Charles Bannerman

Is there a barber's around here where I can get my beard trimmed? Karl Marx. But apart from that, I simply see the 10 team league as being to the benefit only of the Old Firm and maybe one or two other clubs for whom relegation is permanently highly unlikely and to the detriment of the leading clubs outwith that tiny and exclusive group (as well, of course, as that of the fans.) Clubs which are now unable to remain permanently inside the top 10 as opposed to the top 12 previously will be consigned to oblivion -financial and otherwise - and there is no way the SPL can come up with any bribe payment big enough to make that danger financially attractive. Here in Inverness, the devastating consequences of dropping to 1st Division football from the SPL have already been felt and there, but for the grace of God, a rousing finish to last season and Dundee bottling it, still would go Caley Thistle.

Doh! Homer Simpson.

I'm not doing it this year Danny although I will be there to support my daughter who uses the Fun Run as a 5K time trial in advance of the main 10K season - and likes to see how many blokes she can beat! So with a 1pm Fun Run start (1pm for the Half), I'll be clearing out by 2pm by which time not even a runner of your talents will have finished the half marathon and I think traffic could be a problem. I'm planning to stash the car somewhere near the Sports Centre and then to hop through Kinmylies/ Telford Street/ Friars Bridge to the stadium. I hope that there will be enough time for any half marathoners to get over. If you're on for a 1:20 - 1:30 Half, then that would give you just about an hour to get over but the problem could be road closures if you go through the town and getting parked if you are a relatively late arrival at the stadium. An extended post-half marathon warm down from the Queens Park to the Caledonian Stadium could be the answer! (Which reminds me of the time Pele made Vetle Andersen run back from Charleston after excess use of the mouth. :biggrin: ) I don't suppose having two simultaneous big events on in Inverness would cause the police any angst?

Yes it's a nuisance when you post a thread title and then can't rectify any mistake you've made! However a bit of lateral thinking in the direction of the name plate outside Fawlty Towers cracked it for me. I gather it was a very good game which I believe took place during the night our time. As a result, what I briefly saw, or more specifically heard, whilst surfing channels late evening must have been part of the pre match build up - which really had me puzzled to start with. What I thought I was witnessing was this woman trying to impersonate a churchful of Wee Frees singing psalms - or at least that's what the series of agonised, irregular wails she was emitting reminded me of. But then when I listened rather more closely, I realised that what she was actually doing was committing a murderous assault on the American National Anthem. Nobody does vulgarity quite like the Americans.

I believe 54 is the magic number. Happy Birthday young man!

Just to say that, thanks to the postponement at Perth, there's an extra BBC TV presence here, including Paul Mitchell doing commentary for Sportscene tonight. As a result there will be much enhanced coverage on tonight's programme.

As CB says the forecast is a bit better so hopefully the game will go ahead as planned. As far as I'm aware it was only a bit of the pitch that was a problem and I'm certain Tommy is on the case. Yes, it seemed mainly to be roughly a circle maybe of 20 odd yards diameter centring around the D at the North end. And I am equally certain that Tommy is on the case! Possibly his main constrain is that he can't spike as deep as he would like to drain off the water because that would burst the USH pipes. But I would VERY much doubt if a decision would be taken tomorrow, given the potential for improvement which overnight Friday - Saturday seems to offer.

I would have thought that someone local like Jimmy Johnstone or Bill Machray - vastly experienced ex referees who have gone on to become referee supervisors and who actually assess the kind of people the SPL seem to insist must carry out inspections - might have been perfectly capable of deciding whether a pitch is playable or not. On the other hand Bill or Jimmy could have got to the TCS long before the match referee whose late arrival presumably maximised the chances of the game going ahead. I would have been a very interested fly on the wall as regards the conversation the ref presumably had with the SPL on his way up the road. And the number of times he bounced that ball on the pitch before apparently at last accepting that it wasn't suddenly doing anything other than rebounding feebly once before stopping dead was amazing. You saw a couple of attempts on STV but they totalled well into double figures. QUESTION - does this therefore mean that no SPL game at the TCS is going to be able to be postponed before the arrival of the match referee? If so, where does that leave travelling fans? Anyway... maybe time to put this incident on to the back burner and hope instead that the pitch has dried up by Saturday. The rain/ snow is forecast to stop by tomorrow and the last BBC forecast I saw was for sunshine on Saturday. Fingers crossed.

Eye witness report or your information. Round about 5pm today, I watched one of the longest and most thorough inspections I have ever seen in football where the match referee performed just about every test he could on the pitch - again and again. In particular he bounced the ball repeatedly on a quite extensive area around the edge of the North Stand penalty box and again and again the ball gave one weak bounce as it threw up fountains of water and then stopped dead. The rest of the pitch wasn't too bad but there was a significant area in the North half of it which was very wet indeed. Make no mistake about it, the referee did not take that decision lightly and appeared to repeat various tests of running, bouncing the ball and passing very frequently before he gave his verdict after about 20 minutes of examination. It is my understanding that Caley Thistle first requested the inspection before lunch time. I did not detect any dissent when the decision was made at around 5:15. I can only speculate as to how keen the SPL (who insisted that this fixture DIDN'T go ahead on December 4th) were to get this game cleared last night, given that Dundee United have only played 20 matches. Also there is, anecdotally, the impression that the drainage on the TCS pitch is not as good as it was before the undersoil heating was installed. This, of course, means in addition that the pitch cannot be rolled with long spikes to create drainage channels for surface water since the spikes would burst the USH pipes.

Well at least we know it won't be a salivary gland problem.

Scotty... you are music to the ears of Hibs fans! :biggrin:

To my recollection, the actual fixtures are announced as soon as the composition of top and bottom six are known. Given the relatively short timescale, that's a necessity to ensure fans can make arrangements. Typically it's been 5pm on the last pre split Saturday. Of course it could in theory be the Sunday before the exact line ups are known. Can someone tell me if I am right in vaguely recollecting that in such an instance they once issued fixtures on the Saturday, some of them on an "either/or" basis for the 24 hours until the final line up was confirmed?

DEE'S LEGEND MACALPINE!!!!!! Only for the amount of abuse he used to take ( very well I may add) great character but Arab *******',and yes his lad won at Nairn Oops... sorry, forgot! It was the place across the road, wasn't it? That's a wee but like people in the South of Scotland thinking that Inverness and Aberdeen are more or less the same place. :irritated:

Very possibly. I passed a very pleasant couple of days at Nairn West reporting on the Scottish Amateur in 2006... and even did an interview at the end with Dees legend Hamish MacAlpine whose son I seem to recollect won the event! I also note with interest the other observations you made about Colin Montgomerie.

Delighted the Scottish Open is coming to Inverness. This should be a big boost for the game and if it leads to the area producing another Murray Urquhart, Gillian Stewart or Kelsey MacDonald then that would be a bonus for them. What I am dreading, though, is the spate of highly speculative "surveys" which will predict that the event will bring x, y and z million pounds into the local economy where x, y and z are totally different numbers. I find these highly inaccurate exercises extremely annoying, even though the event will be of significant and very welcome local economic benefit. My main problem with golf, apart perhaps from some of the fashions they wear, is Colin Montgomerie since it goes against the grain to see a lot of money being made out of playing a sport by someone who is - in a word - fat.

So that will be an all Scottish final then - Jockovitch v Murray. :biggrin:

They wear green and white hoops... maybe a huddle would help!

This interview includes the manager's take on the red card. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/scotland/9377518.stm

Yes. They go to games and make money out of both clubs for the duration of hostilities. (They also provide the First Aid.)

Believe me... your Peter Pan days, and with them your delusions of moral superiority, are well and truly numbered along with everybody else's! It has been said that there are two certainties in the human existence... Death and Taxes. However there is a third which intervenes before the inevitability of Death... and that is Old Codgerdom. I also wonder how many of the Caley Animals which IHE was so en on reviving for the Elgin game now sit in the Main Stand wrapped in tartan travelling rugs and sucking Werthers Originals? When ah wurralad there was no shortage of Old Codgers either... except that in these days they normally had the fairly potent option of reminding us that they were the generation of the Normandy Beaches or El Alamein or even the Somme, whose efforts saved young people like me from being tramped under the boot of the Hun. At least we can take comfort in the fact that we will never be as old as you Mr Bannerman Well if that is the case at the moment, it is likely to remain the case for the indefinite future since we are all getting older - and hence approaching Old Codgerdom - at exactly the same rate. And those in denial of that are most likely undergoing their mid life crises! :biggrin:

Believe me... your Peter Pan days, and with them your delusions of moral superiority, are well and truly numbered along with everybody else's! It has been said that there are two certainties in the human existence... Death and Taxes. However there is a third which intervenes before the inevitability of Death... and that is Old Codgerdom. I also wonder how many of the Caley Animals which IHE was so en on reviving for the Elgin game now sit in the Main Stand wrapped in tartan travelling rugs and sucking Werthers Originals? When ah wurralad there was no shortage of Old Codgers either... except that in these days they normally had the fairly potent option of reminding us that they were the generation of the Normandy Beaches or El Alamein or even the Somme, whose efforts saved young people like me from being tramped under the boot of the Hun.

Aye, I can just imagine what these Old Codgers were talking about too. "See these young lads... they only come here so they can make a noise and a complete @rse of themselves on a Saturday afternoon. No interest in football at all. Well I suppose it keeps them off the streets. But the soooner they get away back to the North Stand the better. Tut, tut, tut. Pass the Werthers Originals." Don't worry son. The day is approaching faster than you realise. You probably won't suddenly wake up one morning and simply realise that you have become an Old Codger. As sure as night follows day though, it's a status which is certainly coming your way. But enjoy the intolerance of youth for the moment, because it won't be available to you for all that much longer.

Really pleased to hear that. Tomorrow is my favourite day of the Scottish football season (a partiality I share with Richard Gordon from what Richard has said in the past)and I'm really pleased that Scottish football fans worldwide, not just those of Caley Thistle, will be able to share the whole show.

If you are within Scotland, with the exception of the back of beyond, I would recommend one of the FM frequencies since reception is far, far better. MW on the other hand is a bit of a broadcasting Heineken in that it can reach places FM cannot reach.

Just to keep you updated.... Sportsound is going to be covering all of tomorrow's eleven ties in one large scale Open All Mics programme with a reporter at each ground. This will go out on all frequencies (92-95 and 103.5-105FM and 810MW) so there are no commentaries tomorrow. This will keep listeners across the entire afternoon's card. This is on air from 2pm until 5:30. I don't know how available this is in the Diasporate. The Sportscene Results Programme is on air on BBC 1 Scotland from 4:30-5:10 with full time reports from all ties and updates/ goal flashes in the latter stages from several of them. Highlights of all eleven ties, including post match interviews, will then be shown on Sportscene from 10:30-11:50 in the evening - 80 minutes of coverage from across the country. Before and after on Radio Scotland, Stuart and Tam are on from midday, Your Call is on from 5:30-6:30 and Sports Report from 6:30 to 7pm.