Charles Bannerman

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.

Wasn't there but remember it well! Think it might even have been a 93rd minute equlaiser. Next round Stenhousemuir away - 1-0 Brian Thomson screamer. Next round QF Rangers at Tannadice. But was there not a Scottish Cup second replay or something like that at Methil for Caley (sic) in the 80s against Stirling or Berwick...Urquhart header? Alex Smith manager of opposing team. Rangers in the next round... so it must have been 1984??

Yes... second time round, after it had been designated INE's favoured location. If I remember correctly, the first pronouncement had only East Longgman, West Seafield and Inshes but they were suddenly joined by Stratton Farm which shot to top of the list. I remember the very day the Stratton Farm rabbit emerged from the hat, Hugh Crout (ex President of Caley), made an instant claim that the motivation behind this was for INE to kick start the Golden Mile. Thereafter it was INE and Stratton Farm versus Caley Thistle and East Longman. The Board initially made a very ambiguous choice of Stratton but that was then overturned when the District Council agreed to lease land at East longman.

But, with the East End getting done up for the Commonwealth Games,the London Road Tavern, Springfield Vaults and Turnstiles might, with any luck, find their rather less than aesthetically appealing sites "redeveloped".

Third time round - so do I, so I am not even going to bother to reply to the OP on this occasion. You think nothing of it when it happens once and somebody floats a suggestion which is clearly miles out of tune with the vast majority. When it happens a second time, you are tempted to become impatient but do your best to be sympathetic and take the "poor soul,well I suppose there's one born evey minute" line. But when it gets to number three you do realise that such persistent idiocy can only be the result of a wind up! However I have to say that I wasn't too convinced by the suggestion on another similar thread that, partly on the grounds of similarity of name, the wind up merchant was one B Hornell. As I said elsewhere,even in the interests of winding up people on an ICT site, I simply couldn't conceive of BH writing of that club in such positive terms. In particular I think he would rather choke than refer to Inverness Caledonian THISTLE in the first person plural! So what will the next post be from "dougal"? Merge ICT and Ross County and build a new stadium at Tore? I just wonder who it is, though? I don't know how many folks have been on here long enough to remember an absolutely brilliant wind up which went on for ages (something to do with Larsson was it??) and was the work of a certain IHE?

Well if you had, it might have given you enough background on the club to save you the trouble of starting threads suggesting things which a large majority of people clearly regard as non starters. And no, it's not in print since it sold out some years ago.

What was this all about? Yes spill the beans. ICT for me. Yes AD, remind us about "pengate". Reading this thread again, it seems obvious now that the OP is on a fishing trip. "Dougal" to "Douglas" is not a massive leap of faith. Sorry to dissapoint you but the thread was most definitely not a fishing thread and a genuine poll , and no i'm not the person who you obviously think i am:tuttut: Dougal I think I have to believe Dougal here since the individual it is being suggested he is could never, even in pretence, have brought himself to write what it says in the OP and in particular could never have brought himself to refer to ICT as "we"!

OK Dougal... your campaign to change the name hasn't been too successful with over 90% voting for the status quo, so it now seems that you now want to relocate instead. So, given that an extensive study was made of this by Bruce Hare in 1993 and the realistic options in and around Inverness were very limited indeed, where would you be planning to go? I note that you include the Bught, or another City Centre localtion among your suggestions in your poll, whilst almost in the same breath bemoaning traffic congestion at East Longman. Strewth! In the absence of a bypass which remains as remote a prospect as ever, how on earth do you propose to get even a bottom of the range crowd of 3500 from the Bught along Glenurquhart Road and many of them then over the Ness Bridge at 5 o'clock on a Saturday? Then think "Old Firm" and double that up to 7000. But, since you've raised the issue, how about also giving us an overview of how the ICT Trust would fund this, unless you reckon it can be done solely by selling on the remaining 83 years of the East Longman lease? Finally, could I unobtrusively ask if you have read "Against All Odds"? In particular the chapter entitled "Finding A Home" discusses stadium location issues in some depth and the book hopefully also sheds some light on why, for instance, the stadium design and club name are as they are.

Yup, AAO sure was a bit of a moneyspinner. The best estimate is that it made a profit of £10 - 15,000 for the club. And just to confirm what I got out of it - the opportunity to give an account of an important part of the history of Inverness and a very nice engraved Caithness Glass bowl which wasn't even part of the deal but which they were good enough to present me with to mark publication. As for old Buenos, it's maybe quite good to give him the odd cameo appearance from time to time - just to remind us all of the considerable progress which football has made in Inverness over these years!

Buenos of That Ilk. A "prominent" Caley Rebel who posted on here for some time under that name. A "life long" Caley fan who, when taken to task for throwing the Chic Allan Trophy into the river, was alleged to have asked "So who was Chic Allan anyway?"

I have now had a chance to check that figure and the biggest number of Caley fans who ever voted against the merger was 226 at that first Rose Street meeting. In the case of Thistle (where arrangements were a bit different with a smaller membership scheme) it was 16. You also have to remember that the Howden End and a lot further afield was scoured again and again in the six week run up to the first Rose Street meeting so absolutely everybody with any significant anti merger sentiment was pulled in to make that 226. Of these, a very large proportion (including a number of prominent figures) put their reservations aside and came along to games from the start, even becoming involved in the likes of the Management Committee. Others relented at a fairly early stage. Of those who didn't, a number over the last 16 years will either have died or won't be in a position to go to games by having left the area. That doesn't leave many refuseniks around Inverness to be spreading the myth, but it still resurfaces - mainly on threads like this. Maybe I should copy some of this somewhere and simply paste it on to future threads which are bound to resurface every so often peddling this complete fantasy. The Rebels were actually quite good at propaganda which made them look a more substantial entity than they really were. Perhaps the funniest example was right at the start in the summer of 1993 when The Courier ran a readers' poll on whether a merger should take place or not. Incredibly, the good people of Inverness, many of whom had no great interest in football, overwhelmingly rejected the notion to the tune of a resounding 83%. Unsurprisingly, the result was recorded by the paper in a very inconspicuous corner. The best light I can shed on this amazing statistic does little more than explore the "means, motive, opportunity" dimension since it was suggested to me that at this time one B. "Chicky Allan" Hornell might just have been employed by John Menzies, newspaper distributors!

Given that ICT are currently sitting fourth in the SPL table, is that an altogether surprising statistic?

A lot of sense has been spoken on this thread. It begins with the overwhelming outcome of the poll (just take a look), it moves on to yngwie's robust questioning of the validity of the original question and continues with MUCH of what has been said in the last eight or so posts - of which I quote, as highlights, the above and this from yngwie... But did you have the foresight to see that the merger would never have been approved by members if the club names were killed off? (Sorry, I don't know how to do these multiple quote thingies.) It is absolutely correct to say that the merger would have suffered instant death had the original club names disappeared. Those who were present at the First Battle of Rose Street (for the benefit of the younger generation this was one of three highly contentious Caley merger meetings at the Rose Street Hall and took place on 1.12.93.) may remember that the Caley Rebels, even before they left the hall, were adopting a fallback position of what eventually became the name. Although there was still a further year of grief, the adoption of "Caledonian Thistle" played a major, major part in securing the agreement which eventually was made. Similarly on the Thistle side, the name gave them at least something which they felt they had held on to in what had to be an unequal merger, given the disparity between its two components. (Another feature of that is the frequency with which the club is referred to simply as "Caley" which - despite my Dalneigh roots - I regret, but this is to some extent inevitable.) In "Against all Odds", I quote the average combined attendance at Kingsmills and Telford Street at around 600 and have seen no evidence in the intervening years to contradict that. There were, for instance, 4800 at Saturday's St Johnstone game. Almost two decades on, it's therefore difficult to conceive of how thin Jags and Caley attendances were back in the early-mid 90s. Perhaps think "Clach - plus" (but not TOO big a "plus") I could even be generous and concede that the "stayaways" ran to a bit more than 12th Man's 5% estimate, but even then they are still a drop in the ocean compared with even the modest attendances of the day - never mind current attendance levels. And that's before you start questioning how many of these guys who keep materialising in pubs to tell you how much they are missed were frequent visitors to games in any case. Buenos Hornell.... are you still out there? :biggrin: Here's another way of looking at it. At none of the Battles of Rose Street did the Rebels - despite scouring the highways and byways just as thoroughly as the Establishment did - ever muster more than about 250 votes against the merger. We also know quite well that a great number of them subsequently came on board and have been supporting the club for years. So how many refuseniks does that leave? And 16 years on, how many of even these are still in Inverness, still alive and still refusing to go to games? You can also ask the same question of the Thistle fans where the numbers of dissidents were even smaller both in percentage and absolute terms. The crucial, central feature of the 1994 merger was the inequality of its two components and a solution had to be found which reflected that, whilst still convincing the Caley and Thistle support that it was neither respectively selling them short nor constituting a takeover. That was eventually achieved - by the skin of the club's teeth - and an integral part of that was the club name which then had the "Inverness" extension added in 1995 partly at the Council's request to reflect the Stadium land deal. "Inverness Caledonian Thistle" therefore not only reflects 125 years of football history in this city but also the fact that so many odds were overcome to put together a club which, within a decade of its formation, brought SPL status and a great deal more to this city. I make the final statement of this post with a degree of mixed feelings since I am reluctant even to dignify the original question with an answer but.... if it ain't broke - don't suggest trying to fix it.

Unfortunate, but as long as these old dinosaurs didn't manage to persuade you that their view was ever a significant problem after the legalities got sorted out in 1995, no harm will have been done, so just continue to enjoy supporting SPL football in Inverness. (And hopefully we can avoid yet another round of discussion here on the old myth which keeps resurfacing on this forum.)

Strangely enough, in random conversation in the Social Club tonight about the kind of factors which affect and in reality DON'T affect a football club, I quoted the instance of David Bingham leaving "to be nearer his family" (at Gretna - who?) prompting an outbreak of "we're a' doomed!"

A very good read if I may venture an opinion.

As long ago as that! It's strange how time passes since it feels as if it was more recently and it also feels as if Daisy was at ICT for longer than the three years which Caley D has revealed that it was. It's interesting, though, that Daisy is another of these players that the fans simply don't have a bad word for - and very rightly so!

I'm sure Daisy's debut would have been the first game of that season (95-96) as he signed in the summer, if memory serves (I was only 10 at the time). Mabawswa... thanks for that suggestion which I have been able to check up and confirm from Ian Broadfoot's season by season summary on the official site. Tokelyisvictorious is quite right when he says that there is very limited information on the internet. When I tried to google "Daisy Ross" all I got was a few references to people genuinely called that... and several links to this thread! And a variety of "David Rosses" are there in numbers. As a result I can't find out when Daisy left ICT to go to Ross County despite a certain amount of (but by no means exhaustive) trawling through Ian's summaries. I could guess that it might have been about 1999 or 2000?

Are you sure that was Daisy's ICT debut DJS? It was certainly Mike Teasdale's debut that day and Brian Thomson's also and they both went straight into the team. I have no recollection about it being Daisy's debut but you may well be right.

And, given that Daisy left ICT within the last decade or thereby, your definition of "elderly" would be...? :biggrin:

For my money, Daisy's finest hour was in the 1995 Inverness Cup Final against Ross County at Grant Street (2500 crowd in Grant Street!!!!) when he charged down the left wing again and again (only 12th Man seems to have mentioned the legendary "head down"!)creating havoc in the County defence. Iain Stewart got Man of the Match for a hat trick in a 5-2 ICT victory but many felt it was Daisy's game. Daisy's family own a fish business in Kinlochbervie but I don't know if that extends to Rollers. The Apocryphal tale was that he used to come to and from Inverness in a fish lorry. I remember one pulled into the layby on the A9 beside the stadium one night during extra time and some wag shouted "taxi for Ross". Daisy also made a big impact when he went to Clach and indeed - "gentleman" does not begin to describe. PS - I also have to empathise with Caley100's comment on the generation gap on this forum in his reference to the original question..."does anyone remember Daisy Ross?" :biggrin: