out how a club retains potentially high earning players within the scenario described.

Unlike the Board of Directors, you are obviously fortunate enough to know how a club with a £3 million turnover and a bedrock 3000 fanbase can hold on to such players by outbidding competitors who at least double or triple both these numbers. What do you want to do first? Email the Chairman with this magical secret, or tell your fellow posters on here?

I don't suppose anyone has a photo of this individual or better still a video with sound which could be used on Social Media to shame and potentially name him?

I wondered if I should have started this thread in the Olde Inverness section which is going great guns just now, but since it refers to one of ICT's predecessor institutions, I thought I would put it here. Today's Courier has in its "From the Archives" section a feature on the garden business Howdens which has reminded me of the period (apparently from 1961-65) when Howdens was on the corner of Union St and Church St where that coffee shop is now. Since I was pretty young at the time, this is something of which I was only vaguely aware at the time and of which I have now been reminded. However what is relevant about Howdens on here is that I never really realised that the company didn't move to Telford St until 1965. I started going to Caley games in about 1964 so this "new place" called Howdens obviously set up shop next door to Telford St Park quite soon after that. On the other hand, a new plant nursery isn't exactly something which would catch the eye of an 11 year old going to a football match. So the point is that at this stage in the mid 60s the legend of "The Howden End" didn't actually exist and I would suspect that it must have been the late 60s at least before the name caught on. As a result I have discovered today that The Howden End is a rather more recent feature than I actually realised. That will probably be appreciated by the over 60s among ex-Caley fans, but I'm not sure how aware the relative youngsters are that The Howden End had not been a feature since time began and in fact only existed under that name for a relatively small portion of Caley's histort, right at the end. I suppose this also calls into question just how Immortal any Howden Ender could be

I suppose if he's called Willie Short he's unlikely to need the 12 inch variety.

Inverness Cup Final December 1995 at Grant Street. 5-2 I think it was and Daisy was most people's man of the match but that went to Iain Stewart for his hat trick.

Indeed there has. Although there has also been a significant inflation factor since 1994, tickets during the first season were £4, and £2 for concessions. Season tickets were £50 and £25 but this was still significantly more expensive than the £20/£10 for Caley in the Highland League the previous season. Anecdotally, I do recollect that the £4 etc was regarded as quite expensive at the time by a few fans, but not especially strongly so. I do believe that prices went up again fairly soon after that. The average attendance was 1275 for the first, Baltacha season, including a couple of derbies and an initial novelty factor which quite soon evaporated. The second season, still at Telford St, yielded 1579 as the "Pele factor" kicked in. Still in Division 3, the first half of the third season, which included several early Caledonian Stadium gates in the 2300 - 4500 range, averaged 2300. Then the second half of that Championship season gave 2676. To summarise the later years, again anecdotally, I have a memory of attendances typically approaching 2000 in Division 1 and rising to an average of over 4000 in the SPL before the decline of recent years which has taken this down to what will be an average of about 3700 for the season to date. However crowds of around 2000 at ticket prices which, around the turn of the millennium, would have been around £12 - £15 (??) are not going to generate a lot of cash and this would have contributed to the debt of over £2 million which came close to putting ICT into administration before the Trust bailout of 2000-01.

Sneckboy.... it's not far off it. There were even 4931 at Telford St on 23.1.96. and then 5017 at Victoria Park on 12.2.97 followed by 5525 at the Caledonian Stadium on 17.3.97., which remained a Third Division record until Rangers were relegated. I do believe that, in the Premiership/SPL, some derby crowds did rise to over 6000. But of late, yesterday's 4887 and in particular the 3745 in Inverness in October are well below attendances registered at Highland Derbies during ICT's last two seasons in the Third Division.

The Dons sold their entire allocation and contributed over £60,000 to our coffers. Personally, since we were a long way from selling out, I have no difficulty with a few relatively well behaved Aberdeen fans contributing a few more quid I think that must have been the same guy as was sitting just in front of us - older grey haired fellow?. I thought that the vigour of his celebration was potentially provocative within home seating and should have attracted the intervention of stewards. Inevitably, though, away fans will find their way into home areas. I am told that Aberdeen sold out their full allocation of 3052 tickets. With a total crowd of 6614 this means that there were in addition 3562 home fans. This is also significantly up on the norm for a home support which I would guess is typically around 2800. That crowd was the biggest at any game in the North since the 3-1 Friday night derby in October 2012 and significantly larger than for a number of more recent visits of Celtic (thanks to Caley D for looking up the relevant numbers). I would have thought that between a capacity Aberdeen support, a larger than normal home one and what seemed to be pretty busy hospitality, this game would have been a pretty profitable affair for ICT.