Kelty/ Is this a joke - merged thread

[The Mantis]

https://www.facebook.com/ICTFC

 

Club Statement

As one major part of our planned strategic restructure of the club, ICTFC are delighted to announce an innovative agreement with League 1 side Kelty Hearts which will see the club move our training base to the Fife club’s New Central Park Stadium.

This creative partnership will mean that we will hire their excellent facilities which include a 3g pitch, onsite grass pitches and offices for our coaching staff, as our training base during the week starting from this coming pre-season in June.

The last few years have seen the geographic challenges in getting players to move to the Highlands become ever harder for a number of reasons.

Caledonian Stadium will always be our home, but other factors in Scottish football have changed and where we train should not be an impediment to the quality of the players we can attract to Caley Thistle, or to our potential to progress.

The commercial success of the city of Inverness – which will always be our home - both as a tourist destination and a place to live, has led to very high prices for the accommodation we require to house players. In addition to these high costs which our competitors do not carry, the extremely limited housing stock in Inverness continues to be both a challenge and a huge factor working against us.

Increased playing budgets in and around the central belt has meant that on many occasions, even when we have offered players more favourable terms than our competitors, sometimes even agreed deals, we have then been told that the player has changed his mind due to challenges relocating their families. Support structures in and around the families of players may all be in and around the central belt, partners will have jobs where they live and moving kids schools to the Highlands and moving home itself can just be seen as impractical for a one or two year contract.

It makes it particularly challenging for us to sign senior players, a category which through no fault of our budget, or of previous ICT Managers, we have struggled to attract in the last few seasons.

Similarly, our location means that we miss out on the opportunity of signing promising players from the larger clubs in Scotland, on loan or otherwise.

For the avoidance of any doubt we absolutely intend to continue to develop our own homegrown Highland boys and we will take the appropriate steps to make sure that by being creative, innovative and practical, they do not miss out on the chance to have a pathway to first team football with their team. We have a proud tradition of introducing local players in to our first team and this will absolutely continue.

We obviously never intended to be in the same division as Kelty when originally exploring this concept, but football throws strange things at you sometimes and having reassessed the proposition and judged that the pros still far outweigh the cons, we would like to thank the Board of Kelty Hearts and MD Stefan Winiarski and his management team for considering this unique to the SPFL partnership, and then seeing and agreeing on the possibilities and benefits for both clubs.

To reiterate, by moving our footballing department's training base to central Scotland, both the club's Board of Directors and the club's First Team Management feel we give ourselves the best possible chance to attract the highest quality players to the club, allowing some of the players we sign to also live in and around the central belt while playing for ICTFC.

We now look forward to taking further positive strides on and off the pitch to address the football and financial challenges we face we believe this exciting opportunity to help us attract players previously not available to us and build a better squad, is one of the first steps we can make and we hope to develop further innovative partnerships.

Inverness is and will always be our home.

The Caledonian Stadium will always be where we play our football. We hope this venture will help us achieve our goal in giving our supporters a team to be proud of.

Edited May 24, 2024 by The Mantis

[Stephen Malkmus]

An absolute disgrace.

[ymip]

That's me done with this sh1tshow. 30 years following this club home and away and we end up a franchise club with zero link to Inverness.  Get this in the fcking sea.

Sack the board. 

[caley1]

Club Statement

As one major part of our planned strategic restructure of the club, ICTFC are delighted to announce an innovative agreement with League 1 side Kelty Hearts which will see the club move our training base to the Fife club’s New Central Park Stadium.

Shortened as whole statement already posted above

[Robert]

Rearrange these words:

plot, lost, the.

Speechless!

[RednBlackComeback]

Is this serious?

[Satan]

Server slowdown incoming...

[robbylad]

A community club indeed........ in another community

[caley1]

3 hours ago, RednBlackComeback said:

Is this serious?

If our directors are all going for this then every single director needs to ship out . What an embarrassment you are all creating  for Inverness . There is that much money in the bank between the lot of you .But no  Too interested in yourselves than all getting together and making it a successful club  . I’d say bin the lot of you your all a disgrace to the city . This should have been a statement saying that Evil Scot Gardiner was been relieved of his duties and brought a bit of harmony but No its all about Morrison and Gardiner . Get out of our city your a disgrace . 

Edited May 24, 2024 by caley1

[northstandfan]

nothing short of a absolute disgrace

[strutty1965]

Checked the date and it's not the 1st of April.......

[GaliantGrunt]

Surely this cannot be allowed to happen?  Will just mean another bunch of heartless jobless recruits in for a quick buck 

[Satan]

Going by the level of  'recruitment ' over the last few years, is there a chance that this might improve things? 

Useless management issue aside.

[+TheCaleyOne]

I think this has wound me up even more than getting relegated, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. What makes us ICT now? Where's the link to being a community club and getting a better relationship back with the supporters. So now we are a central belt team that visits Inverness to play.

Absolute madness!!

[+EvilWhiteStripe]

The amount of times they say “Inverness is our home” too many times gives me the shivers.

Whilst I see an element of sense about this (there are other teams who have similar set ups), I feel for the youth players, who grow up in Inverness and the area and now have to figure out how to travel to Fife for training.

Or will the club move them out of the security of their homes and place them all there?

[Rebus1746]

I am struggling to actually compute this, it's simply crazy. But highlights perfectly why change is needed at the top of this club. Think I'll be watching Clach next season.

[SteveA2]

This is unbelievable. What a shocking decision. What about the players and coaches that are already based up here. I assume Nicholson, MacGregor, McKay, Devine and others live in this area. Do they have to uproot their families and move to Fife. Absolutely disgusted with this.

[Yngwie]

This is quite a shock, and it’s a very sad day that it has come to this.

I can however see the reasoning. We need to reduce costs and we must spend a huge sum on houses for players, a cost that our competitors don’t face, putting us at an immediate disadvantage. We just can’t afford it any more if we want to live within our means.

For many years, our managers have made the point about hard it is to attract players north, it’s simply a fact that we struggle to attract and retain players that our competitors can get. Think of all the ones we have lost because of our location, this season alone before you even go back through our history, and there must be a very very lengthy long of good players we could have had if they didn’t have to move north.

Not saying it’s the right thing to do and I’m still in shock about it, but I can at least see why the club feel the need to address the problem at a time when we can no longer pay over the odds and pay for housing to overcome the geographical disadvantage that we have always faced.

[Robert]

This is not a result of relegation, it must have been planned for some time.

What message does it send to local youngsters, who we should be developing to be our future first team players?

Another sad day. 

[hislopsoffsideagain]

Reasons for Caley Thistle's current difficulties:

 

Housing prices

Not enough houses being built

Too many tourists

Inverness is too nice a place to live

 

Definitely not reasons for Caley Thistle's current difficulties:

 

The board being an absolute bunch of lunatics

[Stephen Malkmus]

Why would they be "delighted to announce" this? Why do they think it's acceptable to fund a direct league competitor? How long does the deal last?

[Downinthedumps]

What are they planning to do with the empty stadium through the week. Will they let it out for office space etc ?

[Peleistheman]

Off their heads, any decent player who came up to the Highlands loved it. Some are still up here after playing days over. Just can't get my head round this. Could be going back to watch Highland League for me then.

[+Hiro]

So what happens with our contracted young players? Do they train by themselves in Inverness thus splintering the group and not leaving enough players for proper training or are they forced to relocate?

What happens to the players already based in Inverness? Do they have to move?

Is the stadium going to be open during the week? Will there be a club shop?

Are we essentially funding a promotion charge for a rival? Imagine if Kelty go up because we've bosted their budget.

[ictchris]

Geniunely think we could end up going bust this close season tbh.

Some other clubs have training based in different places to help with logisitics etc but this seems like we will be moving the club lock and stock somewhere else except for match days.