Charles Bannerman

I am somewhat bemused at how one or two threads on here seem to be expressing the view that part of ICT's core business and obligation should include providing the opportunity for some kind of summer continental beano for the fans and that the competitive and pre season training policy should be amended to accommodate that!

Got it now. Intertoto Cup! I have to say that the arguments about Europe also tend to mirror discussions about a possible fourth stand at the Caledonian Stadium. How do the possible benefits stand up against the likely costs? I think you have to look at this in the context of a club whose finances generally tend to hover on or just short of the break even point. I suspect that the year to May 2013 will turn out a bit better than average for various reasons, but 2012-13 has been an exceptional season. I would suggest that priority number one has to be affording and sustaining a squad which can first and foremost continue to secure SPL football (remember how "squeaky bum" last season was in danger of becoming) and finish as far up the league as possible. I don't think ICT is in the position to put essentials at risk for the sake of high profile luxuries which - in the grander scheme of things - don't really mean that much in real terms. I also wonder how many of the people who are making a noise about Europe or about a fourth stand would also be among the first to complain if the team started to struggle for lack of affordable squad depth.

I don't think it's as much as that - it's probably nearer £80,00. I saw the figures once and I think the drop between 2nd and 3rd is over £100,000 but 3rd to 4th is rather less. Certainly what he said to me was that the club isn't geared up for Europe (and I would suggest nor should it be, given the remote chance each year which came a lot closer this time.) What I would be wondering is how the team would get wherever. For instance chartering planes is expensive if scheduled flights don't work out. Then there could well be visas to be acquired, accommodation to be paid for. Is there an entry fee for the Europa League? Are there any implications for hosting the home leg? And to echo the arguments surrounding that Diddy Cup whose name escapes me for the moment but which was given consideration in Charlie's time, what are the implications regarding being fit and ready to play by mid July - and the possible consequences for the next season? How much money is to be made from this stage of the Europa League? I am not saying that ICT qualfying for Europe would necessarily have bee a bad thing. But I would suggest that, alongside the kudos and the novelty, there would also have been a significant down side.

Completely off topic, but this has just reminded me of a tale I heard recently of Davie Milroy's French teacher Curly Stuart telling him he spoke the language "with a Clachnararry accent". When I confronted him with the anecdote, Davie cheerfully admitted it! To return to topic, with fans of both sides travelling from Inverness I would imagine the bridge will be pretty bad on the way north before the game, and much worse on the way back when everyone will be trying to get back across a much shorter time interval. When I was on my way back from Ross Co v Celtic a couple of Sundays ago, I didn't leave Dingwall until an hour after full time and still hit the back of the southbound queue nearer the Tore roundabout than the Munlochy turn off.

Aye, but Mantis anticipated that and deliberately gave out a wrong name for the Sky reporter! Mind you, Dougal is probably already heading for the phone box on Telford Street to look out his blue Santa suit and Bah Humbug hat. Oh yes, and the old footage of Cup Finals at Hampden in the 1930s with crowds of 130,000 who he will say are Caley fans meeting to protest against the Merger.

Maybe I should have said "guarantee" getting into Europe!

Well I reckon 16 and a half hours (excluding replays and extra time - when that eventually superseded multiple replays) through 11 rounds from the Q Cup 1st to the Scottish Cup Final and then whatever it took to get to the Cupwinners' Cup final. I don't know how long that was, but any Aberdeen fan would tell you in a flash! As for the £millions... probably about £56 for getting through the Q Cup part of it. On which subject, here's another reflection of how football in the Highlands has progressed since ICT came along. Remember the absolute joy at clubs simply getting to the Qualifying Cup "group stages" (aka the last four which meant you were in the "real" Scottish Cup)? A subsequent visit from Clyde or trip to Stenhousemuir would then be the highlight of the season. That was the situation as recently as season 1993-94 - when neither Inverness team did so since Jags put Caley out at the first hurdle before losing out themselves in the quarter finals to - I think... oops.... Ross County! So in 1993...you have to beat Ross County to get into the Scottish Cup. In 2013....you have to beat Ross County to get into Europe. You still with us Dougal?

Maybe you should outshine the Aberdeen fans and have an even bigger 30th anniversary celebration of that come 2015! Now there's an interesting thought! How many hours away from the Cupwinners Cup final was the first round of our old friend, the Qualifying Cup?

Look folks, maybe it's not a great idea to allow celebration of ICT's meteoric success and the 20th anniversary of the conception of that club to be sidetracked by the likes of Doogie. The first four posts were absolutely great, but since then, Inverness's answer to the Flat Earth Society has unfortunately become able to sidetrack this thread. Don't rise to it!

I read this as an article celebrating 20 years since inception. 20 years since a few people had the foresight to realise that an Inverness team could do what many other teams have failed to do even though they've been established for a hell of a lot longer. What I cant see is any reason why anyone would need to apologise for success. Precisely right Alex. There had been previous half baked suggestions about mergers for decades, but - apart from the 1973 vote when Thistle unsuccessfully went it alone - there was never an opportunity to put one into practice. May 1993 provided just that opportunity. I was going to say it's a pity that there are just a few people like Doogie who remain in denial and cannot acknowledge the reality that what happened between 1993 and 1996 has been a roaring and still developing success, which of course makes it stick in the throat of those who did their utmost to prevent it from happening and keep Inverness football in the dark ages. I am also now wondering if Dougal is really a staunch pro-mergerite having a long term laugh by posing as some kind of caricature Caley rebel and posting the stuff he does. I'm not really convinced that anyone could sustain the posting of such demonstrable rubbish and actually mean it.

When I saw the "M-word" in the title of this thread, I made the very safe prediction that when I opened it up, I would find that Dougal had already emerged from the woodwork to post at least once! But anyway, let's get on with what really matters. It's actually 20 years ago this month that the whole process started which has so far culminated in the top 6 of the SPL and which may further culminate in European status for Caley Thistle in Dingwall on Sunday. It was on 20th May 1993 that INE and the clubs revealed that they were discussing a possible merged bid for national league football and then at their AGM on the 27th, the SFL voted - only because Raith Rovers director Bob Paxton cast his against his instructions - to go to four divisions of 10 by taking in two new clubs. But if it's Europe we're talking about, let's go a further year back to 1992 and the ultimately abortive Superleague breakaway scheme. Inverness was making serious overtures to that too until it collapsed - and while talks were still ongoing, I did an interview with then Clach chairman David Dowling on what national league football could do for Inverness. In the course of the interview, he speculated that one day an Inverness team might play in Europe and he was roundly ridiculed for making what at the time seemed an inconceivable suggestion. Along similar lines, Dougie McGilvray was thought to be off his rocker in 1994 when he bet Tam Cowan live on Radio Scotland that Caley Thistle would be in the Premier League within 10 years - but so it transpired.

As I understand it, the decision not to allow pre match opening of pubs in Dingwall for Ross County v Celtic was made by Invergordon Councillor Maxine Smith, Convener of the Licensing Board, using delegated powers. Disruption of church services appears to have been a factor here. It was Councillor Smith's casting vote which earlier secured the (highly commendable!) binning of the Inverness midnight curfew. I have to say that the first thing I witnessed on driving into the centre of Dingwall around 1115 on Sunday was knots of football fans hanging around aimlessly on street corners, with some of the less well informed tugging in vain at pub doors, only to find them securely locked!

All the same.... just don't take the bait!!!!

The information above is also consistent with what Alex says in his book. The original ground was about 50 yards nearer the canal than the later one. The original ground was on the clay excavations from the Canal. The later one was developed from 1920 on 2.8 acres of land bought for £275! So the £1M obtained in 1996 represents a return of nearly 400,000% on the original investment!

It's possible that Alex Main's 1986 centenary history "Caley All The Way" (which I don't have at hand where I am at the moment) may throw some light on that. On the other hand Alex was severely handicapped by the Telford Strret grandstand fire of 1950 which meant that so many of Caley's old records went up in smoke and were lost.

I'm with Gringo here. I think the 2-1 at Broadwood in May 2004 was a turning point in ICT's history. You can seldom put that kind of thing down to single games in a 36 match season and it was the St Johnstone result the following Saturday which clinched the First Division title and (eventually!) SPL status. But my memory of the result at Broadwood was that it created a wind of change throughout ICT in terms of thinking and perceptions, when a lot of people really started to believe that the title could well be on.

Interesting insight into a situation which nonetheless has still redeemed itself since the earlier, much darker days! Cheers HD.

This is a slight aside HD, but I'd be interested to hear what you mean by that? Do you mean that the Dees should have got rid of Barry Smith and brought in Bomber Brown earlier? Or are there other factors, given what Dundee have shown they can do more recently? I know I was very critical of Dundee a few years ago during the second administration, but that whole set of values and norms has subsequently been upended with the more recent example of a club getting hugely into debt, using unjust insolvency laws to walk away from that before snapping up its own assets for a song whilst cherrypicking the bits of its previous existence it wants and conveniently ignoring the rest. All of this, of course, whilst still continuing to suck away a large slice of the money circulating in Scotland for football purposes. Oh, and I assume that your turn of phrase in the second quoted passage should be taken largely metaphorically?

Agent N... I would beg to disagree 100% and suggest the complete opposite. You imply Rangers and Celtic are the solution to the problem. I would put it to you in total contrast that Rangers and Celtic actually ARE the problem and that they have historically stifled competition from other clubs. Scottish football is struggling for viability because so much of the cash circulating in it is going into the coffers at Ibrox and Celtic Park. Within a population base of just 5 million, there's not enough left for much else to survive at any significant level. However Rangers and Celtic disappearing off to England, for instance, wouldn't solve the problem since the money would still follow them. I'm afraid Scottish football is stuck with this situation since you can't unmake Rangers and Celtic in the form in which they exist - unless you can renegotiate the Anglo Irish Treaty and undo the Reformation!! So you can fiddle about with league structure as much as you like. It really won't make any significant difference since there is no solution to the core problem of Old Firm hegemony. I also don't think the negative factors you point to are a result of Rangers being in the Third Division this season. My own view is that from the perspective of the other 11 SPL clubs apart from Celtic, this has actually been a rather better season than normal. OK, there has been no competition for the league title but that isn't any concern of these other 11 clubs and anyway nothing has really changed there - once again it has been won by an OF club. But on the other hand the other clubs have been going to Celtic Park or entertaining Celtic with a greater hope of taking something from them this season, there was an absolutely wonderful scrap for top six places, the battle is still not over in terms of who finishes second and there is an extra European place for one of these other 11 clubs.

Thank you very much Naelifts boy! Consider your 100 lines for offensive chanting cancelled! However I fear that "ditching the Old Firm" isn't a solution either. They exist in their current over inflated form and will continue to do so wherever they play such as in England. So they will continue to carry their very large support and destructively large cash grabbing capacity with them wherever they are. The Old Firm are simply a phemonenon of Scottish society and Irish politics which won't just go away. Scottish football is stuck with this potentially fatal component. So I fear there is NO solution to this problem of the Scottish game. I think what is happening is that in the current era, a number of factors such as the televised alternative and an even greater polarising effect due to the "gloryhunting" principle as people's expectations increase, are making much smaller units outwith the Old Firm progressively less viable. There simply isn't enough residual cake left for much else to survive. It's the classic Monopoly situation. The Old Firm have got their hotels on Mayfair and Park Lane so the other clubs, with at best a house or two on Trafalgar Square, or worse still the mere owners of Old Kent Road, don't have much of a chance. The scales are progressively tipping against them and "passing GO and collecting £200" (ie the £1.3M on offer) isn't going to make a huge amount of difference either.

What teams 13-24 will get is pennies in the context of trying to run a full time football club. It's window dressing! "Level playingfield"? Yerjokeenmun! In a situation where Celtic are annually turning over of the order of SIXTEEN TIMES as much, for instance, as ICT and even Rangers in the Third Division will be several times as much as well, you're trying to say that the reallocation of £1.3 million creates a level playingfield??? Also, somebody tried to suggest that all leagues have a couple of teams bigger than the others. I'd struggle to find one where two are so massively bigger and in the face of a small population base. Or can anyone else tell me where I can find a league based in a population of 5 million where there are two clubs drawing crowds of the order of approaching 50,000 while several other teams in the same league are averaging around 4000, and with corresponding disproportion from other commercial activities? I am genuinely open to being educated on this one.

12-12-18..... 12-10-10-10....14-14-14..... it's actually largely irrelevant. What has been under discussion today is nothing more than a rearrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic. It's the basic product that's fundamentally dysfunctional as a result of two clubs, artificially enhanced in size because they are the focal point of west central Scotland's religious and Irish political divide, sucking in such a large percentage of the game's resources. People are getting terribly excited about the £1.3 million that would be handed down to the First Division. Better than a slap in the chops, but wait a minute... £1.3 million is LESS THAN 3% of Celtic's annual turnover of £52 million! It's also roughly the prize money for finishing 7th in the SPL. So compared with the kind of cash the Old Firm deal in... and that is the problem... £1.3 million, divided among 10 clubs, is little more than farting into a hurricane. It's less than ICT's drop off in turnover the season they were relegated. Quite simply, in the current era of football economics, wage expectations, broadcast deals etc etc, I believe that there is NO model where a population of 5 million can sustain a viable number of full time clubs alongside two which are turning over what the Old Firm suck out of the system. There simply isn't enough cash left for the other clubs when so many football fans and their money disappear from Scotland's towns and cities to Ibrox and Celtic Park. So I'm afraid I just have to return to my original suggestion that there is NO viable solution to this problem.

Very controversial! Cove's only goal of the game came from a dubious penalty for hand ball which also led to Clach's Colin Williamson getting a red card. This may have killed Clach's title chances but with Wick losing and Nairn drawing, the balance towards the end of this season where the North clubs seemed to be making a big breakthrough seems to have swung back towards Aberdeenshire, where Cove and title favourites Formartine seem to have moved into pole position. Thoroughly enjoyable day at Grant Street as ever, though - and it was relatively warm for the first time for months!!

So what time is kick off at Kingsmills Park this afternoon?

Cheers Mantis. I always get Whitehill and Annan mixed up!