Charles Bannerman

Scarlet.... for stick games, I'll stick with Shinty. Otherwise within the realm of ball games I'll settle for Sackurr!

Or indeed rugby with crash helmets and steel cages inside the shirts? I once attended an American Football game at Telford Street (Ness Monsters I believe - one of Brian Turnbull's marketing gimmicks) and quite frankly I was never so bored in my life. It went on for hours, most of which seemed to involve people hanging about doing nothing. On the other hand it was difficult to have commerical breaks at Telford Street! It was the same when I went to a shinty on ice... sorry - ice hockey - game at Aviemore. Lengthy tracts of total inactivity and colder than the Caledonian Stadium.

Hey buddy... is that Sackurr?

Yes the Americans are the world's best at inventing sports for themselves, which tend in any case to be corruptions of British ones, and then having "World Series" in them.

Just as well they don't play the National Anthem at the end of games like they used to do at the end of a cinema show when I was a lad. That was GUARANTEED to empty the place well in advance! However, if your team has had a memorable 3-0 home win over a local rival, I would have thought that this would have been a huge incentive for fans to stay to share the defining moment of the final whistle?

And why one of these two teams should have such a stranglehold on a vital and major facility like the Northern Meeting Park to the exclusion of many others, I will never understand. The Inverness City problem could have been solved years ago and much more satisfactorily if they had been allowed to go there while Inverness's two cricket clubs shared Fraser Park.

That must have been done at some intermediate point during February 1979 since it only claims a "record" 15 pitch inspections at Kingsmills for that cup tie v Falkirk during that hellish Highland winter of 78-79. The final figure once all the inspections were done was 29 which I can verify because I have seen the referee's expenses claim - 29 x £2.50 = £72.50. PS - in the end Jags lost!

What a wonderfully positive post which I would thoroughly endorse! Coming as the post does from someone with a long background in the HL, the experience must have felt like a home from home for you! Fair takes me back to the old days when I used to take my son to HL games at Telford Street, Kingsmills and Grant Street. We even made Huntly for Caley's last ever game.

Yes I have to say I strongly agree with what Forza has said here. Every time I visit Grant St it's like stepping back into a wonderful past world of cherished old memories of football as it used to be in Inverness. I am a strong believer in Inverness playing an ongoing part in the Highland League and that was why the whole merger thing became that bit more acceptable to me when Clach pulled out of the negotiations. The HL was founded in Inverness, on Bridge Street, and of the seven teams which completed the first season in 1893-4, six were from Inverness.... Clach, Caley, Thistle, Citadel, Cameron Highlanders and Union (which was "assimilated" by Thistle shortly afterwards). The other one was Forres Mechanics which means that only Clach and Forres survive from those original members. A team from Dingwall, which I have heard reportedly called Ross County but I'm not 100% sure if that was the original name since the current cluib wasn't founded until 1929, also started that season but resigned during it. Steadily the league extended eastwards and indeed Elgin are the only team ever to have scored "nul points", which they did three times between 1900 and 1906. Of course we all know that the "Highland" League for quite a few seasons across the millennium was heavily dominated by the Aberdeenshire teams so it's really good to see the likes of Forres, Wick, Nairn and especially Clach reasserting themselves more recently. PLUG - tune into Sports Report on BBC Radio Scotland on 810MW and 92-95 or 103.5-105FM at 6:30 for a full round up of today's remaining five HL fixtures and all the rest of the national sports news.

"We mentioned it 340 times but I think we got away with it!" But righ'eenuff Doogie... your other posts are actually very constructive. For instance look at the excellent thread you started on restaurants in Olde Inverness/ Memories.

That's also off I'm afraid. Five games have survived.

Formartine v Fort William could also be rather appealing in view of what Formartine might score! http://www.highlandfootballleague.com/LeagueTable/ Although rather better than recent seasons, Fort William still have a pretty desperate "GA" record while in terms of "GF" Formartine have even been averaging 3.3 per game, a figure only marginally bettered by Wick. Formartine put six past Pele's old team Huntly last Saturday. Tell you something... this mid season SPL break is offering a great opportunity to enjoy the Highland League in more detail!

Right so let me get this straight. 1889 - Crown + Thistle = Thistle = Takeover. 1895 - Union + Thistle = Thistle = Takeover. 1994 - Caley + Thistle = Caley Thistle = Merger where Jags fans were complaining about a takeover

As a great advocate of the Highland League in general and of its continuing presence in Invernes in particular, I would commend a visit to Clach to any ICT supporter who doesn't have the opportunity to follow his own club on any particular Saturday. My visits to Clach have unfortunately been fewer and further between this season with SPL in both Inverness and Dingwall but I have every intention of going down to Grant Street on Saturday for an afternoon of watching a top(ish) of the table HL clash whilst listening in to the SFL on Open All Mics and am very much looking forward to it.

Most of us moved on a loooooong time ago. Aye but as I drove along Telford Street about 6:51 this evening and looked into the phone box a could see blue Santa hats inside... and one of the wearers seemed to have a laptop.

Don't think staying was ever an option due to the application for league membership stating that a stadium would be built. To the other poster above remember that neither Telford St or Kingsmills was sold for large sums of money by today's standards. Ideally Caley on their own and the the merged club would have preferred the bught for the stadium but this was never going to happen due to the Council and other interested parties eg shinty, rugby etc being so dead against it! That's correct OCG. They were even very lucky to get a 15 month extension of the original August 1995 stadium deadline. And even if there had been no obections in principle to the Bught, getting any size of crowd in and out across the Ness and Friars Bridges would have been impossible. The reality of Bruce Hare's report (and I still have a copy in the box with the rest of my papers relating to Against all Odds) is that Inverness had/ still has very few places for a football club to go. If you want to check it out in detail, go to the "Finding A Home" chapter of AAO on this website. Indeed if Inverness had been better endowed with potential football ground sites, Caley would have snapped one of them up in the late 80s/early 90s and it is my belief that had that happened the merger would not have happened, Caley would have gone it alone, would PROBABLY have got in, and Inverness would have a division 1/2 yoyo club today.

OCG... as I also recollect it that was Norman's viewpoint and that of a number not only of the Caley hierarchy but also of the Jags people - although by the spring of 94 the merger had been completed and the ICT Board, which included reps of both former clubs, was running things.

Yes you are quite right Luke. I thought this thread had run its course over the festive break until it suddenly burst forth again yesterday with this latest attempt to reinvent the wheel - which the inventor insists is square!

Reef.. I'm afraid that statement simply shows how poorly informed you actually are on these topics and also again highlights your tendency to come up with the first unsubstantiated statement which comes into your head as long as it suits your preconceived point of view. What actually happened was that INE's (not HIE's) preferred stadium site was Stratton Farm on the A96 which they wanted to develop to kick start the Golden Mile. This was one of a short list of four sites from a long list of 13 from Bruce Hare's 1993 feasibility study into stadium sites in Inverness - which is incidentally not at all well endowed with suitable sites. Also among the four was the current East Longman site which was the strong preference of THE CLUB. ICT and INE then had a protracted debate about this during the spring of 1994 and the CLUB's will eventually prevailed. So Inverness Caledonian Thistle's stadium is where it is because that is where Inverness Caledonian Thistle and not INE wanted it! It is also reasonable to mention that the possibility of a marina first arose away back in 1995 - over four years before David Sutherland had anything to do with ICT - in an interview I did with Councillor Clive Goodman, Chairman of the Harbour Trust, about the possibility of the stadium road linking through to the Harbour which he said could vastly increase the value of the area, which indeed it has. The Common Good Fund's £900,000 stadium grant has been refunded many times over by that alone.

So were you a Jags supporter in the pre merger days then?

Now that's a pretty damning admission to be making for someone who has spent much of today making blanket assertions and accusations (albeit totally lacking substance) about events of the very era in question! As it happens my memory serves me quite well... even better since I recently happened to take the chance to listen over again to an hour of my broadcast reports from that period..... and I certainly have no recollection at all of reporting that Peter Donald was accosted by hooligans... notwithstanding the way a number of them frequently behaved! On the other hand if Reefinweed would care to indicat in which publication or in which radio broadcast I allegedly said this, and when, it may help to clarify the matter. Maybe also it's Reef's dodgy memory which prevents him from recollecting that BOTH sides within Caley recruited equally vigorously in that autumn of 1993 to the extent that, although ST holders increased from just over 100 to 576, the whole exercise only changed the voting figures by 0.1% (zero point one per cent) at the 1st December meeting compared with the 9th September one. And even after that exhaustive recruitment, the Rebels still could only muster 226 people sufficiently "anti" to vote as such. But really, this thread has spent much of the day floundering among assertions which belong firmly to the same stable as "Hitler is alive and well in Bolivia", "The Loch Ness Monster has been doing somesaults in front of Urquhart Castle", "a Lancaster bomber has just landed on the moon" and "Lord Lucan is hiding Shergar on a ranch in Western Australia". And regarding (again anecdotal) claims of the "hole" in Caley's 93-94 accounts corresponding to alleged "free" tickets, there was a discrepancy of £160 - the equivalent of EIGHT tickets. This was even accepted without challenge at the last ever Caley AGM in June 94 at the old Royal Academy which actually had a majority of Rebels present because the moderates didn't bother to attend since the real action had by this time moved on, with the merger having been finalised four months earlier.

Once again you are attempting to refer to anecdotal evidence which you have not made stand up. If you want to claim that, it's up to you and not to me to back it up. But in any case, the relevant figure is what is, by current standards, the rather small number of 226, despite all the recruitment by the rebels, who actually voted against after all that recruitment - and only a small proportion even of that still choose to stay away. A tiny loss for a massive gain. Charles i asked you to tell the truth...if you don't believe me perhaps you should ask some of the players around at the time(lazy journalism on your behalf if you never did it at the time) you know the FACTS so please do not try and gloss over them.Nothing will change ICT are the club now and thats "progress" but please deal in the facts as you know them,perhaps it wouldn't look good if you said the "real" story how many "new" season ticket holders was there in the weeks leading up to the vote? was there mysteriously over 100 new season tickets holders in the weeks prior to the vote? which in the cold light of day was enough to swing the vote? Also while we are dealing in facts is it not true that you reported that Peter Donald was "accosted by hooligans"? when in fact he was being presented with a petition? what was the reason for that? Reef... you keep making assertions which you then fail to back up by evidence but still aks me questions about. It's YOUR responsibility to back up any case you want to make.... not mine!!!

Once again you are attempting to refer to anecdotal evidence which you have not made stand up. If you want to claim that, it's up to you and not to me to back it up. But in any case, the relevant figure is what is, by current standards, the rather small number of 226, despite all the recruitment by the rebels, who actually voted against after all that recruitment - and only a small proportion even of that still choose to stay away. A tiny loss for a massive gain.

Reef... why can't people just accept the facts based on concrete evidence rather than continually regurgitating the same anecdotal and unsubstantiated myths based on wishful tninking? PRE MERGER * Typical combined attendances at Telford Street and Kingsmills were around 600 - so you seem to be suggesting that roughly as many people stopped going as ever attended in the first place. This reminds me of the Battle of Britain when the Luftwaffe claimed to have shot down more planes than the RAF actually had * About 160 attended between the two original merger meetings. * After both sides within Caley recruited exhaustively for weeks and, note, with season tickets costing just £20 for adults (and £10 for juveniles) they managed to increase that to 576 - of whom 226 voted against the merger in the second vote. POST MERGER * There is a core minimum home attendance of nearly 3000 but more typically nearer 3500. CONCLUSION - Irrespective of a very few who may not have wished to buy into it, the merger has resulted in hugely increased numbers of people watching football at a hugely higher level and has hence contributed massively to the game in this area. Your base maximum figure for refuseniks is 226, many of whom now attend, have left the area or have died. So where are all these people that this serial wishful thinking, based on bald claims with no evidence whatsoever is coming up with? SUGGESTION TO THOSE WHO CONTINUE TO MAKE THESE VACUOUS CLAIMS - join the Flat Earth Society whose views have a rather better chance of enjoying some credibility.

Mike Noble? Captain of D3 winning ICT side in 1997. I think he was still at Thistle when they won the Highland League in 87 and the Q Cup in 88 and he had definitely gone to Caley by the time they won their very last trophies such as the 1994 North Cup.