Oddquine

Second win of the season.......Killie u19s 2 ICT u19s 3.. They lost the last game at home against Killie 4-3.so maybe starting to gel. But if next season the u19s are those born after 1/1/1994 (not sure how it works, tbh), at the least Jack Sutherland,Tom Smith, Martin Laing, Andy Greig and Calum Dingwall, that I am pretty sure of, will be too old...and it is likely to mean that many replacements from the under 17s to make up numbers..so back to square one? I'm ambivalent re a reserve league or an under 21/23/25 or whatever league with some overage players as a staging post to give a level between u19 and first team football, so it is feasible for clubs to grow their own players,...though, as far as I know, the bounce games arranged sometimes for match fitness/practice for first team players have a proportion of under 19s participating....so I can't see why a reserve/under whatever age league wouldn't work much the same.......though a reserve league with no top age limits would likely be more useful re satisfying the need for match practice for peripheral/injured players and the need to blood under 19s. It is, after all, unlikely, at least in the short/medium term, we would ever have the equivalent of two signed teams of first team players plus first team bench warmers needing regular games....and I can't see more than the usual suspects managing to afford to sign that size of squad anyway, so most clubs would be in the same boat. But then I don't know a lot about football...and I still haven't worked out if the powers that be in the SPL and SFA have any more insight re football than I do, as the commonsense and pragmatic approach seems never to be an option in their scheme of things.

What do you mean disappeared? He hasn't disappeared any more than any of the rest of the under 19 squad has in the ICT frame of reference regarding being any part of the whole extended ICT set-up. He's still playing for them.as are all the rest.

I take everybody's points. If I lived in that neck of the woods, and could attend youth games (or first team ones) with any kind of regularity, I'd be happy to do reports etc....but, as it is, I rely on the internet for my football fixes...and one of my fixes are the youth teams I have followed via the Courier reports since the reports started to be published. The coverage of the first team on this site is superb, no question.....but there is even less regarding the youth sides than there was on the old site.and that wasn't up to much. I kinda liked being able to follow the progress of boys up through the age groups to the under 19s and beyond. I even watch out for those names I recognise, but who are no longer here, if I know where they are playing now. OK......I know I'm sad......but I am harmless, if opinionated. Doofer's Dad, it wasn't so much what you said it was more the way you said...what got me was mostly the If the under 19s appear to be not just not doing too well, but to be actually completely outclassed, then that must raise some questions about the current youth set up. I always understood our youth set up to be very good. Perhaps there is just a poor peer group locally in that age group. You could have just said, "Has something gone wrong with the youth set up that we don't know about?"...and I'd not have ranted as much. Sorry!

I should think you are correct in your second paragraph, lukemackay. There is not a thing wrong with the under-19s.......they are doing the best they can with what they have. How do you define outclassed anyway? Would outclassed be playing utter p1sh, as the first team has done more than once? Or would it be giving 100% and being unlucky in front of goal, as the first team has on more than one occasion as well.....or maybe having a referee who wouldn't know the rules of the game if they bit him on the bahookey? How would anyone from ICT not at the games know the under-19s had been outclassed anyway........given that the only place you get more than a straight scoreline in a fixture table is on the under-19 pages of just about every other SPL team...but not on the non-existent under-19 (or any other youth squads) pages on this one, I note........and the other team's reports don't even usually give the ICT team line-up, far less acknowledge that there was any other team on the pitch but theirs. If we are going to do logical and realistic, as opposed to the small nucleus of ICT support who do wishful thinking and fantasy to an embarrassing degree, we will accept that a relatively small team, in SPL terms, has a catchment area for a youth set up much smaller in population of an appropriate age, though a lot larger in area than most, if not all the other SPL Teams. But the number of acres in a catchment area does not negate the fact that if that acre is occupied only by sheep, or windmills, or peat bogs, or forests etc,.....there are no prospective footballers to be pulled into an ICT youth system. The Highlands, including Inverness and Nairn, at the 2001 census, had 4% of the population of Scotland........which means we have much the same population as Aberdeen City, without the rural periphery, have half the population of the city of Edinburgh and a sixth of the population of Glasgow.....and that does not include all the Central Belt between and around both. Add to that, the economic restraints under which ICT has to operate, which means that the option to cross the world, as the biggest SPL clubs can, and poach those that they perceive as the best from anywhere in the world at lesser transfer cost than if they were already full time first team professionals does not exist..so the catchment area for youth players for some SPL teams expands exponentially...but not for ICT. The same economic restraints will also limit the intake to the ICT youth system from elsewhere in Scotland, because, if you sign a youngster, there is an obligation to maintain that individual away from home...which could be anywhere from Orkney/Shetland down and, in the current, or even the past economic climate, the cost of digs does/did not come cheap.......so the obvious option is to go for prospects who live fairly locally, and whose parents are prepared to ferry them everywhere they are needed at no cost to ICT. We had no under-19 squad in the relegation year....so much of what we had then were let go to save money. We held on to what was perceived as the best of the under-19s, as in Ross, G Shinnie, Morrison and Sutherland...so in the first year back in the SPL, nine under-17s were pulled into it...good and fairly successful under-17s when paying at their own level...and augmented (as far as I'm aware, because reporting on, or even mentioning, anything but the first team on any ICT official site, either this one or the old version, appears to be something which is not perceived to interest the punter who doesn't think much beyond the next SPL game, so accurate information is at the level of piles of hobby horses' droppings) by the new signings eligible age-wise to participate. Ergo we played the under-19 games in 2010/1011 with a nucleus of a squad which had never faced a team anything up to four years older and a lot more physically developed. And this season, six of that squad were let go, rightly or wrongly, and another eight of the then current under 17 squad were brought in.......so this season was always liable to be a repeat of the previous one. (I can't speak for the success of the under-17 squad from which the players were taken, because it is a long time now since the Courier gave reports on ICT youth teams....something they regularly did in the years up to the beginning of 2010.......they seem to be just as disinclined as this website/forum is to consider youth teams as a part of ICT's future.) So not a lot different, with respect to the under-19s imo, as to what Terry has been doing with the first team....cutting his coat according to his cloth, and doing the best he can with what is available, with the view of benefiting ICT. In the case of the under-19s, that would be in spotting and encouraging players who are capable of becoming first team players in the future. The under-19 league is no less a development one than any from the under 11 ones, up...even if the fact that the Clydesdale Bank sponsors it makes appear as something more important in the scheme of competition and the "my team are better than your team" stakes. At no time have either Terry or Charlie Christie ever even suggested that any more than a few of those moving up to the under-19s are capable of reaching the highest levels, natural ability, attitude and freedom from injury permitting..and I should think the same applies to the 130 or so young people within the whole youth system. A youth system is only as good as the players available for it to train......and a youth system in the Highlands will, with the best will in the world, never have as many players coming through who are capable of playing at the highest levels as the same system in any big city. Next season might see an improvement......unless the powers that be decide to do the same again and replace half or more of the squad, rather than just moving out those who will be over-age by next season and no longer eligible to play.......in which case, it will be same old, same old.

To do with Grow a Beard for the Archie Foundation? <sorry.thought I'd quoted alternative maryhill post #23>

Totally agree.... A start has been made by changing the crass UK Settlement Laws which legally allowed members of the royal family to marry or adopt any religion but Catholicism......and if I were in the Scottish Government, my immediate reaction to that change would have been to ban all Orange and Hibernian Parades as constituting incitement to hatred....and waited to see the effect of that before making life difficult for the ordinary football fan, with the usual political wooliness when it comes to crafting bills. Never quite understood, not just the Scottish penchant, but the UK penchant for allowing marches which will by their very nature, produce a reaction from those who disagree with them....usually violent. ..and many of which are intended to do just that. When does freedom of speech, assembly and the right to be a complete dick get subsumed by the majority, who can cope with life without hating anyone, right to go about their daily business without having to avoid flailing fists and being kettled for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Why call it a Bigotry bill anyway..isn't bigotry covered to the last dotted i and crossed t in lots of other laws. Why not call a shovel a shovel and call it a Bill "to outlaw Protestant/Catholic sectarianism which has no business existing in Scotland anyway.and a lot less business existing in the beautiful game"........but that wouldn't be PC, would it..even when we all know what triggered it? The racist, homophobic, and (whisper it) anti-gypsy etc remarks/chants have already been addressed umpteen times elsewhere....both via the EU and UK wide laws ...and can, could have been, and probably were, prosecuted when complaints were made. Imo.no complaint....no hurt feelings and the recognition that it is good natured banter fan to fan....but that would be too commonsensical.....to look at time, place, context and level of offence caused. That is, imo, the one drawback of the internet..it does allow the completely irrational PC individual to spend their lives trawling the internet to find something which offends them...and when you add PC lip readers and Youtube to the mix......the complaints by people who were not actually there grow exponentially. Shades of Mary Whitehouse and her compaining to the Beeb about stuff she had never heard/seen .and the Beeb actually taking notice of her. Fan to individual player bigotry is a different matter altogether..but again the sectarian issue only applies to the numpties who support the Big 2..most of whom outside Glasgow don't do it because they know anything about the background, or even what they are celebrating/denigrating..but because it is part of the whole Rangers/Celtic rivalry and a learned behaviour. I guarantee that vast swathes of Celtic fans in the North are not Catholic....and while vast swathes of Rangers Fans may be theoretically Protestant....I'd guess most of both sets might put Church of Scotland on census forms, but never have entered any kind of church outside School end of term church services. I have always had Celtic as my second team after my home Highland League one, until ICT got into the Premier...and Celtic have now been relegated to third in my Saturday checking of scores, and ICT elevated to first...and my sister is a rabid Rangers supporter..and as far as I am aware supports no other team. Neither of us are religious, though technically brought up C of S..but we did, in our younger days do rivalry to the nth degree...she liked the Beatles, I liked the Stones, for example....and our choices of teams to support had less to do with the backgrounds of the teams and a lot more to do with hacking the other off..and going along with our friends. I do think that many clubs have the facility to police their own fans......I should think that ICT would be aware of those fans who buy tickets as ICT supporters and go to games against the Old Firm wearing Celtic/Rangers scarves, and I know there are some who do.......even if they support ICT all the rest of the time. Not easy to change attitudes......even when those who have the attitudes haven't a clue where they came from....but I think you should start locally to change attitudes...and if enough clubs do that then maybe, eventually , attitudes will start to change. Little point in Rangers and Celtic trying to remove the bile of sectarianism, when other clubs do not do the same.

Can I ask something which will come across as being really thick? But please bear in mind that I don't see a lot of footie nowadays, and haven't much since the late sixties, bar the odd time I have been able to organise being in the right place at the right time to take in an ICT game/u-19 ICT game. When I used to stand watching the game from the side of my local Highland League team's dugout in the 1960's and saw the very little of the action I could see from the same level as the players and the dugout, or the marginally better view given by standing on a small rise, none of it did much to let me see the width of the park, far less the length of it. I celebrated lots of Forres Mechanics goals without ever seeing them at all and cursed at a lot of opposing teams goals without ever seeing them either.! Anyway, I always used to wonder how the management could possibly overview a game, and judge player performance from the kind of limited view I had on the ground....and was always surprised on the very odd occasions, in them days, when managers used to get incandescent on being banished to the stand for some misdemeanor or other.because I always used to think that at least they could see from the stand what was actually happening on the pitch, as opposed to assuming that everybody they couldn't see was sticking to whatever the game plan was......because results very often showed that they could not possibly have been. And as football has become more technical and tactics have become more pre-planned, I was just wondering if Terry or one of the management team, during games, sits and watches the game from a seat in the stands, with a direct mobile phone or walkie talkie.connection to the dugout so that there is actually somebody who can see what the punter sees...........the shape of the team, the interaction between the team.members.in the various areas etc, the work rate and efficacy of the individuals in the team, how they read the game and how useful their off the ball running is. etc.. And if they don't, why don't they?

Come on Huisdean this is caleythistleonline , half these posters dont have a clue ! And the other half only think they have a clue. .

And won't half be a blow to the u-19 squad in the SFA youth cup!

Boys and their toys! I prefer Pokemon myself!

I just went on to paypal and sent it using the details from the time I sent the first one, as I found the same as you when I tried using links. I just hope it arrives.

Eve just let Adam think he discovered woman, when in fact Eve formed Adam out of the stuff she had just scraped off her foot in the Garden of Eden! And little of the rest applies to me, at least...bar possibly Chemical Properties #2.

Not as dottled as I thought. Remembered,.eventually, without help......so second payment on way.

I swear my mind is going. I thought I'd done the sponsorship after you so kindly changed my email address, Scotty.....but if I have, you haven't noticed....so I suspect that I haven't. Put me down for one £10 which I'll get off by paypal right now, (or as sure as Caithness is windy I'll forget again),,,,,and if you remind me after the 20th, I'll send another £10 (but I will need to be reminded as auld age has come and my memory tends to go walkabout!) Edited to add ......that's the first £10.75 sent.

Seems to me that if boys give up football because they don't get a letter thanking them for turning up to be coached when they have been let go, then they don't have the makings of a possible professional football player in the first place. Isn't the active encouragement in the coaching itself? I should think that you are talking about the (somewhat unrealistic) expectations of adults, and not those of the boys, because I would have expected all that to be said direct to a youth player at the interview...though he may not remember that part above his disappointment.

Doubtless because Scotland call-ups are not based solely on one game... and highly unlikely to be influenced by games played after the Call-Up...unlike the opinions of fickle fans who expect perfection from every player in every game

You are dead right that it will never be eradicated if the people who make the law and those who enforce it are spending all their time and energy scrutinising football while the Orange Order with impunity struts its triumphalist way as close as it can to Catholic areas, creating all the tension and resentment that it can muster. Unacceptable though sectarian behaviour at football most definitely is, it seems absurd to concentrate all the energies on football grounds while the Glorious Magnificent Lodge Loyal 1690 No Surrender FTP remains free to infect the community at large with its bigoted filth. A couple of weeks ago, as July 12th approached, I wrote to the relevant Scottish Executive minister Roseanna Cunningham and said largely that. I also suggested that sorting out the Orange Order was a far higher priority than football. I even put it to her that this wouldn't even be a vote losing policy since I couldn't imagine too many of Her Majesty's Bowler Hats and Umbrellas voting SNP in the first place. Spot on, CB.......it has always struck me as ironic that Glasgow, in Scotland, has more sectarian marches than Londonderry and Belfast in Northern Ireland combined do to celebrate an Irish Battle. And in Glasgow, Orange Order and affiliated marches are over 200 annually......while Hibernian and affiliated marches are less than 20. It is just as ironic that the Orange Order says on its website that The Protestant ethic is one of tolerance of other faiths and ideals. It is this tolerance and liberty that the Orange Order promotes and defends. Tolerant of other faiths......maybe they are........if that faith isn't Catholic. The Order appears to have a much bigger problem with Catholics than with any other religion in the world to the extent that they organise a couple of hundred marches a year specifically to celebrate the killing of Catholics in Ireland, and the imposition of Protestant rule in Ireland at the point of a gun. Doesn't seem a lot different, to me, to any display of triumphalism... no more useful or appropriate than if Unionists decided to have a march through Culloden and Inverness to celebrate the Battle of Culloden, the demise of the clan system and the Englishing of Scotland..or if people in the UK decided to march through Dresden to celebrate the Dresden bombings. The Orange Order and their biases are instrumental in continuing and reinforcing an irrational outlook, particularly in the Central Belt, which has no place in this 21st Century and must be controlled. Perhaps the simplest way would be to make them pay for all the policing of all their marches and bankrupt them. Given we have laws which are aimed at combating the incitement to violence, I have never quite understood why nobody has yet made a test case citing sectarian marches. Maybe it would also help if our Government joined the 21st century and realised that it makes them look much more than foolish when a member of the Royal Family is permitted to marry into any religion except Catholicism without harming their position.........so we can have a Muslim, Jewish, Moonie, Mormon, Pagan etc consort for the monarch......but not a Catholic. Rational? I think not!

Make it ?20 from me as well.........and given it would take me forever, I'm guessing it will take you less than that..........say 6 and a half hours!

Thats 10 Lol.Foran ain't a sub!

Penalty scored by McGleish 1-0 Rovers 26 minutes according to Twitter

Up until about a month ago Kevin McCann was still an ICT player according to ICTFC.co.uk so wouldnt be my first port of call to check. As previously stated on numerous occasions, the player info and stats on the official site are taken care of by a third party via the website provider. They are frequently inaccurate and almost always not up to date. This is currently being addressed and should be sorted in about 11 days and 23 hours time ! Is that going to apply to the Under-19s and youth sides as well as the first team? For all of last season and up until now, according to the squad profiles, the Under 19s consisted of just eleven players, some of whom have already gone to pastures new.....and it would be good to get the odd result from the under 19 and youth squads..........even if only those from the games ICT bother to tell us about.

So would you be one of the individuals who has given Mahonio three red dots in total for taking the proverbial out of himself? I'm afraid it very much does look like abuse because of personality clashes to me, rather than any effort to respond appropriately to posts actually made. Personally, if I can't give a green dot, I don't give any. I have never been on a forum before which allows members the option to denigrate other members posts without having to have the courage to put their names to their opinions. Red dots are the coward's reaction. After all, why would a discussion forum allow people not to have to discuss? I can see the point of the green dots as a plethora of "I agrees" would be rather monotonous...but red dots are disagreeing with something, which would, in a real discussion forum, require a few words of explanation. (And Mahonio.....try bolding words you want to emphasise......that arouses less ire than using Capitals on a forum...and smilies like rather than exclamation marks )

Nothing to do with the topic of this thread, but I notice that Mahonio has, in two posts attracted 6 red dots for what appeared to me, having no prior history with him/her, pretty innocuous posts according to the level on this forum......so maybe it is about time the management/mods were thinking about removing or drastically limiting a system which appears to be so open to abuse.

Getting picked up by a bigger team at better money wouldn't practically guarantee him a regular game as it does here. As there is no fence-sitter option on the poll, I haven't voted.......but I'm of the opinion that another year of pretty well guaranteed appearances if he is fit, at his age, can only improve his game....and help him make a real impact on a bigger stage when he moves on. (Never really understood the obsession youngsters have to get into the big money when that very often means not getting a regular game..and often not even bench-warming. Hope too many of our U-19s don't feel like that.)

Sounds a bit like soft-hearted me trying to tell a farmer pal that he shouldn't be selling a cow which is costing money to feed, but is only producing calves every third or fourth AI try compared to the others, just because she is the lead cow of the herd and is a good influence on the others. I say let TB manage as he sees fit.