whats wrong with us????

[Tug]

ok i may be a little paranoid but i for some time now have felt that we are a very unpopular team in the publics eyes.

this is not just a fans rivalry thing what im talking about is the amout of negative press we get and the lack of coverage on any tv shows.

qustion how many times when we have done well (rangers wins etc) have the press been more concerned with the oher sides poor performance and we get a casual,:-

" oh they did well but it was a freak result " kind of comment. we had to fight to get in to the spl and i know that we have proved beyoned a doubt that we deserved to be thee. Iirc when we went up partick had 15 points for there season???

please tell me im not parnoid..................or maybe the bad men are really out to get me  :006:

[Johnboy]

Sorry Tug - Your appear to be displaying all the symptoms of paranoia at a fairly advanced stage....  :017:

Try not to worry about this - mental disorders such as yours are very common, particularly among many of the contributors to these boards....   :023:

[alimci]

In general, in the mainstream central belt media, no-one gives a sh*t about anyone outside the OF. So these are the only games the commentators/journalists actually notice. And as they all have their heads up the backsides of the OF, they have to make it sound as if any good results for us are freak results.

Next  :015:

[RiG]

Simple - we are a wee diddy team and we play (in some peoples eyes) some terrible hoof it and hope football.

As already mentioned no one outside the OF is going to get much coverage in the papers - the likes of us, Falkirk and Motherwell - so we can't do much about that apart from just win more games and try and elevate our status in the SPL.

Other fans see us as a "big, physical team..." etc. You know what I mean. That's just how they percieve us and perhaps to an extent they are right. We do have some big dominating players in our team but a lot of our midfield are midgets and Bayne aside it's not like we have huge folk up front.

Our style of football, a lot of the time, won't win many fans (of other teams) but if it gets results you can't complain (too much  :004: ).

[alimci]

"Charlie Christie and his Midfield Midgets"

Great name for a jazz band  :022:

[dead_ball_specialist]

I remember when I played in the Street league at our annual award ceremony Charlie gave us a speech and he talked about`how he felt the central belt teams motivated themselves when they played against us because we were from the Highlands - they had to 'put us in our place' so to speak. And he went on to say that it worked both ways, the perception that everyone felt like they were above ICT created a kind of 'siege mentality', remniscent of Alex Fergusons Man Utd.

ICT have always been under-estimated and that's probably worked to our advantage. When we won the third division by a record margin we started the season as outsiders, even Albion Rovers were given better odds than us.

When we knocked Celtic out of the Scottish cup the press reacted as if we were a Highland league team. Was it really that big a shock for an on-form, full time, top first division team to win a one-off match against a struggling Celtic? If anything, Airdrie United knocking Celtic out of the Coca Cola cup the year before was a bigger upset. But the reaction was as if someone like Clach had beaten Celtic.

Of course, our case wasn't helped by the manager going through a phase of never ending negative comments about the club and the town, although he's been a bit better recently.

There's a stigma attached to this part of the world. We're looked down on by central belters, the same way Scotland is looked down on by England, or North England is looked down on by South England. We're guilty of it too when it comes to County, and probably next year we'll find ourselves looking down our noses at Gretna.

I suppose it's a case of respect having to be earned, and the best way to do that will to be to keep on surpassing the miniscule expectations that so many seem to have of us.

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

It is all about avoiding a small team mentality.  :001:

[Guest kingkojak]

granted, the media dont seem to give us much credit but i completely disagree that the public dislike ICT.

im at university in dundee and the vast majority of my friends and people i meet are supportive of our team and always interested in whats going on up north! 

in fact the last and only time i remember hearing any negative comments from anybody down here was during the brewster saga and they merely ammounted to the fact that utd had more money than us and were going to buy all our players...

there is clearly a central belt media bias but i think an equal highland region fans paranoia is rife up in the motherand!

[Guest Atholl]

If anything I think the mainstream media patronise the club just a tad ... I'm thinking of  Chic Young as a prime example, it's almost as if they see us as just a quaint addition to the historical central belt hierarchy and one that shouldn't be dealt with too harshly for a bad performance.. they give our managers and chairman an easy time of it accordingly and never seem to tire of the cliched after match observations, while being careful always to praise the beautiful area we live in.. the fact that there is no tradition of pit hardened hands applauding League and Scottish Cup victories to look back on, nor a boozer next to the ground to soak in the craic with the worthies means that we are perhaps to them a little bit of a sideshow, an experiment that so far has refused to go away but not really to be lamented if we head south, in league terms that is. Not that matches being postponed was ever a real concern in our joining the league, after all it's not Tommy Gemmells fault he hadn't heard of global warming back in 1994 now was it!  :017:

[Heilandee]

Don't know why you would think ICT are unpopular,you only had to see the amount of signatures on on-line petitons and support for the club from the whole of Scotland at the injustice of not getting promoted to know they are generally well thought of, as for the Glasgow media bias, all clubs outwith the OF suffer from there blinkered reporting .

[buckett]

We're upstarts and we're doing well- that's what's wrong with us.

"Who do they think they are?"

It's the same as how we all hated Cove Rangers when they joined the Highland League. Nobody was bothered about Fort William because they performed sh!te from day one.

It's the same as how we all hate Gretna, because they're upstarts too and they're doing well. Nobody's bothered about Elgin City because they performed sh!te from day one in the SFL.

People are warming to Ross County now - they should be worried!!

[tm4tj]

As Cilla said............Surprise surprise

Look what a grumpy old Maurice had to say yesterday................

Motherwell manager Maurice Malpas was furious with his players after their 2-0 defeat in Inverness.

"I have to apologise to the fans, it's a long distance to come for a performance like that," he said.

"I have an honest bunch of players but they did not turn up today - it was imposters who turned up.

"It's the worst performance since I came to the club. I was disgusted by it. We were insipid, we had no urgency at all."

At no stage did Motherwell look like scoring and Malpas added: "If the youth team put in a performance like that I would get rid of them.

"Unless (assistant manager) Paul Hegarty can persuade me otherwise those players will be playing for the reserves next midweek."