Kingsmills

Grant Street looks better than Cappielow!

A very good point. I am struggling to think of a single player produced my Elgin during their two decades or so in the Scottish Leauue. There must be some but, right now, I can't think of any whereas the Scottish Premiership and various leagues in England from their top division down have been peppered with players produced or improved by their time at the Longman. Take a long look in the mirror and wind your neck in Graham Tatters. If you have nothing positive to contribute to the debate then much better to contribute nothing in much the same way as your club has contributed nothing to Scottish football this millennium. A pathetic state of affairs. When Elgin were in the Highland League they reached the quarter finals of the Scottish Cup. Since admission to the Scottish League I'm not entirely sure that they have even reached that far in the Challenge Cup. In fact their biggest achievement since has probably been coming within two minutes of holding us to a draw in the Scottish Cup, a prospect that had their fans almost wetting themselves with excitement until that balloon was punctured not once but twice in the dying minutes.

I agree that the Elgin chairman should be concentrating on addressing the serial underachievement of his own club rather than stubbornly standing in the way of progress for the league system as a whole. A club serving a community with the population of Elgin should be somewhere between the bottom of the Championship and the top of League One. Instead, they have been forever stuck in the lowest tier and generally towards the bottom of that tier at that. They really need to get their own house in order before trying to pull down the houses of others.

Always best to be honest. Just ask Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnston!

Agreed. I have not worn a football top for about thirty years but will be purchasing this one to try to support the club through this difficult time albeit in a very modest way.

The new kit is a huge improvement on last season's. A little black trim around the collar and cuffs to fully reflect our heritage and it would have been perfect. Red and blue vertical stripes are our clear identity. Can we please never again revert to the bland, The Rangers style, tedious blue top that we seem to adopt from time to time.

Even before the pandemic struck I was concerned by the fact that we were increasingly struggling to make full time football work in it's conventional way on dwindling financial resources. Part time football was and remains an obvious destination but that is far from ideal and would make it all but impossible to get back to the top tier in the short of even medium term. A combination of full time and part time seemed a much better solution but, although we have had part time players in full time squads in the past, Jimmy Calder and Paul Ritchie notably come to mind, that is very difficult to work with the full timers training during the day and, due to work or educational commitments, the part timers only available in the evenings. So, I wonder if we could think a bit differently. Since the beginning of professional football, full time players have tended to train daily for about four hours almost invariably in the morning and very early afternoon. Is there any reason at all why they couldn't put those same hours in in the late afternoon and evening on a daily basis ? That way, they would themselves be able to combine full time football with some other employment or, in the case of the younger full timers, education or apprenticeships to supplement the very modest full time salaries we are now able to offer. Those full time players and coaching staff who were not otherwise engaged would have more time for community work in schools and elsewhere during the day thus bringing the club more closely into the community. The biggest benefit though is that we could then bring in some of the country's best part time players and fully integrate them by being able to train with the full timers for two or three hours two or three times a week. There are thirty or forty part time players in the lower leagues who are more skillful and have more potential than very many of the full time players playing in the Championship or the lower reaches of the Premiership who do not, for very understandable reasons, want to give up good careers or relocate to the Highlands for our very modest full time wages. However, if we could help find them employment in their own line of business or a place at college combined with what would be a very generous part time wage and the opportunity to play with full time colleagues at a higher level that could be a very much more attractive proposition for them. Could this be a way forward not just in the Championship but even if and when we are fortunate enough to return to the top tier or am I barking up the wrong tree entirely?

I have lived long enough to have viewed some of the most appalling images of inhumanity from children with skin dropping off having been burned with Naphalm in Vietnam to innocent aid workers having their heads sawn off by craven cowards in balaclavas in the Middle East. However, in all honesty, I don't think that anything chilled by blood as much as the sight of a white supremacist in a police uniform causally leaning on the neck of a fellow human being initially pleading for his life and then being very patently lifeless for a full nine minutes. Almost worse, the image of three of his equally culpable colleagues standing back and doing not a thing to intervene and prevent the murder taking place before their eyes and a matter of feet from them. I do not condone the violence and looting which serves nobody but can understand the outrage and the feeling of enough is enough and was pleased and proud to see so many white people standing shoulder to shoulder with their African American brothers and sisters. That country needed, as never before, an empathetic voice of authority with a credible promise of real and lasting change. Instead what they got was a loathsome subhuman pouring petrol on the flames calculating that more death and devastation, especially if the deaths were more black deaths would play well to his base and improve his rapidly diminishing prospects of re election. Never have I been so ashamed by the thought that there is Scottish blood flowing through the veins of that vile reptile.

Even if we got to that stage, that would mean a maximum of about eight or nine hundred fans in our ground. We were haemoraging cash in the Championship with crowds of two and a half thousand and people in hospitality and the stadium bar open, neither of which are likely to be available. In order to even think about being able to field a team, we would need to come up with innovative solutions to plug that gap.

Neil Doncaster not doing his job adequately well. What a ridiculous suggestion!

Had a 'posh seat' in the South Stand with my joy at the final whistle and for the pitch celebrations afterwards slightly tempered by really wishing that we had saved a few quid and were with the main body of ICT fans. Got a great and impressive view of the pre match display though !

Good that there might be some live professional football back in the United Kingdom. However, I don't think it marks any step on the road to Scottish football returning. The EPL is expending a huge amount of money to return with no income from fans. The financial gulf between the EPL and the SPFL, even at our Premiershio level, means that option is not available to us. I honestly can't see how professional football can return in Scotland until August at the earliest and only then if our clubs stop the usual internecine bickering and all pull together.

For all the reasons alluded to above and probably some more that we haven't thought of yet, league reconstruction is very unlikely to happen We should be firmly focusing on what will, in all the circumstances, be an extremely difficult and challenging season in the Championship in very many regards In the unlikely event that agreement can be reached on reconstruction that would be a very welcome bonus and we can recalibrate then. For now, we need to stay firmly focused on merely ensuring that the club survives.

Not strictly ICT related but I was sorry to read of the death of former Clach forward Charlie Kennedy. My late father was a staunch Clach fan as a result of which I probably spent more time in Grant Street than was healthy in the late 60s and early 70s and Charlie was a firm favourite. I am sure that the whole Inverness football community would wish to send condolences to his family and friends.

What certainly isn't necessary is another dose if austerity. Time to renew the economy with investment in sustainable non carbon producing industry for which Scotland is well placed. I am now going to utter a phrase that surprises even myself but credit to Douglas Ross. In the one particular regard at least whatever his true motivation was. In every other regard he was a shite junior minister and an equally shite assistant referee who was never going to swap either his literal or his metaphorical flag for a whistle.

The measures put in place by the UK government in an economic sense are broadly welcome. However, they are not as generous or as comprehensive as similar measures put in place by the Rebublic of Ireland, Denmark and Norway all of which have similar populations and resources as Scotland and all of which through having control of their own borders, have very significantly lower death rates than the United Kingdom. What on earth makes you think that an independent Scotland with full control of the fiscal levers and border controls, would fare any less well than our similar European neigbours ?

Just to be clear, unless you have missed the vital recent public health advice. If you have any doubt at all about your fitness to drive through failing eyesight, it is vital that you drive a minimum of 30 miles to the nearest popular beauty spot, preferably on a public holiday which also happens to be your wife's birthday, get out of your car and sit by a pleasant water course for a minimum of 15 minutes and then drive back to where you set off from. You must also have a vulnerable young child in your vehicle.This is particularly important if you should, under no reasonable circumstances, have been at the point of departure in the first place.

Appalling but sadly not surprising. Typical of their elitist arrogance and the disdain that they have for the ordinary people and the huge sacrifices and restrictions of their own rights and liberties they have made during this pandemic. The only reason that Cummings Johnston Hancock, Whittey and countless others caught the virus in the first place is their reckless disregard for their own social distancing rules from the very outset.

Four more days and these draconian conditions that we have all been living under will start to slowly ease. It will be a slow, long and sometimes stuttering path on the road back to some sort of normality but we have been provided with a path, perhaps not the path we would have chosen but a much clearer and safer path than at least one nation of the United Kingdom has been provided with. The reason we are now able at last to embark on that path is not mainly down to our political leaders who have made mistakes but again not nearly as many and as reckless mistakes as the political leaders of one nation of the United Kingdom and, sadly, the United Kingdom as a whole but due to the fact that we the ordinary people, have been sensible and considerate of and compassionate to others and have as a result, spared the lives of countless of our fellow Scots. If we, or at least the great majority of us, continue to act in such a responsible way and follow the new rules and guidelines, whatever they may be, we will continue to save lives and Hasten the day we can get back to something like normal. Well done to everyone. It has been long and hard but we are getting there.

Maybe slightly harsh on one of our cup final heroes but absolutely agree on Stuart Morrison.

Absolutely agree. With the exception of Hearts, every other team in the division is likely to be in the same boat and, if past experience is anything to go by Hearts might take a while to adjust to the drop. An opportunity to refresh and renew as well as the very necessary cutting of costs. I feel that we have often been guilty of bringing in fairly average players in the past as the expense of promoting and developing local talent. Now, out of adversity, we might have an opportunity to do just that.

My post was more of a hope than an expectation. I am expecting Hearts to lodge a legal challenge with maybe Partick and Falkirk joining in. There remains the outside possibility that rather than getting involved in lengthy and expensive litigation, the SPFL might agree to a temporary expansion of the Premierhip which, from our point of view would be excellent but still only a distant possibility. I would not rule out the ridiculous and unfair fudge of temporarily increasing the Premierhip to thirteen teams with one team being idle each round of fixtures to cynically buy Hearts off. It is the Scottish football authorities we are speaking about and Hearts are part of the establishment.

The SPFL have now agreed that the Premiership season should now be concluded on a similar basis to the other divisions with Celtic being crowned champions and Hearts relegated. I have no difficulty with that. Although not ideal it does have a certain fairness. The important thing now is that we draw a line under this season and put all the rancor and divisions of recent weeks and all clubs work collaboratively with the appropriate government agencies to try to work towards starting next season in some manner that allows clubs to survive. Season 2020/21 is not likely to start on schedule or in a normal fashion but if everyone pulls together it can surely finish in a much more normal manner come next May or June. Being able to do that depends entirely on the all concerned focusing firmly on the future and putting the hugely damaging and embarrassing recent past behind us.

Yes. It says that we gave at least some consideration to the interests of other clubs and to the integrity of the competition. The only two reasons that league reconstruction is being considered at all is that Dundee appeared to be gullible enough to fall for the bribe and that the team at the bottom of the premiership is one of the 'elite' clique. Were it Hamilton, St Mirren or Ross County at the bottom it would not still be being discussed at all.

It's not going to happen. Scottish football can't agree on anything. Especially, they can't agree on anything that makes sense and, since league reconstruction makes particular sense at this time, it won't happen.