Charles Bannerman

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:

Correct! The second that night (9.8.94.) was an own goal and the first (three) goal(s) in the league the following Saturday (13.8.94.) came from Herchie with his hat trick in 19 ninutes in a 5-2 home win over Arbroath.

And would you also pay for the necessary road infrastructure to get the traffic in and out of one of Inverness's most horrendous bottlenecks? Another £40M possibly? The current road network in that area of town struggles to cope with Highland Council HQ and the Aquadome being in that part of town. Getting 3500 to 7500 people away from there is a completely different ball game again.

I was standing right beside Bobby that night when that Barry goal went in. Bobby was on his feet! This is an absolutiely great thread! And how many clubs a mere 16 years old could boast such a wide variety of choice? I certainly had to think long and hard in order to make mine and might indeed change my mind a few times over the next few days. Maybe, given the embarrassment of riches, someone should start a new thread inviting "Top 10s"!

OK... if you want "exactly what it says on the tin".... the 2 all draw with St. Johnstone at Telford Street in February 1992. However if Caley Thistle games are allowed to be included, it would for me be a dead heat between two 4-3 scorelines - the already referred to defeat at Livingston in the Second Division and a 4-3 victory against Ayr United in Inverness, coming from 3-0 down.

This certainly sounds like a bit of overkill on the part of the SFA. Perhaps this is motivated by a genuine desire to shield young players from excessive competitive pressures and you can actually appreciate that when it's relevant, but this surely is a hefty overdose of Political Correctness which would even put Harriet Harman in the shade. If the above is the case, then I think the SFA need to waken up, smell the coffee and come to terms with the real world. It is a competitive place and while you can indeed over pressurise a situation I think that they have called this one seriously wrong. For instance, these very same under 17s will be studying for Highers, Standard Grades etc and will get results which inevitably will be compared with their peers. 30 odd years in my day job and in coaching athletics to a reasonably high level tells me that this kind of thing motivates youngsters. And what's the motivation on the field if league tables are banned and you can't even get the warm glow of satisfaction of seeing your result on your own club website? How prepared then are young Scottish players at last to emerge into the real world of competitive football - where we don't really seem to be producing much?! Alex also makes a very valid point about parents - not by any means all of them, but you do see the overcharged few going blue in the face with bulging veins in their foreheads. Oh, and at last to get to what should have been my first point. That was a very decent match report young man! I am sure that more of the same will be very welcome. Here's hoping the SFA Thought Police don't track down your URL and close you down though! :annoyed: