DoofersDad

The bookies have Stuart Kettlewell as hot favourite. As manager of County's development squad he will be well known to the team and seems to have done a pretty decent job. It would be a bit of a gamble promoting him to 1st team manager but far less of a gamble than us appointing Foran. If the players are keen to see Kettlewell take on the role then that might be the spark to get them playing as a unit. John Hughes is 3-1. Uncle Roy obviously got it wrong with Coyle, so maybe is losing his touch. If so, he just might be daft enough to appoint Yogi.

Don, are you in a position to advise why the rules needed to be amended? I have a vague recollection that you had previously posted that there was a need to update them to comply with changes in legislation or perhaps they weren't quite compliant with existing legislation? Thanks.

Whilst I am grateful that we now know the names of the "Board" members of CJT, the rest of the statement is, shall we say, disappointing. Several of the concerns and questions raised following the first statement have simply been ignored. Charles asks valid questions that demand an answer. I will add just one comment to what he has said. The second statement says "we would like to confirm that the board is indeed correctly constituted and valid as we have worked closely with Supporters Direct to ensure that this is the case." The original statement says "Working closely with Supporters Direct Scotland we have now been able to register the model rules". I take it from this that the "correctly constituted and valid" Board has been appointed in line with newly registered model rules and/or constitution/articles of association. As it would appear from the statement that a Board can appoint itself with no reference to the membership. it is therefore vital that members can have access to these documents. I would be grateful if the CJT would make these document available to the members as a matter of urgency. These documents should, of course, be available on the CJT website but that website has had no content put on it since it was established nearly 2 years ago.

I absolutely agree that CJT need to discuss the voting rights with the Club Board before anything else, but in order to do that, it is essential to establish that the people representing CJT are doing so legitimately and have the backing of the membership. We need an EGM and then it should be the CJT Board which emerges from that which takes the issue forward.

I think that with a bit more self belief amongst the players, a bit more discipline and a bit more luck, reaching the play offs is still realistic. And once there - well, anything could happen. But to be honest, I hope we don't get promoted this season because I don't think we have the resources within the club to be anything than canon fodder next season in what is a stronger Premiership than when we left it. I think Robbo has done great work in starting the rebuilding process but there is still much to do both on and off the field. This year is about stopping the rot. Next season we can think about moving forward again.

What an extraordinary statement from CJT. CJT held an AGM on 5th December 2017. As is evident on a very lengthy thread elsewhere, very short notice was given for this meeting and many members received no notification. Due to the short notice, I was unable to attend but it seems as though the meeting was a shambles. I am not aware that CJT have issued any report or minute of that meeting but Caley D summed up his impression of the meeting by posting "Long and short of it.....the society is currently in abeyance due to having insufficient board members. An EGM will be held at some point in the future (no timescale was given) to rectify this and bring it back into proper operating order." In CJT's statement above there is reference to a Board meeting being held; that the Board is now up to 6 members and that this Board is now seeking 4 more members. But there is no mention of holding an EGM. Why not? The statement says "We need to know what’s important to you". I would have thought what is important to us is clear from the 6 page thread elsewhere on the forum. We want a supporters' body which is representative of the supporters, which actively works in the interests of the supporters and which keeps the supporters fully informed. Instead, we appear to have a self-appointed group who, over many years, appear to have done very little in representing supporters' interests, have consistently failed to communicate with the members and who appear to be acting unconstitutionally by simply ignoring what I understand was an unopposed call at the AGM for an EGM. The statement goes on to say "We are actively working to update membership records so we would like to encourage you to respond promptly." Just what exactly are people supposed to respond to? Is this supposed to mean that yet again members are expected contact CJT to tell them we are members? And if we don't, will we be deemed not to be members? The statement refers to a proposed meeting with Graeme Rae. Surely it is quite inappropriate for such a meeting to take place before the EGM takes place? It is vital that communication with the club on behalf of the supporters is carried out by people who have a remit from the supporters. It seems strange that after weeks of silence, this anonymous statement should appear so soon after Davie's recent post in which he stated that he would attempt to call an EGM with the aim of calling for the resignation of the existing Board membersand electing a new Board to take CJT forward. I will be interested to hear what progress Davie is making in due course. But one thing is clear. This mess has to be cleared up ASAP both to protect the voting rights and to give the supporters a genuine voice within the club. We have to have an EGM as soon as possible to establish a new Board to take things forward. That will provide a platform for the existing Board members to state their case and argue as to why they think they should continue in post. It will then be for the members to decide.

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An interesting and very honest interview with the manager. But looks like Donaldson will be out for another 3 or 4 weeks with a hamstring injury. It becomes a very important week now. 6 points against Dumbarton and Brechin should be achieved and would, in reality, dispel any lingering fears of relegation. Get that out of the way and should be able to play with a bit more confidence, and then, who knows? Lose to Dumbarton and we might have a very nervy end to the season.

That's an excellent summary by Charles. There are 3 ways of getting back into the Premiership. One is the County route of having a rich benefactor. However, as this season is showing, splashing the cash is no guarantee of success and despite a budget way above ours, County are in serious trouble. Having a sugar daddy carries significant risks . Many a club has gone bust because a chairman used the club as their own vanity project and when the cash stopped coming in, the club was over-committed and couldn't survive. That is not a price i would want to pay for a few more years in the top flight. A second way is by increasing revenue by increased gate receipts.This has gone round the houses time and time again and whilst we may think that a city the size of Inverness ought to get more in the way of crowds, it just isn't happening. No doubt people will keep plugging away but it's not going to happen any time soon. To feel reasonably secure as a top flight club, we would need to at least double our gates. The third option is to punch above our weight. To a large extent, that is what got us into the premiership in the first place. St Johnstone have managed this for some while. The key to this is having a Board which knows what they are doing and who can get the right managers and other backroom staff in. Whether we have or haven't got that is not something I am qualified to talk about, but what I would say is that John Robertson is more likely to get the team kicking above their weight than either of the last two managers. But we have to recognise two brutal truths. The first is that the Premiership is stronger now. We were fortunate that our rise coincided with several of the big clubs hitting the self destruct button in an attempt to compete in an increasingly high money player market. It will now be far harder to get into and then stay in the top flight. The second is that we do not have the fan base or regular financial backing to fund a team that can be expected to compete at the top level. We may get there from time to time with an exceptional manager and good player recruitment. But, as we have often experienced, a good manager and good players move on in order to further their careers, and replacing them with guys of the same or even better calibre at a price we can afford is difficult to say the least. Success will be short lived. I'm afraid the Championship would appear to be our natural level. Over stretching ourselves in an attempt to meet unrealistic expectations will end in tears. We might find ourselves in the top flight briefly and equally we may find we slip down a level from time to time. We need to enjoy the success when it comes and continue to support the team through the bad times. A sense of reality will make those cup runs and any promotions to the top flight all the sweeter when they come.

Doesn't all this general mood of discontentment highlight the need for getting the problems with CJT sorted out? There needs to be a clearly recognised route of two way communication between the Club and the fan base. With a mechanism to ensure CJT is truly representative of the fans I am sure that there are many of us who would be willing to help out in a variety of ways to improve various aspects of the match day experience and to keep people informed. CJT should also be a vehicle for pressing the Board to honour the commitments it has made in areas where volunteers from the fan base aren't in a position to actually do anything. Scotty's offer to make space available to CJT on this forum really means there is no excuse for CJT to keep fans informed, and no excuse for fans not to keep CJT informed of any concerns or ideas they may have.

I for one certainly hope so. He took over with the club in a dire situation and has had a major rebuilding exercise to do. On a shoe string budget he has managed to bring in better players than Hughes ever managed with all the resources at his disposal. He has also had the team playing generally fairly entertaining football. Note that despite a rather lacklustre and disappointing performance today, we still had 15 shots on goal with 6 on target according the BBC stats. It was a rare game with Hughes in charge that we reached those dizzy heights. I'm rather enjoying the games this season.

A bit of a strange one that. We didn't play particularly well but we put far more pressure on their goal and could have won that comfortably. We gave away 2 soft goals at one end and had 2 disallowed at the other, hit the woodwork twice and had one cleared off the line. Despite having more of the game and more of the chances, we had a very lacklustre feel about us for such an important game. I don't think anyone played particularly badly but equally, I don't anyone played particularly well. It seemed to me that players were well aware of the importance of the game and froze somewhat. There was a nervousness about the play and despite the number of near misses, there was a reluctance to shoot, particularly from Polworth after good work to give himself a half chance on 3 or 4 occasions. I've always been a fan of Doran but he looks some way from the player he was before his injury. He did little wrong today but there was little of the buzzing energy and ball carrying which was such a feature of his game. Hopefully more game time will strengthen and sharpen him up. A pre-injury Doran would do some serious damage to some of the defences in this league. Whilst the play-offs now seem most unlikely, I think we need to cast our minds back to where we were at the start of the season. The principle goal at the end of the season must be survival and that should be comfortably achieved. The focus should be shifting to make a serious challenge for promotion next season.

That sounds like a bit of an artificial sweetener to me!

A boycott would never work. The numbers participating would be more than compensated for by new subscribers and all it would achieve is to demonstrate the power the TV companies have. This is not just a problem for footbal in Scotland but in countries around the world. The game is increasingly being dominated by a few big leagues in rich countries where the players in those leagues get paid obscene amounts of money whilst teams a couple of rungs below struggle to survive. It is market forces which dictate, but I personally don't think it is good for the game. As fans, I think we are powerless to do anything about it, but the football bodies who negotiate the contracts and run the game are not. On their own, I don't think football authorities in smaller countries like Scotland can do very much but if there was a more collective view, then change would be possible. Of course, football bodies across the world may take the view that there is nothing wrong with the current arrangements - in which case the money continue to be concentrated within the elite. However, if there was a collective view that money and TV exposure needed to be spread more widely to ensure the health of the game at grass roots level , then the TV companies and the big clubs would have no option but to go along with it. It's not going to happen though. As long as we continue to see teams coming 3rd in the group stages of the champions league getting a free pass into the later stages of the Europa league, you know that the European football authorities collectively are only interested in allowing the obscene money tree for the elite to grow and grow. Clubs like ours are left with trying to survive through gate money whilst potential "customers" stay at home or the pub and watch the elite on big screen HD TVs, complete with detailed action replays etc. Unless the footballing authorities change their tune, I'm afraid the future for clubs like ours is bleak.

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It perhaps indicates the confidence the manager has in young Mackay and that Austin is now fit again.

The SNP could have done a lot more. They froze Council Tax for 10 years. That benefited the better off most and hit the most vulnerable in our society most. The creation of the narrow 19% tax band is simply a political gimmick which creates some practical difficulties. It has a fraction of the impact on the lower paid compared to the steady programme of raising the tax free allowance which the Tories have implemented. Over 400,000 Scots have been taken out of paying income tax altogether, with many more paying significantly less tax. Whilst the modest tax rise at the higher end is welcome, it is simply not enough. It does not look like an SNP Government will have the guts to make any meaningful increase in income tax until we get a different Government in Westminster. As for full fiscal economy. No thank you! According to the latest Scottish Government figures, Scotland currently raises £312 per capita less in taxes than the UK as a whole and spends £1437 more. That's a budget deficit of £1749 for each and every one of us. We are able to maintain our public services because the mutual sharing arrangements within the UK. That would disappear with full fiscal autonomy and we would have to find ways of addressing the shortfall. That would mean a combination of significant cuts in public services, higher taxes and loans which we would be paying back for years to come. However appealing you may find the general concept of devo-max or an Independent Scotland, now is not the time to go down that route.

Clearly when you are on skates, the effect of physical contact during the race is far greater than in track running. Most skaters are very disciplined and have a good awareness of when they can slot in when trying to overtake and when they need to give way. One can't fault Christie's desire or courage, but it does seem to me that the dream of Olympic success has rather clouded her judgement in her last two races. The "expert" who was in the studio when she was disqualified in the 1000 metres was in no doubt she was a fault in two instances during the race and it certainly seemed pretty clear to my untutored eye. I have to say that it strikes me as a very unappealing sport though. If the skaters are evenly matched then there really is no legitimate way to overtake, and unless someone makes a mistake then it just a procession to the finish line. It just becomes a running race to the first corner. Excitement ensues only when someone makes a mistake. Give me a 1500 metres on the track any day!

With a bit of discussion with interested parties including television, you would have thought they could have selected a venue date and time for the final before the competition even started. Teams entering would be entering on condition they accept those details. Maybe word will break out on March 23rd.

I've been a big supporter of Vigurs this season and think he has been our stand out player. Yesterday I was less impressed and thought he gave a rather mixed performance. His free kick when he passed the ball to the guy at the end of the wall was one of the worst free kicks I have ever seen, but he also had others which were poor including some short ones when everyone had gone into the box. I was particularly concerned to see him and Warren having a right go at each other early in the first half. I have no idea what it was about but clearly that sort of thing needs to get stamped out. I sort of got the impression that Vigurs was sitting back a bit more as if he was protecting Warren. On the plus side, he didn't get booked. A more pertinent question is to ask about Warren's performance. Sad to say, but his best days are gone. We look far more assured at the back with Donaldson and Mackay as the central pairing. With a limited squad like we have, there will be times when there is really no alternative but to play Warren, but I think it is time to hand over the captaincy to Vigurs. I doubt that will happen but the manager certainly needs to get a grip on leadership on the park issues.

Well there’s a lot to talk about after that. But in summary, it was a game of two halves.

Seems like Dumbarton took a decent number of folk down with them.

I think most people realise that the club's finances are not good at the moment but I fail to see anything in the Chairman's statement that could reasonably be interpreted as though the situation has significantly deteriorated. Instead, the Chairman has used phrases such as "making solid progress", "beginning to pay dividends" and "are making good progress on achieving our targets." Had the position deteriorated we might have had "continuing to develop solutions", "actively working with others" and "making concerted efforts to address these challenging issues" etc. Having said that, I have little doubt that progress made is not as great as the Board would have liked. After all, how often have we heard the club state that they were finalising the gift of the stands from Tullochs? What is perhaps interesting is that the chairman puts the word "gift" in inverted commas. It would be nice to know a little bit more. Perhaps the Chairman could communicate a bit more frequently and/or in a bit more detail. But if we had an effective fans group which engaged with the club and reported back to the fans then that would be our route for information. What the statement brings home to me most starkly is the utter failure of CJT to carry out it's role. It is clear that the club needs the support of fans now more than ever and therefore action needs to be taken to reconstitute CJT as a genuinely representative organisation and for it to actively engage with fans and the club alike.

She was unlucky in the 1st event where the judges didn't spot her hand being taken out by the other skater's skate but she was the author of her own downfall today. As her performance in the world championships shows, she clearly has the ability to win, so let's just hope that on the more public stage of the Olympics she can show a bit more tactical maturity next week and finally win an Olympic medal.

Here's hoping we get a good crowdie on Sunday.