Charles Bannerman

Is this American Football by any chance? What a waste of good rugby players! The time outs (aka commercial breaks) would deprive me of the will to live if I ever went to a game! These guys seem to spend half their lives practising running backwards. :irritated: And why do they play their game encased in crash helmets and a cage? Is this fear of the American litigation culture? What they have done is to have hijacked Rugby and made it silly and boring. I went to an American Football game at Telford Street once (I think it was the Ness Monsters which was not so much an American Football Club, more an attempt to sell stuff for Turnbull Sports). I found it absolutely wrist slittingly tedious. It's probably the only time in my life that I have had a burning desire to get the hell out of Telford Street!!

The SOLE purpose of USH is to do with games being called off because of frozen pitches. The additional question is whether or not the frost is accompanied by snow, which it has been on a large number of occasions in Inverness. When there is snow, it doesn't matter how effective the USH is, recent trends are for games to have been pulled on the say so of bodies other than clubs. As for the SFL games, yes, I would agree that the best chance is in the west. Ironically a lady at Glencoe Chairlift today told me that they probably won't open at the weekend because they don't expect to have quite enough snow. In general terms I'm not sure where I stand on the question of games being called off by the Police or the Elfin Safety Industry - that's in general terms as opposed to blanket call offs three days in advance of kick off. On the one hand I can accept that travelling can be considered just to be too dangerous. But on the other hand the argument which I have seen elsewhere that there would be no chance of the Eastgate Centre being closed on Police say so in the event of bad road conditions is also very persuasive.

With blue shorts IIRC, worn at Dens Park on 17/8/94. Not sure if/when it was worn again. Sorry Scotty, had a look but I can't help either! Gordon Gillespie or Ian Broadfoot are about the only hope. It's certainly not shown in Ian Broadfoot's book nor in mine but I've definitely seen it, as apparently has Mantis. I'm sure it was there at the very first strip and shirt sponsor (Citylink) launch at the Haughdale Hotel on July 29th 1994 - 24 hours before the first friendly against St. Mirren at Telford Street. There is also a reference on P46 of Against all Odds to Norman floating the idea of such a deisgn, an old Caley one, at the meeting in the Caley Club on 26th January 1994 which APPEARED to end so peacefully that Mr. Beaumont famously stated that he didn't think he had clients any more!

Yes indeed, you have put your finger on a Catch 22 situation here which began to emerge last winter. When USH is used to make a pitch playable the game is often postponed anyway under circumstances imposed by forces outwith the club which was obliged to instal it. There's something of an irony here that clubs have been using the USH which "SPL Rules" insist they have, manage to get their pitches playable... then the SPL imposes a blanket ban on all its games irrespective of local circumstances. It wll be interesting to see if any SFL games go ahead... possibly in certain areas of Scotland without the assistance of USH?

Terry coming up on Sportsound talking about his team's 1 year undefeated away from home.

I gather that a lot of work went ahead down at the Caledonian Stadium today to clear the car parks and the surrounding area in anticipation of the game being on. The undersoil heating has also been on. This will presumably cost a lot of money which will not now be recovered.

That's correct KB and I remember being at the meeting in the Caley Club early in 1994 when Norman Miller floated that very idea of using an old Caley away strip as the inaugural CT away strip in the hope of a favourable reaction from some of the Caley "doubters".

No indeed it's not, because it's painfully obvious.

Of course it does ... The courier printed proof last week http://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/13910/Mystery_surrounds_Loch_Ness__91humps_92.html Yes, an amazing coincidence that the "monster's" three "humps" happened to correspond exactly with the three sections of the house immeidately above it and from which light would have been impingeing on the loch surface. Credit to Adrian Shine, even though he is a "believer", for being objective enough not to jump on this bandwagon.Anyway... to return to topic, I would be interested to hear what kind of "new" support has come into ICT as a result of 17 very high profile years. It must be growing from somewhere. (In addition to those among the thousands and thousands of original Refuseniks who have latterly seen the light of course )

I know I'm indulging a bit in numerical pedantry here, but I'm wondering why something which is measured in "games per goal" should be called "strike rate" because surely the higher the number of games it takes for each goal, the lower the strike rate is? I would tend to express something which implies a rate of scoring in terms of goals per game (eg 0.453) - or if you multiply by 100 (45.3), that gives the average percentage of games in which a goal was scored (which isn't the same as games per goal and indeed is the reciprocal of it).

I think the figures following the "x goals in y appearances" entries don't seem to correlate with the headings. The headings have got "strike rate" in brackets while the table itself has "SR" outwith brackets. As I understand it, what these figures really mean, for instance for Iain Stewart but it's the same for them all, is that he scored 82 goals in 144 appearances. That's 0.5694 goals per game which is presented here multiplied by 100 as 56.94. The other figure, in Iain's case 1.75, is the reciprocal of the goals per game figure ("one over it" in non mathematical terms). That therefore represents "games per goal". The figures in the table I've quoted are, quite correctly, stated in descending order of goals per game, so the average number of games it took the players to get each goal hence gets bigger in a downward direction.

Apart from the question of the trauma of being followed to the toilet :biggrin: is this evidence of institutional bias within Celtic Football Club against Highlanders?

I think there's a bit more than that to it in this specific case. Hugh Dallas occupied a senior position within the SFA and the Protestant - Catholic divide is (unfortunately) a significant feature of football in Scotland. (I could go on to argue that it is extremely significant but won't digress here.) Furthermore the email was against the side of that divide subscribed to by many followers of the club which is claiming there is an institutional bias against it within the Scottish game. That severely aggravated the whole thing.

I would in no way want to condone in any way what Hugh Dallas did, which was fundamentally unacceptable and was made even worse by the fact that the message was forwarded from his address at the SFA, a body whose core business (football) is badly affected by sectarianism and the existence of a Catholic - Protestant divide in Scotland. However Gabby's reference here to the downright criminal activities of a number of Catholic Church staff - which have actually been covered up far more elaborately than any decision of Dougie MacDonald's although that's a separate issue - is spot on. I think the Bible covers the issue in its story about "motes and planks" in the eye.

Yes, I would have to agree on that. My follicologial terminology isn't that great! Does Rod still have hair?

To your first comment... hilarious!!! Will Rod be rinsing the long term white out of the mullett with a mid brown? To your second comment... don't go there! Buckie is a south west of the Castlecary Arches beverage and should stay there. Morrisons do a cheeky looking little Perry, probably not dissimilar to Pomagne, at 18.7p per unit. The reason I know this is that I did a bit of research the other week in relation to something I was doing with a class... honest!! Tesco then upstaged them with their "Killie Brand" (blue and white vertical stripe Tesco Value) cider which came in at about 15.6p per unit but I don't think you will want to go there either.

Oh there's mileage in this rite enaff You fancy being Winston? If Ann Nicoll will be Isa. What are you going to use for Pomagne 30-40 years on?

An interesting post which possibly reinforces the recently struggling theory that Dougal is in fact a windup merchant. In other words is he or is he not perfectly aware that IHE, in real life, is actually a senior psychiatric nurse coordinating treatment of many of the cerebrally dysfunctional of Lancashire... in effect gamekeeper rather than poacher? (OK... maybe a bit of both at times! ) Other than that.... reviving the "Caley Animals"? For "IHE and Mantis" read "Jack and Victor"!

Having now recovered from the shock of the revelation that you appear to have been in a bookshop no less than twice in something like a week, I do appreciate your update. However I am not unduly concerned since the half dozen or so still on the shelf in Waterstones are the very final copies of the sixth print run which this book has enjoyed since it was first published 15 years ago. Preumably your next episode of crass and naive stupidity will be to start a thread suggesting that I should instead have written it about the High School or Millburn rather than the Royal Academy.

Out of order! Heilandee is one of the most respected visitors to this site, his contributions are greatly valued by many and on that basis it doesn't matter a toss about which club he supports. It's when you see the Dundee situation at first hand, as I did in Dingwall on Saturday, that you feel for the genuine Dundee fans who have had nothing to do with years of financial profligacy, who really wish it had never happened and who only want to be able to continue to support their club.

That was actually me from Dingwall on Open All Mics. Maybe it's worth adding that, in his interview with Richard Gordon, Terry did also say that not all the players had fish and chips and not all of them had beer either!

You speak for yourslef duckie!

Presumably, Scotty, your "most of" qualification refers to the one almost fatal period around 2000 where the stadium had to be handed over to the Trust and in excess of ?2M of debt miraculously disappeared from ICT's books. That, of course, means that ICT now owns no significant asset (players in contract and the Social Club being about it) to trade against any future financial crisis (not that I'm suggesting that one is likely.) In the warm afterglow of winning the First Division last season and returning to the SPL, I sometimes wonder if the Board have ever had an informal "what if" session on the scenario of NOT having bounced straight back up? What I am talking about is last year's ?947K debt (well actually a bit less than that since the bonuses to players would have been less in these circumstances)against continuing SFL income streams rather than those of the SPL again this season. That would have been quite a serious situation but not, I would suggest, in the same ballpark as a decade ago.

It does seem extremely harsh.... Let me be Devil's Advocate here and ask why any company which, long term, fails to meet its liabilities should be allowed to continue trading at all? It strikes me that a number of football clubs have got themselves into serious, long term financial problems and have gone into this state called "administration" which appears to allow them to tear up perfectly legal contracts with employees and show them the door. It is also not at all clear how much of the money some of them owe is actually paid back in this process. Then, at some point in the future, the company miraculously "comes out of administration" and seems to be able to carry on trading as if nothing had happened. One alternative might be for the law instead to require straight liquidation, with assets sold off to allow repayment as far as possible to creditors - with the sacked employees regarded as creditors and entitled to compensation along with the rest. In Dundee's case (and this is the SECOND time they've been in administration) I'm not even clear what assets the company owns since I believe that they do not even own Dens Park and it appears to me that they are, rather like Dickens' Mr. Micawber, quite simply "waiting for something to turn up". Maybe it's time that the football authorities addressed the fiscal lunacy which is rampant within the game by cracking down much harder than they do on clubs which cannot keep their house in order.

A case of beggars not being able to be choosers at two stages where there were enormous time and cost pressures to get an urgent job done. In 1995, a raft of planning requirements, including a ?1.3M approach road, meant that roughly ?1 of savings had to be made on a stadium project which was already way behind the timescale promised to the SFL. Hence the Main Stand + pitch part. Then in 2004 there was the urgent necessity to get ICT back to Inverness from Pittodrie in a situation where money was once again tight. As a result the Tulloch and Highland Council funded North and South stands were erected on a very short timescale to realise the SPL seating criterion of 6000 and get the team back playing in Inverness in January 2005. The only other part is the 200 seats on the west side of the ground which was a genuine attempt by Alan Savage when he was chairman to meet the needs of a Singing Section but which never quite took off.