Kingsmills

What a very good suggestion. I am sure that a very suitable charity will benefit considerably from the members of this site alone.

Something done at last about this curse would be a very fitting tribute and perhaps something positive to emerge from this tragedy. We are brought together my a love of football and of ICT in particular but this puts the trivial nature of sport and the various, spats, niggles and emnities we have with our fellow posters into stark perspective. Mea Culpa as much as anyone. I have always been a good and willing listener to the concerns of others but, and I think that being a middle aged man brought up in a stupidly stoically Highland tradition has been a large factor, I have always had a tendency to bottle up and cover up my own worries when sharing them, or at least discussing them, would have been better for myself, my family and colleagues both present and past. If by being more open and honest about ourselves and offering the help and experience that we are able to give to others can prevent another such tragedy then some good will come of this and I too am very happy to make myself available to listen to anyone at any time. I have been as guilty as any but perhaps, whilst still having robust discussion and disagreement, we can start being a little more respectful and tolerant of one another not just on this site, not just on social media but in general.

What dreadful news. Another much valued and respected member of the ICT family gone far too prematurely. I can't add to what has already been said but fully endorse every word.

It was a very blatant and inexplicable error. Not sure I would describe it as 'grave' though. A grave error is one that might result in death or injury. Football, as important as it is, is after all only a game.

The right decision will be made in the end but only by the SFA throwing out it's own rulebook and not out of any sense of justice but only to bring the ridicule which they have rightly been subjected to to an end. It's clear that the system needs to be reformed. There is no reason why written reasons for the decision can't be issued with 24 hours. Why give them effectively a full week to concoct something ? Justice in the end but those charged with our national game are a national embarrassment. Actually, the way this was going viral, they were quickly becoming an international embarrassment. Despite the volte face we still need to see in writing why two of the panel came to such an extraordinary conclusion in the first place. Job only partly done.

We should turn up. We should do our very best to win and have Keatings fully stripped lift the trophy.

Who ever drafted that official club statement spoke for us all and did so very eloquently. Very well said indeed.

In the final season in the Highland League, Caley's average league attendance was circa 340 and Thistle's under 200. So ever if every single regular attendee boycotted the new club the effect would have been no more than three figures. In fact, probably no more than five dozen or so, Mainly Caley, fans stayed away initially and many of them returned as soon as success and entertaining attacking football emerged under Steve Paterson.

More than half of the current population of the greater Inverness area were either not living there, unborn or less than eight years of age at the time of the merger. There are many and complex reasons why we have been unable to sustain a large and loyal supporter base. The most important of these at the moment is that there is a team twenty minutes away playing more entertaining football with better players in a more pleasant and accessible stadium while we are struggling in the second tier. I appreciate that there are those that are obsessed with and very vocal about battles fought and lost over quarter of a century ago but the merger only had a very limited effect on attendances at the outset of our journey as a combined club and the effect now sits somewhere between negligible and non existent. We are unlikely to ever fill our current ground but crowds of three to four thousand home fans are entirely possible for a team playing attractive football in the mid to higher reaches of the Premierhip especially if improvements are made to such things as facilities, car park management, catering and the general matchday experience.

We didn't 'bottle' it. We overcame a very talented and rather highly paid development team of a club with close to twenty five times our income in horrendous weather conditions and in the face of two terrible officiating decisions one of which deprived us of a penalty and a player for a large chunk of the second half and the other of a perfectly valid goal. A little more positively on reaching a national final might not go amiss.

Poor refereeing decisions can and do cost games and on another day rwo absolutely abysmal errors by the officials could well have cost us our place in the final of this competition and a modest but, in our current circumstances, essential boost to our coffers.

Yogi may have presided over the Cup triumph but was also responsible for the start of our long decline and then went on to get Raith Rovers relegated from which they are only starting to recover. His ability as a manager is such that nobody has been prepared to touch him since.

Sadly, it's not just the football pitch where he is clueless and not at the football where he does most harm

Better late than never. This 'tiny oversight' is redolent of the way we have treated half of our potential fan base for far far to long. Hopefully, lessons have, at long last, been learned.

A worthless gimmick. There may be a couple of dozen or so Gaelic speakers in our home crowd, two or three might even have it as a first language but each and every one of them is also fluent in English. If we are really wanting to encourage a portion of the population of the Highlands who might not be regular attendees then announcements in Polish would be more effective and demonstrate an outward looking, embracing and welcoming attitude notwithstanding the xenophobic and insular madness of exiting the European Union.

The explanation is clear and obvious. We have been in the Championship now for three seasons and have lost the best part of a million pounds in each of these seasons. No point in blaming the board who have, in general terms, worked hard to keep us afloat and out of administration and maintaining full time football albeit with a squad much diminished in terms of numbers and quality. The mistakes were made not so much recently but in the immediate aftermath of our Scottish Cuo triumph.

About as bad an idea as it was for West Ham to reappointed Mr Moyes as the manager to oversee their relegation.

One of Steve Paterson's finest qualities was to promote squad harmony and unity and that team spirit took us a lot further than ought otherwise to have been the case. His team was always greater than the sum of it's parts with many apparently lost causes being chased down. Brewster, second time around, Yogi and Foran seed division within the camp and the team paid the price. Robbo has a mixed record when it comes to a United dressing room who would run into the ground for their manager and team mates but, with the limited talent and limited resources available to us, only the Pele like team spirit is likely to lead to promotion.

A devastating affliction that came close to ruining the life of an ICT legend. Well done to Brian Rice for self reporting and, whilst the football authorities will obviously have to take appropriate disiplinary measures, I hope he also receives the support, treatment and understanding he requires. Like any addition, there is the potential to ruin lives and, whilst there is always scope for responsible gambling, I'm sure that a lot of us enjoy the odd flutter, football needs to cure itself of the toxic relationship it often has with the gambling industry.

I bet that Ross County would have loved to have been drawn away to us too!

It may be galling to be unable to compete with a team from a suburb of Aberdeen but I don't see how a well run, well funded and relatively well supported club making their way up the league system is in any way ruining the game. Much better to have hungry and ambitious clubs in the lower reaches of the SPFL than the likes of Cowdenbeath or East Stirling who for too many years were content fo bumb along the bottom in deteriorating grounds secure in the knowledge that there was no hole in the net they could for though. Now, at long last, there is a route for ambitious and well run non league clubs to make there way along. A long overdue breath of fresh air let into a stale and crumbling former closed shop.

Not too disappointed. Curry didn't bring much spice to our attack.

Very competent and professional performance yesterday against a team with twice our budget and the best possible reaction to last week's setback against Arbroath. Realistically, we are now in a battle for second spot and it's impossible to overstate just how important it is that we retain that place. History shows very clearly that teams occupying third or fourth place in this division have little or no chance of prevailing in the play offs due to the extra effort of the two extra games. Second place gives a chance and has been good enough to achieve promotion more than once. Whilst a cup run would be a bonus, all efforts must now be on retaining second place and giving ourselves a chance of promotion. It's no exaggeration to say that retaining full time football in Inverness may depend on it.

Whilst there are obvious practical and commercial advantages of artificial surfaces, professional football should only be played on grass unless and until the characteristics of the two surfaces are far more similar than they are now. As far as the serious problems that our friends and neighbours from Merkinch are now faced with, we should do what we can to help them and if that means a bit more work for the ground staff and playing on a poorer surface for a few weeks then, in my view, that is a price we should pay. Despite our recent difficulties, we are a large commercial undertaking with a seven figure turnover whereas they are a struggling community asset linked to an area of town with more than enough issues already. I, for one, am very pleased to see our CEO articulating the club's willingness to help if we can.

He had been ill for some considerable time. He was, as has been said, the mainstay of that wonderful double title winning Jags team of the early 70s. He may now sadly be gone but he leaves us Jags fans of a certain vintage with memories that we still cherish nearly five decades on.