Merger Talk

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

Dougal is but a mere mortal with less intelligence, less charm and less appeal. But at least he knows the facts about the merger and it's longstanding effect on attendances. Ther has been an interesting thread on the Inverness Facebook forum where a piccy of Telford Street was posted and apart from adores boy and myself there is nobody who used to go that is now following ICT.

Hmmm I think your nose is growing! Lol

The intro was evidently a bit of a wind up to get people's attention. The responses are getting more and more interesting and show that there continues to be a real opposition to ICT related to the merger. In all honesty it really is quite concerning - would you not agree ?

[Kingsmills]

For two gentlemen with a combined age well into three figures, the level of this 'debate' is distinctly primary school playground. You may wish to refresh your memories as far as the site rules are concerned. Maybe we should also include one banning tedious repetition.

[old caley girl]

Dougal is but a mere mortal with less intelligence, less charm and less appeal. But at least he knows the facts about the merger and it's longstanding effect on attendances. Ther has been an interesting thread on the Inverness Facebook forum where a piccy of Telford Street was posted and apart from adores boy and myself there is nobody who used to go that is now following ICT.

Hmmm I think your nose is growing! Lol The intro was evidently a bit of a wind up to get people's attention. The responses are getting more and more interesting and show that there continues to be a real opposition to ICT related to the merger. In all honesty it really is quite concerning - would you not agree ?

I do wonder tho if the merger is the reason with a lot of folk tho? I think folk maybe just moved onto other interests/hobbies etc and use the merger as an excuse because it sounds good?Folk grow up and spend their money on other things? I also think moving the football out of built up areas to the longman has something to do with it! There are true refuseniks my brother being one but I'm not sure they're in huge numbers.

I also think success has brought its own problems with a lot of peeps sticking with their traditional 'big' teams instead of actively supporting the local team. Again some using the merger as an excuse.

Therefore I'm not sure I believe some of the replies on FB in all honesty! Just my thoughts.

Edit Just went back to look and actually more than 50% that replied do support ICT so not as bad as you thought?

Edited July 10, 2014 by old caley girl

[Renegade]

Do you think Ross County had all these arguments twenty years after their merger?

[ilpadrino]

Do you think Ross County had all these arguments twenty years after their merger?

 

1949 rationing meant they were only permitted an hour every week on the internet.  Anyway, they were only allowed them to mention the war, not the merger.

[ferben1994]

Im not on that particular fb page, however me an quite a few boys who were aged between 11-15 used to go to telford st in the Howden end and we still support ICTFC now, go to as many games as possible and furthermore have introduced our kids to the pride of the highlands and they don't support anyone other than ICT

I still think our success at least crowd wise is about 10ish years away

[Charles Bannerman]

Possibly the main thing this thread has to commend it is that it provides a (relatively) welcome escape from the Referendum and the Queen's Baton Relay, both of which now feel as if they have been going on for even longer than discussions about the merger.

 

The effect of the merger has been to have several times as many people in Inverness watching alevel of football which is light years ahead of what was available 20 years ago and with a worldwide profile which would have been unthinkable in the Highland League days. So even if that doesn't suit a few people, then it's a small loss because this new deal clearly suits hugely more than the old one did. Frankly it's getting to the stage that if a few people don't like the vastly improved fare on offer, I don't really care and (with no disrespect to the other Inverness team which I love dearly) if that is the level of football they prefer then they could do a lot worse than go down the Clach Park.

 

One further apprehension I have about this thread is that it is often difficult to discern when and whether IHE is being serious and when he is trying to provoke his fellow posters into stances ranging from longwindedness to blind fury.

Edited July 10, 2014 by Charles Bannerman

[+bughtmaster]

What on earth happened in the early sixties 'cause before my National service in 1958 the concensus of opinion at Telford ST. Grant Street and Kingsmills was to amalgamate and have one strong Inverness Team to challenge the big headed Southern teams that thought we still lived in black houses up here. I for one who was a staunch Caley man am delighted that the name lives on in the Inverness team and proud of the progress the merger has brought.

 

Long may ICT reign in the top division as the pride of the Highlands and if the native Invernessions can't grasp that we have something really good going here then it is their loss.

 

The up and coming generation will surely have a bit more savvy and they too will share my belief that one day Inverness will be the top Scottish Club and turn out in their thousands to urge them on to that peak in Highland history.

 

Never forget Caley....never forget Thistle   but rejoice in the Inverness Team that has been made by uniting.

 

 

 

Edited to say     you too I H E 

Edited July 10, 2014 by bughtmaster

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

I am being totally serious in my statement that the merger has been responsible for a lot of potential ICT supporters. It is not a few it is considerable. The delusion that it is minimal is my frustration and it is being shown on the Facebook page as these are not the voiciferous refuseniks but are Joe Soaps - and they influence their offspring. I clearly do not give a feck but get feckin pisssed when some peeple are blind to the facts.

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

Im not on that particular fb page, however me an quite a few boys who were aged between 11-15 used to go to telford st in the Howden end and we still support ICTFC now, go to as many games as possible and furthermore have introduced our kids to the pride of the highlands and they don't support anyone other than ICT

I still think our success at least crowd wise is about 10ish years away

Now that is spot on. And the success has to be maintained. Are any of your mates influenced by their oldies to follow other teams ?

[dougal]

Inverness had been deprived of senior football for decades and it was a disgrace that it took until 1994 for it to come to fruition

Bannerman keeps harping on about how many more fans attend now than they did in the highland league but let's be perfectly honest here it wouldn't have mattered what team gained entry whether it was ICT,Caledonian,Inverness Thistle,United or plain old Inverness the numbers would have increased as the attraction was senior league football

Had Caledonian entered alone you would have all the same ICT fans that attend today minus the odd jaggie granted but the whole Howden End would be there too

The merger has decimated the Inverness football family and fragmented it into the following categories

1 Pre merger fans(Caley & Jags) that attended highland league games regularly 5%

2 Pre merger so called fans that maybe attended now and again or indeed if ever(Jonhny come latelys i.e CaleyD) 15%

3 Incomers to Inverness/post merger fans 40%

4 Inverness youths born after merger and as a result not permanently scarred 30%

5 Menopausel women 10%

Yes folk can argue over the % against each category but I doubt I'm far off the mark

Dougal

[+DoofersDad]

I'm not sure whether I've commented on this sad and negative thread before, but as it is now over 600 posts long I think i'll say my bit.  Not having been born and bred in Inverness I never developed a particular alleigence to any of the inverness teams.  When I moved to Inverness in 1975 I would watch any of the three teams to fit in with when I was free or if there was a game that had a particular attraction.  For me, supporting the merger with the prospect of entry in the Scottish league and progress within it was an exciting prospect.  From a purely footballing perspective supporting the merger was a no brainer.

 

On the face of it, it seems absurd that over 20 years later this is still something people feel compelled to talk about.  I can well understand that at the time many people were very unhappy with the prospect of a merger and about the way things were handled.  But whatever issues may have caused hurt then are over and done with.  What we now have is a new team which is far more successful than either of the merged teams ever were and which deserves the support of all local football fans.

 

I am not going to speculate on how many refusniks there are because I neither know nor care.  Whilst I can understand the passion these folk may have had for preserving the identify of the team they had supported over the years, I fail to understand why, if they are genuine lovers of football, they don't give their support to ICT.  OK, so they were deeply upset about the merger but ffs, get over it.  Just what is the point of denying yourself the pleasure of supporting the local team as it progresses over the years?  These are the sort of people who, if a Marathon bar had been their favourite chocolate bar would refuse to eat a Snickers because they didn't think the name should have been changed.

 

But I suspect that many of the so called refuseniks were actually never particularly keen on the football.  For them it was an identity thing and supporting either Caley or Thistle was like being in a big gang.  When the gangs disappeared there was nothing for them but to mourn the loss of their gang and they are mourning still.  Asking them to come along and watch ICT was a bit like expecting gang members to trot along to the boys' brigade (if it still exists).

 

Refuseniks.  Either stupid or not interested in football.  Yes, they may influence their offspring (if they're allowed access) but youngsters are also influenced by peer pressure and increasingly this pressure and the good promotional work done by the club will reduce the impact of any refuseniks on the youngsters to an insignificant level.  Of course, this continual obsession with the merger merely keeps the poison flowing.  The refuseniks have cut off their noses to spite their faces and they aren't going to start supporting ICT now.  There is nothing productive to be gained by continuing to speculate on their numbers and the potential loss of support they represent.  We will progress better as a club if we ignore them - just as they have ignored us for the last 20 years.  Hopefully I'll do my bit by not posting on this thread again but it would be much more productive if Dougal stopped posting his nonsense on the subject.

[+Fraz]

No point continually retreading old ground, as the fact is that Caley and Thistle will never split because

 

[Scarlet Pimple]

It seems as if the so-called Refuseniks are just using this type of action to hide their boredom with football and fans in general. Their loyalty must be to their own narrow visions and prejudices, not to our team from Inverness?

Hopefully the last 2-3 weeks in Brazil will change all that. Whatever, it's just an excuse for them to

seem important and influential. After all if they were a rabid refusenik after the merger then they

have to find an excuse to keep the negativity flowing or they may lose face. Goodness forbid that they show up one day and apologise for their previous ignorance.

Why are we even talking about them anyway? The future of the team and the positive flow of the energy

surrounding ICT is enough for me to keep interested and if the word was never mentioned again then it

would suit me just fine. Why continue to beat a dead horse--they contribute little or nothing to the

forward progress of Caley Thistle so....?

[Charles Bannerman]

In the case of Caley, IF there was that much bitter dissent within the ranks of all those people who were alleged to be "loyal" Caley fans, then how come - after several weeks of trawling the highways and the byways for anybody they could get signed up - the anti merger faction only managed to get 226 people into the Rose Street Hall on 1st December 1993 to try to overturn the decision of 9th September?

If, as we are constantly told, there were all those thousands of people out there who were diehard Caley fans and huge numbers of them were anti-merger, and if they regarded the merger as all that vital an issue, how come they could only raise 226 votes after the frantic recruiting period during that autumn? That 226, by the way, was also the biggest vote that there ever was against the merger. It was downhill all the way for the rebels after that and even a large proportion of the 226 became regulars at ICT games.

So why, 20 years on, do people keep labouring us with their Seville-like delusions? For goodness sake, if opposition was even a fraction as large as has repeatedly been suggested here, the Thistle-Caley merger simply would never have come close to being the outstanding success it has been for the last 20 years.

It's sort of like trying to claim that Brazil's single goal was some kind of mortal blow to Germany.

There's also a further "merger dividend" which for some reason has never been mentioned here and that is the fact that the merger eradicated at a stroke the pretty widespread unpopularity and dislike which there was specifically of Caley in the local area, outwith their own fans. Unfortunately the club took with it a sort of Rangers-like aura of hubris and arrogance to the extent that had Caley tried to go it alone, one of many factors which would seriously have limited its progress would have been that Caley would signally have failed to be identified as "Inverness's" team - which ICT most certainly is.

Edited July 10, 2014 by Charles Bannerman

[Scarlet Pimple]

Er...Charles----- does hubris mean jealousy by any chance?

[Kingsmills]

Er...Charles----- does hubris mean jealousy by any chance

 

 

Er....Scarlet....No it doesn't.

[dougal]

I'm not sure whether I've commented on this sad and negative thread before, but as it is now over 600 posts long I think i'll say my bit.  Not having been born and bred in Inverness I never developed a particular alleigence to any of the inverness teams.  When I moved to Inverness in 1975 I would watch any of the three teams to fit in with when I was free or if there was a game that had a particular attraction.  For me, supporting the merger with the prospect of entry in the Scottish league and progress within it was an exciting prospect.  From a purely footballing perspective supporting the merger was a no brainer.

 

On the face of it, it seems absurd that over 20 years later this is still something people feel compelled to talk about.  I can well understand that at the time many people were very unhappy with the prospect of a merger and about the way things were handled.  But whatever issues may have caused hurt then are over and done with.  What we now have is a new team which is far more successful than either of the merged teams ever were and which deserves the support of all local football fans.

 

I am not going to speculate on how many refusniks there are because I neither know nor care.  Whilst I can understand the passion these folk may have had for preserving the identify of the team they had supported over the years, I fail to understand why, if they are genuine lovers of football, they don't give their support to ICT.  OK, so they were deeply upset about the merger but ffs, get over it.  Just what is the point of denying yourself the pleasure of supporting the local team as it progresses over the years?  These are the sort of people who, if a Marathon bar had been their favourite chocolate bar would refuse to eat a Snickers because they didn't think the name should have been changed.

 

But I suspect that many of the so called refuseniks were actually never particularly keen on the football.  For them it was an identity thing and supporting either Caley or Thistle was like being in a big gang.  When the gangs disappeared there was nothing for them but to mourn the loss of their gang and they are mourning still.  Asking them to come along and watch ICT was a bit like expecting gang members to trot along to the boys' brigade (if it still exists).

 

Refuseniks.  Either stupid or not interested in football.  Yes, they may influence their offspring (if they're allowed access) but youngsters are also influenced by peer pressure and increasingly this pressure and the good promotional work done by the club will reduce the impact of any refuseniks on the youngsters to an insignificant level.  Of course, this continual obsession with the merger merely keeps the poison flowing.  The refuseniks have cut off their noses to spite their faces and they aren't going to start supporting ICT now.  There is nothing productive to be gained by continuing to speculate on their numbers and the potential loss of support they represent.  We will progress better as a club if we ignore them - just as they have ignored us for the last 20 years.  Hopefully I'll do my bit by not posting on this thread again but it would be much more productive if Dougal stopped posting his nonsense on the subject.

I thought the whole point of this forum or any forum for that matter was to stimulate debate and that means the debate should be from both sides however that is obviously not the case and that happy clapping is the only side that is tolerated

No wonder so many ICT supporters have left CTO for P&B over the years and not returned

Pathetic!!!!

Dougal

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

I think it is a typo and should have read debris or perhaps rubbish - both words that succinctly describe Charlie's posts on this thread. And this is a thread that has positives and negatives and is possibly containing "real" issues about the merger that have been discounted previously.

I starred posting again on here becos of the debate about the attendance. The posts on the Facebook page show that there are many who have withdrawn since the merger - and they are not the known refuseniks. But the more recent posts are more heartening as it seems that many are allowing their children to watch ICT and not trying to influence that decision. So the Family Section and the great work being done in the Community does appear to be working.

Have to laff at the journalistic twaddle linking Caley with Rangers and the vote and a pathetic Seville joke. Again the true fans know the reality of the situation. There was never anything bitter about Caley - with Jeggies it was banter - and there was always an allegiance with Clach and many Clachers also watched Caley. There was a lot of ENVY as Caley had traditionally been the BIG club in the town and in the Highlands. Elgin were of similar ilk and that bred the hostile rivalry.

[ferben1994]

Im not on that particular fb page, however me an quite a few boys who were aged between 11-15 used to go to telford st in the Howden end and we still support ICTFC now, go to as many games as possible and furthermore have introduced our kids to the pride of the highlands and they don't support anyone other than ICT

I still think our success at least crowd wise is about 10ish years away

Now that is spot on. And the success has to be maintained. Are any of your mates influenced by their oldies to follow other teams ?

Rather bizarrely no,

Most of us convinced our ol fellas to go to the Caley Thistle games from the start and most of them only have one team now

With the exception of one mind who still holds a torch for Hearts lol

[12th Man]

How about channeling you energy into the future and thinking about how you can help galvanise the club, fans and community.

After all one half of your club is you child, the other half is your stepchild. How about looking after both of them. With the same interest.

They are growing up fast, so what can you do to help them on their way.

[old caley girl]

How about channeling you energy into the future and thinking about how you can help galvanise the club, fans and community.

After all one half of your club is you child, the other half is your stepchild. How about looking after both of them. With the same interest.

They are growing up fast, so what can you do to help them on their way.

Don't see any problem with this debate tbh 12 th Man. I think is a bit patronising to suggest that just because folk still have views about the merger 20 years on that they are not channelling their energies into a ICT.

[12th Man]

Is it a debate?

Edited July 11, 2014 by 12th Man

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

It is for some and there are evidently the usual media and management myths and mistruths to dispel. The future is important and I think that you forget that most of the participants in this debate are loyal supporters who have spent a lot of time supporting ICT and encouraging their families to follow in their footsteps. Supporting a team from afar means you can't help as much as you can so little so called words of wisdom become annoying patronising phrases - probably from someone who has swallowed the myths.

Thanks for the response Ferben - that is very reassuring - keep up the good work but learn from the past and keep an open mind unlike some of the bitter old fossils.

[old caley girl]

Is it a debate?

If you dont like the thread just ignore it?