Inverness City FC

[Tichy_Blacks_Back]

Well done Inverness City - First Division North champions 2010/11

[wazzow]

Agree. Let's hope they get somewhere to play so they can get promoted this time.

[SMEE]

im sure i heard the Council will not budge and help them out...so they will NOT be going up. Its all to do with The Northern Meeting Park. Cricket seems to have priority....but as far as i know...its for municipal use.

[mainstander]

im sure i heard the Council will not budge and help them out...so they will NOT be going up. Its all to do with The Northern Meeting Park. Cricket seems to have priority....but as far as i know...its for municipal use.

I heard on Radio Scotland this morning that the Junior FA have knocked them back for promotion even though theyve won the league because they havent got a pitch. I thought they were looking at the Highland council getting them a pitch at the Bught. I think they cant get the Meeting Park for the whole season because the cricket gets prioraty. So it looks as if cricket is more important in Inverness than having a football team in the junior Super League.

[dead_ball_specialist]

At least Colin Campbell will have something to rant about in the HN this week.

Edited May 9, 2011 by dead_ball_specialist

[ictewd]

I believe they are playing at Tulloch Caledonian stadium this Saturday

[Charles Bannerman]

I heard on Radio Scotland this morning that the Junior FA have knocked them back for promotion even though theyve won the league because they havent got a pitch. I thought they were looking at the Highland council getting them a pitch at the Bught. I think they cant get the Meeting Park for the whole season because the cricket gets prioraty. So it looks as if cricket is more important in Inverness than having a football team in the junior Super League.

Yes, you are quite correct, that is what you did hear on Radio Scotland - or at least the local Highlands and Islands news bulletin. But that will be it from me since I have now passed this story on to colleagues because it heavily involves the Council - my "day job" employers, so I don't cover Council stories.

Not being involved in the story does, however, allow me to comment on it here. It's my understanding that on Wednesday of last week, someone from the Scottish Junior FA travelled North to meet with representatives of the Council and Inverness City to examine at first hand the proposed location for City at the Bught. However it seems that the project is not as far advanced as the SJFA had either understood or expected. So when they then met on Sunday, they decided not to allow City to be promoted to the Superleague, which has certain ground criteria.

"ictewd" says above that City are due to play at the TCS on Saturday. What I have heard here is that this was the plan, but that the SJFA knocked this back because the TCS, despite having met the criteria of the SPL no less!, was not registered with them as a ground.

Now IF this is the case, all I can do is to drop a into this post and simply ask how far up themselves the SJFA actually are? It would also need to raise the question of how much of a Jobsworth culture is alive and well within the SJFA.

SMEE mentions the Meeting Park but here I understand that much of City's interest has switched to the Bught which they presumably regarded (until last week perhaps) as a more reliable bet than the Meeting Park where the cricketers seem to be totally entrenched. The main problem is that the cricket season, plus the long period they seem to need to get the place ready for it, significantly impinges on the football season.

I had my say on that one in the Highland News a few weeks ago in response to the latest girn from a cricketer - this time to the Simple Minds concert going to the Meeting Park.

It seems that what has to be just about the most anonymous and poorly subscribed sport in Inverness has an incredibly strong hold on what is a major venue near the city centre and seems to have a huge amount of sway as to what happens and doesn't get to happen there.

I'd also like to know how much rent the cricket club pay for their use of the park and the extent to which they also deny that use to others.

Edited May 9, 2011 by Charles Bannerman

[bauhaus]

typical but if the cricket was there first, you cant just steamroll them because they play an unpopular sport at a poor level. However, this has rumbled for a long long time now. Why cant the council just decide to award them a home pitch. Not as if their aint many around - Bught, Milton, Charleston, new Inshes, Culloden, North Kessock, Canal pitches. What do they need in place?

Fenced off, stand, changing rooms, floodlights, parking, ?????

[Charles Bannerman]

typical but if the cricket was there first, you cant just steamroll them because they play an unpopular sport at a poor level.

If you can groundshare in the Champions League, you can groundshare in the MacAllan League. There already is a perfectly adequate cricket pitch at Fraser Park and Counties should be sharing with Highland there. It's not realistic for Inverness to have two areas, one of them a major asset, tied up by the very restrictive requirements of the ultimate minority sport of cricket.

Things move on and the situation is such that an increasingly vital and major asset like the Northern Meeting Park can't simply be frozen as a cricket venue while other much bigger users go wanting or have their use reduced by what are extremely restrictive requirements of this sport. Northern Counties may well have been at the Meeting Park for a long time but, taking all the circumstances into account, that doesn't mean that they should have effective control of this valuable publicly owned asset for all time.

Edited May 9, 2011 by Charles Bannerman

[bauhaus]

didnt realise that there were two seperate cricket teams. let them groundshare i say. does anyone go to watch either of them. Is it not inconvenient for them to have to deal with the Tattoo, and concerts etc

[BornCaley]

im suprised no one has mentioned Clach Park! Surely they wont be denied another promotion based on what is merely a technicality!

[Sorted]

I heard on Radio Scotland this morning that the Junior FA have knocked them back for promotion even though theyve won the league because they havent got a pitch. I thought they were looking at the Highland council getting them a pitch at the Bught. I think they cant get the Meeting Park for the whole season because the cricket gets prioraty. So it looks as if cricket is more important in Inverness than having a football team in the junior Super League.

Yes, you are quite correct, that is what you did hear on Radio Scotland - or at least the local Highlands and Islands news bulletin. But that will be it from me since I have now passed this story on to colleagues because it heavily involves the Council - my "day job" employers, so I don't cover Council stories.

Not being involved in the story does, however, allow me to comment on it here. It's my understanding that on Wednesday of last week, someone from the Scottish Junior FA travelled North to meet with representatives of the Council and Inverness City to examine at first hand the proposed location for City at the Bught. However it seems that the project is not as far advanced as the SJFA had either understood or expected. So when they then met on Sunday, they decided not to allow City to be promoted to the Superleague, which has certain ground criteria.

"ictewd" says above that City are due to play at the TCS on Saturday. What I have heard here is that this was the plan, but that the SJFA knocked this back because the TCS, despite having met the criteria of the SPL no less!, was not registered with them as a ground.

Now IF this is the case, all I can do is to drop a into this post and simply ask how far up themselves the SJFA actually are? It would also need to raise the question of how much of a Jobsworth culture is alive and well within the SJFA.

SMEE mentions the Meeting Park but here I understand that much of City's interest has switched to the Bught which they presumably regarded (until last week perhaps) as a more reliable bet than the Meeting Park where the cricketers seem to be totally entrenched. The main problem is that the cricket season, plus the long period they seem to need to get the place ready for it, significantly impinges on the football season.

I had my say on that one in the Highland News a few weeks ago in response to the latest girn from a cricketer - this time to the Simple Minds concert going to the Meeting Park.

It seems that what has to be just about the most anonymous and poorly subscribed sport in Inverness has an incredibly strong hold on what is a major venue near the city centre and seems to have a huge amount of sway as to what happens and doesn't get to happen there.

I'd also like to know how much rent the cricket club pay for their use of the park and the extent to which they also deny that use to others.

Think that's probably the key part of Charles post. No doubt the SJFA are being pedantic (it's a football administrator thing you know!) but were they lead to believe that matters were much further progressed than they actually are?