DoofersDad

I seem to recall Butcher rarely playing Rooney until forced to do so as a result of an injury to the woeful Barrowman. It was the spark that started our charge towards promotion

If Foran goes he will not get another job in football easily. He's bought a house here and has a young family to support. In those circumstances, how many of us would do the "honourable" thing? He will probably genuinely believe he can learn from his mistakes and therefore it is up to the Board to make a decision on the matter. There is an urgent need to get the close season business underway and we need a confirmed manager in place for that. With Kenny calling it a day, there is a very urgent need for the Board to be a lot more decisive than they have been for a while. At the very least we need an interim Chairman in place and a decision on Foran's future by the end of the week.

You'll be staying on the bus during the game as well by the looks of things?

County won the Development League so even if they do play 3 or 4 youngsters they will still be too good for Hamilton. Any development players will be motivated to show what they have to offer for next season. Never have I been so keen for County to win a match

Significantly, the club statement does not say what role Malpas is going to have. Foran says he is joining the coaching staff but you can be sure that he's not here just to do a bit of coaching. What is needed is better decision making around who to play, where to play them and the game plan. If Malpas is coming in to assist in that, I'd love to know what the dynamics will be between him, Foran and Rice. There would seem to be scope for a bit of confusion and a lot of tension I would have thought. I'm with Dougal on this one. A very odd appointment indeed.

And why would Hartley do any better than Foran? He's at a bigger club with players on bigger wages and yet the team he is in charge of is in free fall. There must be something seriously wrong with the dynamics between manager and players at Dundee.

The fact that the County development squad are 4 points clear at the top of the Scottish Development league table with 3 games to go suggests there is plenty of talent in the Highlands.

er - I think that's what I said. It's the same statement. But what the statement does not do is to to say that the Board has given its backing to Foran although the headline suggests it does.

That's simply the same statement they issued earlier in the week. It's the kind of sloppy reporting you expect from the Highland News.

If the Board thinks Brian Rice can save us in the last few games, then it rather begs the question of why they didn't offer Rice the post when Hughes left (always assuming they didn't, of course!). Maybe Rice prefers being in the number 2 role - many folk do - but it always struck me as bit of a strange one that an experienced guy like Rice would be happy to be number 2 to a rookie manager who clearly wanted to play in a style radically different from the Hughes style that Rice was familiar with. Whether this relationship has resulted in tensions I don't know, but on the face of it, it is not an ideal pairing. We always knew it was likely to be a rocky road with Richie but I thought he would grow into the role and would succeed. I think he's been unlucky with injuries and the rub of the green at times and it is also clear that some of the senior players are not as effective this year as previously. But is that Foran's fault for not getting the best out of them or the players'? Tansey seems to have picked up from a generally poor season but Draper has been regularly below the standard we have come to expect from him. Warren is also not the player that he was and I wonder whether he has ever fully recovered from his leg break. He is not as young as he was and sadly it seems his best days are now behind him. With key players like this under-performing and players like Meekings and Doran plagued with injury it has not been made easy for Foran and I think he is rather unlucky to find himself in the position he is. But he is where he is and the more the season goes on, he seems to be going backwards rather than forwards. There are times when it seems the side is screaming out for the kind of attacking intent which he promised he would deliver, but increasingly he has not been brave enough to play a creative side. Instead, too many players are played out of position and things are changed from week to week. He persists with some players who have not played well and then inexplicably drops players who seem to have brought fresh life to the team. It's all too easy to criticise Foran, but whilst he is the manager, he does not work in isolation. He has an assistant, a team captain, experienced staff like Charlie Christie etc to seek advice and get opinions from. So what advice are they giving him? One get's the impression that he is floundering with little support but we really can't know what is happening behind the scenes. Of course, a win against Motherwell could kick start a little run which could see us climb to safety, but with each week, relegation looks a step nearer and it does look that all is not OK behind the scenes. The Board is not going to sack itself and the shareholders are not going to change the Board. We simply have to trust that the Board has the matter in hand, although if it has a strategy, there is no evidence that it is anything other than hoping that remaining results go our way.

The statement says that the Board are to have a routine Board meeting. Presumably at routine Board meetings they discuss how their product is faring in the market place and how that is impacting of the finances of the business. No doubt they will do the same at this meeting . But equally, just because it is a routine meeting doesn't mean a big decision won't be taken.

From the BBC highlights there is one angle which makes it look as though he may have got a touch on the ball but the other angle shows he was nowhere near it. But as Celtic1Caley3 says, there was an early foul by Sammon on Brad which would not have been out of place in American Football. Even more of a stone waller but obviously not given. I suppose we can be grateful that Madden didn't penalise Warren for his well timed tackle on the ponderous Boyd.

There are folk who point to St Johnstone and say that because there are similarities between Perth and Inverness that ICT should be doing at least as well as them year in year out. I'm saying that such comparisons are unrealistic because St Johnstone have over-performed over a prolonged period. You are quite right to point out that ICT have spent a small majority of their existence in the top flight, but that simply serves to demonstrate my point that ICT have also over-achieved. At the moment we have St Mirren, Ayr, Raith and Dunfermline all scrapping it out at the bottom of the division below us and all from towns of broadly the same size as Inverness. These are the sorts of teams we should be comparing ourselves with and therefore I think it is clear we have over-achieved over the years. My concern is that our recent over-achievement should not lead people to have unrealistic expectations for the future.

I'll be interested to see the footage, Scarlet. From the North stand just in line with the incident it looked as clear cut a penalty as you will ever see. Mackay's reaction was one of someone who knew he had been rash and let his team mates down. He made no claim that he got a touch on the ball. I just don't think that anybody there was in any doubt it was a penalty.

"I'm looking forward to being able to afford a suit and a tie."

Which is precisely what we were NOT doing under Hughes.

Yes we know that, but what point are you trying to make?

Of course the graph does not show the teams in the division below us. Realistically with our budget we should be a bog standard side in the Championship. We are over-achieving by virtue of the fact that we still have a decent chance of staying in the top flight. As for St Johnstone, they are really the miracle of Scottish Football. They are a club from a small city with a population less than Inverness and with bigger city clubs not far away, and yet for a significant majority of the last 60 years they have had a team in the top league.

I think Tansey had an OK game today. I've seen him play better and I've also seen him play a lot worse. I think his performance suffered today from a bit of confusion around the make up of the team and its shape. I don't see any issue with his attitude for the rest of the season. I expect him to be in the side on Tuesday against Aberdeen and for him to be keen to show the Don's fans what a good player they have signed. I also expect the celebrations for his hat trick to be respectfully restrained.

There have been times this season when we have lost but when I came away feeling that the team had played well and we had been entertained. Not to day, I'm afraid. Today we were the poorer of two poor teams and whilst a win was far more important to us, Kilmarnock looked like the side which wanted it more. I cannot agree with Foran's comment after the game when he said "I'm delighted with the players' attitude, passion, endeavour." In general I think our attitude has been good this season but today I thought there were too many players who lacked the passion and endeavour. There were players looking to give somebody else the ball even when they were in space to put pressure on Kilmarnock, there were too many players not going for the 50:50 balls and too many players not providing the movement required to open up Kilmarnock. I was pleased to see Cole start but whilst he did a lot of good work there was simply too little support for him to create much. Kilmarnock were there for the taking and it is disappointing not to have taken the 3 points. Apart from Cole, I thought McNaughton was very good when he came on - he's a real class act, and Billy proved again that he might well be the difference between staying up or not. MOTM for me though was probably OFW - a fact which tells it;s own story of the number of chances we allowed a poor Kilmarnock side. Draper had one of his poorest games for us, and whilst I was glad to see King start, he was totally ineffective and perhaps should have been hooked sooner. Brad Mckay was the villain of the piece though. A stonewall penalty and he was very lucky a little later when the impressive Jones beat him in the box again but was skilful enough to skip over Mckay's awful challenge. Had he not done so, it would have been another penalty and a red card. With Partick winning today I think they are as good as safe with 37 points. I can't see Kilmarnock or an out of form Dundee catching them for top 6, but even if they did, there are 4 teams averaging less than a point a game and another couple of draws in their remaining 8 games would probably be enough. I think it is now a case of "and then there were 6".

I think its a bit of a catch 22 situation really. You get transfer fees when players are signed up on longer contracts but longer contracts tend to cost more and risk you being left paying a player who has not performed. A small club like ours simply can't afford the risk of longer term contracts although I think it tries to do the best it can within the resources available. With regard to Tansey, he has benefited from being here and we have benefited from having him here. He's been a great player for us and I wish him well in his future career (except when playing against us, of course).

Kilmarnock are 8 points clear of us and will be happy to keep it that way. I would expect them to keep it very tight and therefore we need at least one of King or Cole in there to provide a bit of creativity. We also need the likes of Polworth and Tansey to be looking to shoot on sight.

The club really needs the kind of vocal support the young lads give. They keep singing when we're losing and you can see it really gives the boys on the park a lift. The club and the community surrounding the club really needs to do all it can to encourage these youngsters to come along and give that support. The more that do, the more likely it is that some of the older and more restrained supporters will also give more vocal support. I don't know whether the anti-social behaviour is perpetrated by the same lads but let us just assume, for the sake of argument that it is. One thing you can be pretty sure about is that that there will be just one or two ring leaders responsible for starting it. The others who get involved simply follow the leader like sheep as happens in some many aspects of life. It's human nature, so let's have a bit of perspective here. The majority of the lads are just normal lads out to have a good time and whose exuberance sometimes means they get involved in things which on reflection they will realise was wrong. It's all part of growing up. Of course, if youthful high spirits leads to more serious incidents then those responsible need to be dealt with. If one or two get banned from the ground for fighting or whatever, or arrested by the police outside the ground, then that will serve as a lesson to the rest about where the barriers between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour lie. When you are young, it can seem that forcing others to make way for you or picking a fight is making you appear grown up. It can take a while to realise that it is much more grown up to make way for others and to discourage others from fighting, It's easy to be critical of youngsters but how many of the older contributors to this site can honestly say that when they were young they never behaved in a way which now causes them to shake their heads disapprovingly when youngsters behave that way today? Cut the kids some slack, for goodness sake!

Glasgow's 3rd team can only attract a crowd of 3082 against us. It was much the same against Hamilton where the away support had a much shorter distance to travel. And this is Scotland's top flight. My home town team in Worcestershire currently play in the 10th tier of the English pyramid structure (6th tier of non-league). They have reached the semi-final of the FA Vase and in their home leg semi final on Saturday attracted a gate of 3349. Just goes to show the problem facing football in Scotland at the moment.

Can't argue with that. Unfortunately I won't be there. Like Tim Farron and the Scottish Lib Dem Conference, I have a prior engagement at a family celebration. There is now some real pressure on a County side who have lost 5 of their last 7 games. We really need to keep that pressure on them as they have some real quality in their side and I would worry that a derby win would give them the confidence to lift themselves well clear of the drop zone. We are probably at the stage where home games, at least against any sides out of the top four, are "must wins". Please shout some encouragement to the lads on my behalf.