Charles Bannerman

Aye... on the way there maybe!!

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And at Ross County their average attendance of 4300 is 86% of the population of Dingwall. So I don't think relation of crowd sizes to the population of the host community is particularly accurate or revealing. Similarly Rangers' and Celtic's combined gate is knocking on towards 15% of the population of the city, although much of their support comes from far beyond - including Ireland. However I would agree that a club based in a city the size of Inverness should be getting bigger attendances. The reasons for this under achievement are probably many - some of them relating to Scottish football as a whole while others are more locally focused. However the big one for me is the one which affects all non-Old Firm clubs in Scotland and that is that a league with a population base of just 5.3 million has two clubs which - for religious, political and (I use the next word fairly loosely!!) cultural reasons - have supports and suck in resources which far outweigh their actual significance as football teams. That is the fundamental problem with Scottish football in an era when the amount of money you can get into the coffers is so much more important than in previous days. Rangers and Celtic suck in so much of Scottish football's wealth that, in the modern era, there is little scope left for other teams to do very much. Like it or not, one of the main factors determining the nature of Scottish football is Irish religion and politics. And in terms of the Old Firm factor, Inverness is no different with its busloads of locals heading off to Ibrox and Parkhead on a Saturday and many more who still support these teams from afar so are lost to their local club. There are, of course, other factors - including simply "something" about Inverness which I have never understood or even had a decent handle on despite being born and bred.

I know the plural of stadium is not "stadiums" but I couldn't be bothered to change it. Before the "correct" brigade sort me out. It would have been quicker to sort it out than post again explaining why you couldn't be bothered! Lizi, you are actually right. Stadiums is the preferred plurar throughout most of the english speaking world. Stadia is derived from latin and seldom used to mean plural of stadium according to http://grammarist.com/usage/stadiums-stadia/ Dd, it would have been quicker to do a bit of research before laughing. So in India, which has a population of over a billion, they use "stadia". Meanwhile the Yanks, who have notoriously bastardised the English language since before the Boston Tea Party - keeping, as they do, their "pants" up with "suspenders" whilst making their way along the "sidewalk" in search of a "street car" - use "stadiums". I think I'll stick with good old standard English and stuff whatever "criterions" our transatlantic Johnny Come Lately cousins adopt.

To quote George Bernard Shaw - "The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity." The problem is that they do have a game which is potentially interesting and exciting (ie in its Twenty20 or other limited over format) but they seem to prefer to adopt this five day borefest which as often as not ends in a draw, not because the teams are remotely similar in standard but because they just haven't got the thing finished!

Laurence... in a word, most (but definitely not all) cricket is tediously BORING. Test matches last for nearly a week with breaks for their lunch and their tea every day and then - even if it doesn't p!ss down with rain (*) sending them all scampering for cover - the game as often as not ends as a DRAW. What that actually means is that even the best part of a week wasn't enough for them to finish it. Basically, test cricket is nine people watching ten people watching three people doing very little for hours and days on end. Now that's not really much of a test. Even in club cricket, when Highland scored 224 and disposed of Northern Counties for a pitiful 19 in Inverness the other week, it still took Highland almost 20 overs to bowl NC out. That means that of the 118 balls, in about 100, nothing whatsoever happened.... apart from that slow handclapping they do when nothing happens (which is usually)! Now this Twenty20 is a very different matter and a whole lot more like fun! That is REAL entertainment and rapid, quickfire action with full on aggression. Bring it on! So cricket really is a potentially very good game but woefully mismanaged by the people that run it. (*) a few years ago did England not make almost as much fuss about winning the ashes as they did about 1966 when the reality was that they only won because is started to pee down so instead of coming back to finish the game on a nicer day, they just called it a draw?

If I had known that IHE was possessed of such revisionist talents, I probably wouldn't have bothered writing a word back in 1997 in anticipation of this entertaining epic. But on the other hand one suspects that without his copy of Against All Odds, IHE might just be lacking a template on which to base this revisionist peroration! I wonder if he will manage to progress his tale as far as the opening of the Caledonian Stadium and winning the Third Division title before the "real" football starts again on August 3rd?

http://movieclips.com/a8Vq-a-fish-called-wanda-movie-dont-call-me-stupid/

I'm getting really bored wth this thread!

Would you not get a bit brassed off at ICT constantly finishing bottom of the Third Division and, from 2015, liable even to be kicked out of there by the upwardly mobile Highland League champions?

Spot on Donald! Not for the first time I have to say that I am completely bemused at the range of sanctions which are possible against football clubs and fans for "offences" in this neck of the woods while the Orange Order - an organisation which was founded and exists for the purpose of being anti-Catholic - can strut its bigoted stuff around streets of Scotland more or less as it likes. Here we seem to have UEFA following in the footsteps of the Scottish Executive and focusing its attention on the wrong people.

Pay to get in? To Telford Street? Yerjokeenmun!! (As we say in Inverness, but - possibly not being from these immediate parts yourself Doogie - that's an expression you may not recognise.) When we used to go to watch Davie Reid, Bobby Glennie, Sammy Ross, Jimmy Smith and co. of a Saturday afternoon we used to avoid forking out the 9d by "joopeen in" over the gate at the left hand corner of the Howden End before collecting the empty MacKintosh's lemonade bottles from around the ground and cashing them in at the club shop beside the twin plaster footballs for 3d each. So once the Pennny Dainties and Smiths Crisps had been bought, there was usually enough left to fund a visit to the front stall of the La Scala the following Saturday when Caley were away. (Not enough to pay for the flea powder as well though )

You mean you think he's a County sew and sow! That will be my option B then!

Ha ha!!! Don't know where I got that won from

You know, I've just been reflecting for the last little while on where this thread is going.... or rather isn't. Once again we have a member of the blue phonebox brigade with much of Torvean Quarry on his shoulder posting his usual complete drivel and succeeding in promoting dissent which really isn't there. As a fairly keen but not fanatical Caley supporter from the mid 60s, I have been happy enough to move into the ICT age with fond memories of a lot that was very good taking place at Telford Street on the part of one of the top clubs in the Highland League. I am usually quite happy to accept that without being over analytical about it. As an Invernessian I also take much satisfaction from what Thistle did and what Clach continue to do. Rather than dissect this to death, I'd prefer simply to look back with a lot of satisfaction on these great past days. But then, instead of celebrating all of that, and the more recent achievement of ICT getting to within 90 minutes of Europe, you find yourself instead almost talking down the old days in defence against Dougal's latest irrantional rant and 20 year old hissy fit of pique. I might ask - why do we keep rising to this rubbish? And I have to admit that I am as bad as anyone for doing so. It's just that I can't bear to see blatant drivel talked without shooting it down. But every time someone shoots holes in Dougal's latest wafer thin gallon can of p!sh, they are actually supplying him with attention which far outweighs any fundamental support for what he (or she) is ranting on about. Once again I have to say... is Dougal REALLY a member of the blue phonebox brigade? Or is he actually:- A - An 80 year old staunchly pro-merger retired social psychologist indulging in some later life research OR B - A secret agent in the pay of a rival SPL club with a mission to attempt to sew discontent among ICT fans OR C - does he just need to get out a bit more? Maybe someone should start a poll. And maybe we should make a pact not to rise to Dougal's nonsense.

Mantis, that actually occurred to me too when I looked in the book for the quote in question. When I wrote that back in 1996-97, my perception was that the 1980s, arguably their best period ever, was a time for Caley which was a cut above a background of otherwise fairly consistent success, It was only a couple of years ago when I started researching the preliminary online chapter for the book which went on this site that I began to realise that there were actually more gaps in Caley's past record than I had previously appreciated - such as in the 50s and 70s. Rest assured if the book were ever to be reprinted, that could well become "the standards to which the Caley support had become accustomed during the 80s" (But you will have read that already since the carrier pigeon I sent to the Hebrides will probably have got to you before this electronic version does )

Not entirely true......I'm on holiday so doing this from memory (my memory not being what it was but I still have a few years on ol' Central Belter). Caley won the Q-Cup in 1991-2 and went on to have a superb Scottish Cup run, ending in a Round 4 replay at the end of February at McDiarmid Park. I stand moderately corrected. At the original time of writing I didn't have a copy of "Against All Odds" beside me which I now do so I can quote what it does actually say on P4. "Indeed all Caley got in theri last six years after the 1988 League title were the Inverness Cup, the North Cup and the Qualifying Cup once each - thin pickings by their normal standards." And don't give me this holiday crap... you're permanently on holiday (a state in which I will soon be joining you.)

Yes indeed they did, but statistics like this do seem to stick disproportionately in the minds of people like Dalneigh Caley - who presumably was a Howden Ender of the 80s. Caley equally won very little during the 50s, for much of the 70s and (as already illustrated) in the final 6 years from 1988 onwards. They never had the permanent greatness which a number of people delude themselves into believing was the case. One of the problems of the "militants" of the merger years was that they had this rose coloured spectacles view of the 80s and tended to generalise it across a much wider period which is simply inaccurate. (Apart from IHE who spent most of the 80s trying to recover from the 70s!) They also failed to appreciate that by 1993/94 Caley was just a shadow of the team of the 80s - which they had deluded themselves into imagining was normal service for Telford Street, which it wasn't. Caley was a superb club with which I grew up - but let's keep things in realistic proportion (and note my modest correction in post #387)

What a crock of disingenuous mince from the usual suspect! Dougal seems to have forgotten (if he ever knew it in the first place) that during its last six years in existence, Caledonian FC never won any of the Highland Leagues major honours contested by all the clubs - ie the League, the League Cup or the Qualifying Cup. The last of these was the league which was won in the spring of 1988, a few months before Caley were routed 3-0 on their own ground by Jags in the Q Cup final replay. That doesn't sound much to me like a team which had "outgrown the Highland League". But unfortunately Dougal does seem to suffer from this delusion which afflicted a minority of Caley fans that they were in some way invincible and a much bigger cheese than the club really was. Maybe Dougal wasn't at Kingsmills Park in April 1988 to see the outright jubilation when Wilson Robertson scored the only goal of the game to give the three points which were needed to keep Caley in the title race. And presumably he wasn't at Grant Street a few nights later among the large presence of Caley fans who celebrated hysterically when Clach finally extinguished Buckie's challenge on their behalf with a 2 all draw. These celebrations (and I witnessed them both) didn't sound much to me like the Highland League title meaning "absolutely nothing". And what these Caley fans were actually unknowingly celebrating was Caley's very last Highland League title, all of six years before the club became part of ICT. Because these last six years actually yielded very little - the Inverness and North Cups to be precise - as Peterhead, then (sorry to say it chaps!) Elgin then Ross County took control of the Highland game. Get used to it Dougal. Caley were simply one of the bigger players in a provincial semi professional league. Five or six years into a phase of decline, they joined with Thistle and now, 20 years later, crowds have increased seven fold to watch Inverness football in the top half of the SPL.

Including darkest Lancashire! OK IHE.. enough.... as Kingsmills puts it.... "oxygen" for one day!

Doubt it - wouldn't be much different from what ICT are getting now. That would be missing the point though - who'd have thought you'd be trying to wind up the same prefect 40 years on!!! Johndo may indeed be fishing for a reaction, but if so I suspect it's not from me! This is just another example of IHE's well tried tactic of making an deliberately absurd statement just to see who will rise to the bait and take it seriously.

How do you know there's plenty more if you don't know them? Pure class!! The perfect answer! Or maybe Forza meets them at the annual congress of the Walter Mitty Society. But is it not now time to set aside 20 year old fantasies and move on?

(CUE THE HORLICKS MUSIC).... eeh lad... ah remember 't day when 15,000 Caley fans signed Buenos Hornell's petition against 't merger and 83% of nicked copies of 't Courier 'ad 't coupons filled in saying "nay lad"! Seriously, though, I think we now have claims of more refuseniks than ever went to Telford Street or Kingsmills in the first place However probably the most revealing statistic of the lot is that the most bitter year of the whole fraught affair - 1994 - saw the biggest ever percentage increase in attendance at matches. When it was Thistle and Caley, typical combined home gates, which were in decline, came to about 600. Then the first season of Caley Thistle - despite Baltacha's uninspiring tactics - average attendance more than doubled to 1275, which of course has gone onward and generally upward ever since. So in the face of all these alleged "boys at my work who don't go any more" (so what did they do instead - go off on holiday with Shergar and Lord Lucan?), crowds actually doubled in the first, controversial season of the new team. The last 20 years to a large extent boil down to the following single sentence - As a result of two clubs joining forces, Inverness progressed from the Highland League to the top half of the SPL and attendances rose almost seven fold. So quite frankly, if progress like that has been made, I don't actually give a flying toss about anyone who might have thrown the rattle out of the phone box and decided not to share in the magnificent experience. If 40 ex Jaggies and a few more Howden Enders have taken the hump, then that's a tiny price to pay. It's a wee bit like spending a pound to earn a hundred. And I really wish the Flat Earth Society would stop banging on with their wishful thinking about numbers which simply don't add up by continually returning to this now tedious and redundant subject. ICT is a top six SPL club - job largely done but progress still in process.

In terms of "major draw" crowds (ie 6000ish plus), at the TCS there have usually been three per season between Rangers and Celtic. This season that dropped to two from Celtic only, but with two more due to Highland derbies, this makes a total of four. On the other hand many of these have been at times other than 3pm on a Saturday, which tends to cause a fall away. A 6000 crowd compared with, say, the 3500 which it may replace gives 2400 extra which, across 19 home games, ups the average by about 125. Then there is the additional issue of Ross County joining ICT in the SPL. There are possibly two additional factors here. Firstly, I have heard it said that a number of away fans are choosing one trip to the Highlands and since Ross County in their first season in the league, several are going there to see what Victoria Park is like. Similarly there is, I believe, a floating support about the inner Moray Firth which has historically tended to patronise both grounds. Again with County in the SPL for the first time, the balance of these may well have drifted towards Dingwall this season. To what extent either or both of these factors swing back towards the TCS as County establish themselves as a regular SPL presence remains to be seen. Anecdotally it also SEEMS that there have been more non-Saturday 3pm KOs this season, which will also depress the numbers, but I haven't checked this out. I think we are dealing wirh a very complex range of factors here.