Charles Bannerman

Great to see that the usual levels of Peace And Goodwill To All Men are operating in the Dougal household this Yuletide.

Going a bit of topic DD I was once told that there is a spring or well on Glentruim Estate just west of Newtonmore that the Laird claimed was the center of Scotland. Your geography is quite good! Which means that the real Central Belt Old Firm rivalry is between Newtonmore and Kingussie!

Good questions Alex to which answers will presumably be forthcoming into the New Year. I do believe, however, that there is a raft of criteria which clubs have to fulfil before they can go into the playoffs.

I would have thought that Annan and Berwick are much nearer the back of beyond than Brora in that they are far closer to the edge of Scotland. The problem is the so-called "Central Belt" mentality which is a complete misnomer because this is a state of mind prevalent within a circle of radius 40 miles with its centre at the mid point between Edinburgh and Glasgow. That is nowhere near the centre of Scotland but the kailyard attitude which tends to be held down there means that it is regarded as such. The reasons are probably historical since the Highlands and the Borders have for centuries been regarded as beyond the pale by too many Lowland Scots. So Brora have as much right as anyone to be in League Two next season should they win the Highland League (virtually certain) and the playoffs (pretty good chance if they actually played in them). However all the signs are that there is little or no appetite within the club for national league football.

Alex... making conditioning training of a higher intensity doesn't necessarily make it more effective. For instance you won't build much aerobic endurance by running sprints all of the time. Also, high intensity conditioning sessions often actually take longer since recovery times within the session are much longer. For example you could do a relatively low intensity session of 400m runs with a 200m jog between efforts in less than 20 minutes. On the other hand doing a series of 60 or 80m sprints for speed/speed endurance would take longer because you would need to take much longer recoveries between your runs for the session to be effective. Similarly, lifting weights at around maximum loading needs long recoveries. The other consideration is that there are so many different boxes that need to be ticked for a team ball sport. In the case of "fitness" you need to pay attention to speed, strength, endurance and various combinations of these three as well as to the likes of mobility. Then you also need time to cover personal technical ball skills as well as whole-team manoeuvres such as what are called "training ground moves". If players are doing just 2-3 evening training sessions in addition to games, I just can't see how that could be nearly as effective as daily and sometimes twice daily sessions.

Are you just using "wee wave" as a tactful euphemism? The hand gesture I saw and which you can just catch on the You Tube clip might just have a rather more profound message than that, referring to a certain preferred means of sexual gratification. That was from the smaller of the two who also tried to pull the keeper's shorts down. It will be disappointing if he is not charged with assault. There is a standard expression used in the teaching profession to describe guys like that.... "wee sh*tes" I did find it quite astonishing that the stewards were neither able to prevent the incident nor apprehend one of the two culprits. Maybe the stewards were too busy listening out for what they imagine to be racially motivated comments from home supporters - for which I understand there is already a precedent this season.

Don, maybe I'm just lucky enough to have had 30 odd years of coaching international athletes, but conditioning and preparation training programmed round competitive priorities is important in anybody's book. I certainly don't envy team sport coaches for the constraints they have to work under by nature of the competitive programme because it's a big juggling match at the best of times. I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility of looking at this in a Highland News Sportsview column at some point, although at the moment I am engaged with why, despite teams doing well and clubs bending over backwards to encourage fans through the turnstiles, people are instead sitting on their couches at home, drinkng beer and watching foreign football.

I am hearing from a man selling ICT merchandise in the Eastgate Centre that both Santa and his Elf were very well suited to their roles

Agreed - and also a difficult aspect to manage within the context of the year of a footballer or indeed many other team sport players. The problem is that football has no obvious "peak" and players need effectively to be at a high level of performance for the entire season. Apart from a few weeks' pre-season, this leaves little scope to have periods of the year where players can focus on strength or top up endurance which must be a nightmare from a coaching point of view. Coming from an athletics background where you can identify a relatively small number of targeted peaks, I don't envy the dilemma of football coaches. For instance, when there is a game every weekend (and sometimes midweek) of the season which is no less important than most others, how do you programme in your SandC? At one end of the week you need some recovery from the previous match and at the other you don't want to let it run too close to the next one. The same goes for topping up aspects of running related fitness although games do contribute here, and all of this is on top of the time needed to work on teachical and team aspects of the game. On the other hand there is the option of "double sessions" which are a perfectly viable consideration for full time professionals with no constraints of a day job to manipulate training requirements round.

As long as they don't appoint Dutch legend Ruud Boogers as their Head of Public Relations they should be OK.

To a large extent I think this angle, highlighting the cup, is slightly old news since the Scottish Cup seems to have been a lost cause for a few years now. The current issue in Scotland is the now declining SPFL where I see the present retreat simply as an extension of what started some time ago in the cup. Quite simply the Scottish Cup hasn't been "sexy" for some time now and that malaise seems to be spreading to the league. It all makes the SPL's vanity project of 10,000 all seater stadia look even more ridiculous than it did at the time,

You mean that Spotty could be Scotty's adolescent lovechild?

Spotty... you are not by any chance Scotty's adolescent love child, are you? Seriously, though, I do think that there is a good point there. Globalisation may well be drawing more Scottish football followers into the European fold. Anecdotally, I think I saw progressively fewer Rangers and Celtic strips etc in evidence during my latter years in teaching and it may well be that Man U, Chelsea etc became a bit more evident - along with ICT I would have to say.

Charles, on checking that my link 'worked', I've noticed an error in my figures. (my 2013/14 figures are only for the pre-split fixtures). I'll resolve it tomorrow! I wouldn't imagine the difference would be huge for 2-3 home games out of 18-20 concentrated across other top 6 or other bottom 6 opponents - although in the case of, for instance, ICT and County, visits or otherwise of Celtic, Aberdeen or each other might tweak it a bit.

Cheers Sneckboy.

Sneckboy, I'd be interested if you could point me in the direction of your source of these figures - not because I'm on a Wikipedia "citation needed" campaign but because this is an issue I'm currently looking at. Also, given that season 2014-15 is still incomplete, is there any danger of these figures being distorted by some clubs having had more crowdpulling visitors than others. I did see what you said about St. J. (PS - I would have asked Dougal, but finding him among 6000 Caley Refuseniks in a blue phonebox on Telford Street might just be a bit tricky )

Yes, probably at least 4000 of the 400 who used on average latterly to go to Telford Street.

As they say on Wikipedia - "Citation needed". I am not in any way suggesting that this is not the case but would be interested to see the evidence which verifies this as a "fact" - along with the definition of "supporter" on which the figure is based. For instance if you were telling us that you have seen the list of Ross County season ticket holders and "700+" (another slight ambiguity) have IV1, 2 or 3 postcodes then that would be one form of confirmation.

NJ.... even before the major questions of traffic and parking chaos in addition to highly likely resident opposition at the Bught are considered, are you not presuming rather that Highland Council would be prepared to part with a large chunk of Inverness's prime recreational area for exclusive use by a private company which is already trading on land leased from the Highland Council? I would be very surprised if HC, and especially Councillors who remember the extent of Council previous support for ICT's insistence on going to East Longman, would be prepared to part for this purpose with a substantial green area which is currently open to the entire community. I would also be interested to know where precisely you would locate the 9.03 acres (the area of the current East Longman site) within the perimter of the Bught (remembering that the Bught Stadium is already within it) and how you would lay out and finance the necessary infrastructure for access and egress? Even Inverness City's current small allocation, to which there must be full public access when they are not playing, was contentious enough within the Council so I find it difficult to see this proposal coming to be - even if the money was available to make it reality.

Are you possibly thinking about the 1993 study by Bruce Hare of Percy Johnston-Marshall and Partners which cost £5000 and was paid for by INE (Inverness and Nairn Enterprise)? Of 11 sites initially looked at in that study, seven were fundamentally unsuitable for various reasons, leaving a short list of four. Of these, Inshes was rejected because the land was too expensive and opposition from local residents was highly likely. West Seafield was rejected because of police reservations, cost of infrastructure and poor pedestrian access. That left East Longman and Stratton Farm. The latter appeared to shoot up in the estimation of Bruce Hare between his provisional and final reports. The conspiracy theory was that INE wanted Stratton Farm so they could use this as a springboard with which to launch the Golden Mile development. Stratton seemed to win the battle in the spring of 1994 but by mid summer, after a long debate between the club, which wanted East Longman, and INE, which wanted Stratton Farm, East Longman duly got the nod, the land was leased from the Common Good Fund and planning permission was sought. The rest is history.

Ballpark and off the top of my head... it went up from a few hundred to well over a thousand in D3 at Telford St. There were 4950 at Telford St. for a Highland Derby in 1996. The initial rush at the Caledonian Stadium (still D3) gave several crowds in the 2000 - 5000 (derbies) range. Progress through D2 and D1 in the late 90s/ early 00s typically yielded 1800 - just over 2000. In the SPL/ Premiership era, to my recollection the current numbers of just over 3000 bread and butter, around 6000 for Celtic and especially 3745 for a Highland derby are unprecedentedly low and have declined over the last 3 years or so. HOWEVER it must also be observed that this is in parallel with the rest of the Premiership so very probably there are significant factors outwith ICT itself in operation here. Football does indeed seem to be in decline as a spectator sport in Scotland. Another thread on pricing gave statistics about overall attendance levels in various countries' top leagues. However any figure for Scotland is seriously skewed and inflated by the fact that, although also considerably down, Celtic's numbers shove the average considerably up in a situation where the other clubs have very low figures indeed. In the face of what is on offer on TV from south of the border and elsewhere and other competing activities these days, sitting in a stadium watching a Scottish football match - especially if that costs over £20 - seems no longer to be a flavour of the month activity. I am not criticising the "over £20" because clubs are caught between a rock and a hard place in terms of balancing their books. I think this is merely a symptom of an increasing unsustainability of the current model of football economics - in Scotland at any rate. I also think that there is a school of thought in some places within football that the public owes it a living and it is a "given" that sufficient people should attend in order to sustain the game's current economic practices and wage structure.

You could almost be talking about the Highland League there!

I'm not going to rise to the bait there but I don't think shinty has ever attempted to hold the public limelight to the extent that football does - albeit with much more difficulty these days. However you will find extensive areas of the country such as Lochaber, Argyll and Badenoch where shinty is the mainstream activity and football is marginalised and indeed sometimes frowned upon. Note that none of these three areas is reputed for its excellence in football. The shinty league reconstruction is actually a more complex issue than suggested, but not appropriate for detailed discussion here. The Queens Park does not even have a large enough infield for football, never mind shinty. As for cricket and the Meeting Park, in my Highland News column I have repeatedly called for Inverness's two cricket teams to groundshare at Fraser Park so the major facility of the Meeting Park can be used more efficiently for something else - possibly Inverness City. Or maybe they could put American Football to the Meeting Park and hold cricket matches during the time-outs However I have never seen the Bught as an appropriate area fo a Premiership football ground. For a start the traffic flow is just about as bad there as it is at East Longman. Finally, I have for some time been right with PumpFake on the UHI suggestion. It would take more than a year, but a PhD thesis on habits, practices and attitudes with respect to attendance at football matches seems like a very good idea. I have to say that the possibility of doing this myself as a mature student did briefly wander through my head a few years ago but I have too much else on!

Not many additional dots and crosses to be made there since in my view Scotty's appraisal is pretty well bang on. Anyone who wants a detailed account of why the club went to East Longman can find it on this site where "Against All Odds" is published online and it's mainly Chapter 8 - "Finding A Home". The only option which ran East Longman close was Stratton Farm and after the mother of all debates between the club and INE, East Longman it was. Back in 1996 I read Bruce Hare's study of possible stadium sites in entirety and my main conclusion was that Inverness didn't have much to offer. In the case of the stadium itself, the £1.3 million road demanded by the planners forced wholesale economies and hence substantial compromises on the building itself. The original East Longman scheme also included training facilities on site (there's an illustration in the book) but this had to be abandoned. I think the football side has actually suffered quite a lot by having to trek daily out to Fort George. Traffic considerations.;... I think this is a major one and has become a lot worse in recent years. The Kessock Bridge roundabout has become a disaster and I do believe that traffic issues are now keeping a number of people away, but this is just one of several factors, some related and others not related to the club, which are conspiring against attendances. It should also be said that you can compare like with like over the last decade and numbers coming to watch SPL/Premiership football (ie effectively the same product) have steadily declined. Finally, just in case Dougal is queueing in the wings to make his predictable contribution.... we all, of course ,completely accept that, of the six hundred who used to attend Kingsmills/Telford Street pre merger, six thousand refuse to come to the TCS

Remember the terminal decline predicted for ICT in 2004 when it was first feared that David Bingham would be leaving?