DoofersDad

Well, 11 draws would take us on to 37 points which would probably be enough to keep us above the relegation play off spot - and with 6 games still to play! I like your positive thinking!

Maybe it was sold off in part payment of debts?

Was wondering about that myself. Andy and his team did a great job and it was always good to watch the highlights of the game whether you had been to the game or not. Watching the highlights is just another little thing that connects people with the club. It probably helps to encourage people to attend an extra game or two, or buy some ICT merchandise from the shop. At least there was a report of this week's game on the Club's website, which is more than can be said of our previous victory which was against Stirling Albion in the Scottish Cup! That meant there is no mention on the Club's website of what, I believe, was Max Ram's first goal for the club. On the subject of the report of last Saturday's game, I note it was written by someone called Marko Srsen. I know nothing about Marko but I am assuming English is not his first language. Despite that, he has written a very good report. However, although his use of English is generally excellent, there are a few things which don't read well. It would have read much better if someone at the Club had bothered to spend just a couple of minutes with Marko in editing it. Not only would that have made it a better read for us punters, it would have been a great help to Marko in further improving his grasp of our often confusing language. These little things matter to people and make them feel valued. It is just another indication of things not being right at the club.

It doesn't always work that way. Remember that last season we we also had a crushing 6-1 win when we beat Morton away in December. We then went on a dreadful run of 11 league games without a win.

A superb bit of footage showing just how much times have changed! It would be interesting to know what proportion of the male population of the town was at the game. This was just 2 of the Inverness sides playing each other, yet a similar proportion of the city's population today and we would need to have a stadium of probably 3 times the capacity of the current Caledonian Stadium. The crowd was free to swarm onto the pitch after the game without any sense of risk to the players, lots of spectators were smoking and no doubt many a hip flask was being put to good use. Most of the male supporters were wearing ties. We will never have that kind of atmosphere in our current location. Some things don't change though - we still play hoof ball.

I'd be going along if I could, but unfortunately I am an addition to the fans' injury list having slipped on the ice a couple of days and landed on my back. I can barely walk to the loo, let alone the stadium. Hopefully no slip ups from the team today and we can get back to winning ways. Hoping for the best but fearing the worst though.

HT 0-0 FT. 0-1 ICT. Billy Mckay Cove. Megginson Crowd 2094 1st Yellow. Carson

The Supporters Trust hasn't disappeared, but is alive and kicking. A brief report of the recent AGM was posted in the Supporter's Trust section of this site just a couple of days ago.

The Supporters Trust held their AGM on 13th December with members attending both in person and via Zoom. Chair Jennifer Aitchison reported a very significant and welcome increase in membership with nearly twice as many members than a year ago. I (Peter Mutton) had informed colleagues a while ago that in order to focus on other aspects of my life, I needed to step down from the Board, unfortunately, nobody else has come forward to serve on the Board and there are now only 4 members serving on the Board. In addition to Jennifer, the Board members are Laura Grant, Alison McInnes and John West. Jennifer updated members with the latest work of the Board. The Trust continues to try to work with the the club but with limited success. Earlier in the year we had offered to work with the club in raising money for a roof for the West Stand. Requests for a meeting to discuss options went unanswered. More recently the Club has contacted the Trust with non-negotiable plans for a roof over part of the stand and asked us to be part of a fundraising group. Despite having had no opportunity to input into the plans, the Trust again demonstrated its goodwill by agreeing to help. However, after an initial meeting, it appears to have stalled again with meetings being cancelled at short notice. We are also trying to liaise with the Club on a fairly detailed survey we have been working on about the match day experience. We are awaiting feedback from the Club regarding this. The reach of the survey and therefore the quality of the data will be significantly greater if this is a joint effort with the Club and therefore, the Trust Board very much hopes the Club will engage constructively on this. With or without the Club, the Trust will be launching this important survey in the New Year. At a meeting in September, the CEO told Jen and I that the Club were close to appointing 2 new members to the Board and that the AGM would take place soon after that. It has taken a while, but there are now 2 new Club Directors and therefore we can reasonably expect that the Club will hold an AGM soon. Given concerns about the Club's finances in the light of a number of factors, it is important that the Club Directors update shareholders and supporters at a long overdue AGM. The Supporters Trust will continue to push for this. Given the concerns about the Club's finances, it is more important than ever that the supporters of the Club have a strong voice. The Trust has grown in strength in the past year and it now has a far better infrastructure behind it to support a growing membership. Whilst the membership has almost doubled in the past year, it is important that it continues to grow strongly in order that it can be seen to be properly representative of the wider fan base. But a growing membership and a sound infrastructure counts for nothing if there aren't people to do the work. The Supporters Trust Board can have a maximum of 10 elected members and now there are only 4. They need your help. Jen, Laura, Alison and John have been a pleasure to work with and all are passionate about the future of the football club and the need to get the voice of the supporters better embedded in the working of the club. But they all have a range of work, family and other commitments which restricts the time they can spend on work for the Trust. The Trust urgently needs people to help both on the Board and behind the scenes. You can find out more about the Trust on the website, or, if you are interested in helping out one way or another, you can contact the Trust at info@ictsupporterstrust.org. All best wishes to everyone for a happy and successful New Year. And here's to some genuine togetherness between club and supporters and to success on the pitch.

Looks like the weakest starting line up for a league game all season. Good luck to the lads, but that line up looks like a damage limitation exercise.

HT 1-0 FT 3-0 ICT. Shaw Opp. Lawless Crowd 2861 Yellow. Graham

HT 1-0 FT 3-1

If the club say they "will have no choice", then presumably they will also have no choice the following week (also at Hamilton) unless several players who played against Dundee have miraculously recovered from previously unreported injuries sustained in that game. I do sympathise with the plight the club is in and I would be supportive of bringing in 2 or 3 youngsters for the game. But public statements like that really aren't very helpful. We may have a long injury list, but the team that played against Dundee are all in the first team squad. One or two may have picked up injuries in that game but clearly we have a choice to play a team which consists of entirely 1st team squad players.

A bit of a grim watch that. There was a good bit of effort and we were generally OK defensively, but we could have played all night and not scored. I lost count of the times when players either failed to see or failed to execute simple balls into space for team mates to run onto. Instead, it was foot on the ball, have a look around and then play the ball backwards for it to be hoofed aimlessly forward. When we did have an attempt it was invariably feeble and off target. With the players we have missing, I'm not expecting us to win the league or even get close, but any player who is good enough to be in the squad should be able to execute the basics of the game better than we saw today. Glimpses of quality were few and far between. I hate to say it, but this is relegation form were are witnessing at the moment.

HT. 0-1 FT. 1-2 ICT. Billy Mckay Opp. McMullan Crowd. 2284

Hopefully the club will open up the North Stand for this tie and make it look as though they actually want fans to come and support the team in a competition we actually won a few years ago. It's not the most attractive tie but it is eminently winnable. We need a good run in the cup to get a bit of a buzz around the city for the team. Hopefully club and fans can come together to get the cup spirit back for this one.

HT 0-1 FT. 2-1 ICT. Billy Mckay Opp. Carrick Crowd. 1008

I'd have taken a point before the game but disappointed not to have got all 3. We played well in the first half and would have gone in at the break with a comfortable lead had a couple of well worked chances not ended up with tame efforts straight at the keeper when a bit of composure would have seen the ball side-footed past the keeper into the net. Nathan Shaw showed great composure for his 2 goals and others need to follow his lead. The surprise return of Danny Devine showed what we have been missing in central defence and David Carson showed why he should be playing in midfield. I was, however, rather disturbed to hear Billy Dodds' comments after the game saying that both Devine and Welsh were not fully recovered from injury. If they weren't fully recovered, they should not have been playing. Putting players who have not fully recovered from injuries into a highly competitive match environment puts them at serious risk of aggravating their injuries. It was a real worry to see Devine forced to go off in the 2nd half and I sincerely hope that was simply a reflection of a lack of fitness . Oh, and why did people boo Logan Chalmers? It only made him play better. In fact, he played very well, and after he came on as sub, he was far and away Ayr's most effective player.

HT. 0-1 FT. 0-3 ICT Billy Mckay Opp. Akinyemi Crowd 1922

HT. 0-0 FT. 1-1 ICT. Billy Mckay Opp. Murray Crowd 492

If we had all of the squad fit, I wonder how many of Saturday's starting line up would have been starting - and in the position they played? Not very many, that's for sure. Missing the central pairing of Deas and Devine together with Allardice is a big loss defensively, whilst the loss of the creativity of Dan MacKay, MacGregor and Samuels limits our attacking options. In addition we are without the often under appreciated Shane Sutherland whose importance to the team is reflected by the fact that he was the players' player of the season last year. In those circumstances, I thought we played pretty well on Saturday. Mackay was rarely troubled in goal, we played some good passing football and created some decent chances. Shaw, in particular, had an excellent game. No doubt with the return of some of the injured players we will create more chances, but the question is, will we take them? Billy Mckay remains our main striker, he works his socks off and has scored 5 goals in all competitions this year, but his conversion rate is just 14% . Oakley has played in 17 games and scored just 2 goals with no assists. He's only had 7 shots in those 17 games. Doran is 7th on our all time scoring list but in 16 games he has only scored 1 goal with 1 assist. Boyd isn't shy at having a pop at goal but just 1 goal from 20 shots is a poor return. Of the players out, only Samuels looks as though he might contribute a reasonable number of goals in a season and therefore it seems to me that we are over reliant on Mckay to get the goals. There is a lot of pressure on him and he gets a lot of attention from defenders, so we really do need others to step up and get their shooting boots on. We also need to be sharper in our attacks and have a bit more movement in the box to help Mckay find a bit more space. Given our injuries, we have performed pretty well defensively and in midfield. What we need now is to be more clinical in creating and taking chances up front.

He scored it just 2 minutes after conceding a penalty at the other end.

HT 0-0 FT. 1-0 ICT Billy Mckay Opp. McKenna Crowd 2214

We can help them out with that dilemma by getting promotion ourselves.