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Caledonian/thistle Last Ever


Guest CALEY108

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As a Caley fan I found the last season to be one of mixed emotions because one part of me was sad that it would be the end of Caley as we knew it but another part of me was excited at the prospect of joining the "big" league and having the opportunity to progress through the leagues.

Looking back at what ICT has achieved in 14 years and all the great memories, convinces me that the merger was the correct decision and I don't look back with any regret.

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C4L.. Thistle definitely were the less well supported team and very much the junior partner of the merger. It was said at one point (correctly) that Caley contributed 70% of the assets, 80% of the membership (artificially high due to the huge recruitment drive in the autumn of 93 resulting from their merger wrangle) and 90% of the fundraising power. As a result the merger was very much an unequal one and fundamentally this was what all the difficulty was about. There were those on the Thistle side who were not prepared to accept their junior status and there were those on the Caley side who either wanted a more or less complete Caley takeover or for Caley to go it alone.

It was only when a balance of power roughly reflecting the relative sizes of club was found that Caley Thistle struggled into secure existence.

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C4L.. Thistle definitely were the less well supported team and very much the junior partner of the merger. It was said at one point (correctly) that Caley contributed 70% of the assets, 80% of the membership (artificially high due to the huge recruitment drive in the autumn of 93 resulting from their merger wrangle) and 90% of the fundraising power. As a result the merger was very much an unequal one and fundamentally this was what all the difficulty was about. There were those on the Thistle side who were not prepared to accept their junior status and there were those on the Caley side who either wanted a more or less complete Caley takeover or for Caley to go it alone.

It was only when a balance of power roughly reflecting the relative sizes of club was found that Caley Thistle struggled into secure existence.

Still don't accept the term 'junior'  :008: :008: :008: It implies a younger less important team !!!! Jags were older than caley and no way in the world could be described as less important.

The assets.......Kingsmills sold for ?400k and add to this the subsequent, blatant asset stripping, sale of the social club at another ?150k. Total ?550k compared to the ?750k for Telford St. Equates to 58% and 42% !

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I can see why some fans didnt go to the last games. I would be extremly bitter about the merger as the team I loved with a passion was being merged with my bitter foes and all the history and liniage was being pissed down the toilet. I feel the reaction of the men at the game was justifiable of desperate men who didnt want to see a part of their lives destroyed. As an impartial fan of the new club I can honestly say I would be extremly bitter if ICT were to merger and I probably wouldn't support a new team and I would be to angry to go to the last game and enjoy it.

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I watched the whole merger thing unfold with great intrest as a football supporter with an affection for both teams and also from the hypothetical "what if" viewpoint.The merger of Dundee teams has raised it's head a few times over the last few decades and i always felt it was absurd and untennable.What i witnessed was 2 teams with great heritage but small financial and crowd backing being torn apart and the real fans of the time having to sacrifice their team for the greater good,this convinced me it would never happen at a higher level(and i dont mean that at all in a dispariging way) It's tremendously sad to see a way of life for some folk come to an end but in the Inverness case it was for the greater good and for those of you who let go and carried on as ICT fans i applaud you , for them that didn't, i can fully understand and would probably take that route in the same circumstances.

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RBC... I had a lot of sympathy for Thistle fans in the 93-94 period but there is no getting away from the fact that they were significantly the smaller outfit.

Kingsmills was actually sold for ?486,000 (after they discovered that they did in fact own it!) and Telford Street eventually went for ?1 million although ?750K was the long quoted expected figure before sale. You mention the Thistle Club. Sale of what became an ICT asset was a perfectly legitimate act and certainly not "asset stripping", given that it was clearly surplus to requirement, making a loss and had been voted to ICT along with the rest of Thistle's assets by a clear two thirds majority at a General Meeting of thistle in December 1994. Sherriff Fraser's judgement in March 1995, backed up by the outcome of the appeal in front on Sheriff Principal Douglas Risk in the July, upheld the legitimacy of that move. And if you want to include the value of the Thistle club, you would also have to include the value of the much larger Caley Club which is still a profit making asset of ICTFC. Therefore the 70% figure is pretty sound.

Further evidence - Caley were turning over ?250K towards the end. Jags' turnover was a whole lot smaller and their losses were a very large percentage of that. The Caley Centenary Club had been a huge money earner for them since 1986. The Thistle Capital Club was just set up in 1992 and was really struggling to break into the market. The Centenary Club is still a major earner for ICT. Caley's crowds were a lot larger, their success on the fierld was a great deal more. I don't think you can claim enhanced "clout" just because Thistle may hav e been founded a few months earlier back in the 1880s!

Believe you me, I had genuine sympathy for Thistle during the summer of 1994 as they withstood a whole lot of pressure and propaganda as Caley tried to appease their hardliners by applying the squeeze to Thistle. But on the other hand this was in no way anything near an equal merger.

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I had a feeling that Telford St was sold for ?1M but wasnt overly sure, and I knew the Centenary Club was raking cash in, as I remember Aberdeen approached Caley for help in setting theirs up. Am not being biased, but Caleys set up in the HL was light years ahead off any HL club and dare i say....prob most teams outwith the then Top Ten in Scotalnd.

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Still don't accept the term 'junior'  :008: :008: :008: It implies a younger less important team !!!! Jags were older than caley and no way in the world could be described as less important.

Is this what they call 'chauvinism'?  :004:

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You mention the Thistle Club. Sale of what became an ICT asset was a perfectly legitimate act and certainly not "asset stripping", given that it was clearly surplus to requirement, making a loss and had been voted to ICT along with the rest of Thistle's assets by a clear two thirds majority at a General Meeting of thistle in December 1994. Sherriff Fraser's judgement in March 1995, backed up by the outcome of the appeal in front on Sheriff Principal Douglas Risk in the July, upheld the legitimacy of that move. And if you want to include the value of the Thistle club, you would also have to include the value of the much larger Caley Club which is still a profit making asset of ICTFC.

I'm not arguing the legality of the sale, simply the ethos of it. Yes it was making a loss but the majority of football clubs in this country make a loss...... does that mean they should all be sold off? IMO if one social club was to be sold then both should and a new property purchased with the proceeds (which was talked about several years ago.....a whole new thread could be started to discuss the benefits of a city centre ICT social club location)! Should the Clach Club be shut down and sold off because it's making a loss?

I don't think you can claim enhanced "clout" just because Thistle may have been founded a few months earlier back in the 1880s!

I'm not claiming that at all (that would be petty to say the least) it was merely an argument against your use of the term 'junior' !

Still don't accept the term 'junior'  :008: :008: :008: It implies a younger less important team !!!! Jags were older than caley and no way in the world could be described as less important.

Is this what they call 'chauvinism'?  :004:

:rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao:...Then we're all chauvinists !!! :001:

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RBC... your suggestion of a brand new city centre social club is an interesting one - albeit possibly tinged with a bit of resentment of the current use of a property previously identified with "them"!? :004:

How financially realistic this might be, I couldn't say but a single city centre premises incorporating a Social Club and a club shop would have a lot to commend it. There is one possible down side, however. As I understand it, much of the profit which the SC has regularly made is due to people resident in the Greig Street area whose "local" this is. (For instance there's this old guy like Jack and Victor who sites at the corner of the bar and Fs and blinds incessantly all evening and another one like Young Mr. Grace who needs virtually carried into the top bar.) If that clientele were to be lost, the profitability might be affected. Certainly ICT fans don't keep the place going since it's busy with them only after home games.

However this is a completely different issue. What we were discussing was the relative contributions to the merger of Thistle and Caley in terms of assets. We had got as far as - Kingsmills ?486K, Telford Street ?1M. Thistle SC ?150K and lossmaking,Caley SC - unknown but very much bigger and has continued to make a profit. That comes out at around 70% Caley, 30% Thistle.

You are not comparing like with like when you compare keeping football clubs and keeping the Thistle club going. Football clubs are kept open at all costs because they are the principal business. A social club, especially one which is surplus to requirement and at the top of a narrow stairs, is subsidiary to the principal business and it is therefore wise to realise its value for the overall benefit of that business.

And by the way, you are hearing this from someone who had a lot more sympathy for the Thistle perspective on matter than for the Caley one during that fraught "Summer of Discontent" of 1994. It's just that you have to be realstic about the unequal nature of the merger, difficult though that may be for a fervent ex Jaggie.

As far as the Clach Club is concerned, you will be hearing more about that in the Media this week as their overall plans for Grant Street become public.

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I don't really see where your line of argument is leading RBC. Maybe you just need to let off steam (BTW, as I remember it from my schooldays, chauvinism means "excessive devotion to a cause").

The term 'junior partner' is in common use and has nothing to do with age- you've just inferred it (as if a few months makes any difference anyway. It's been reported many times that the date of Caley's formation could be 1885 OR 1886).

If you're going to come up with terms such as 'important' then you really have to define what it means, and in saying that I realise that the Jaggies were important to YOU! In the greater scheme of things neither club could be said to be important at all!

At a more local level, I think you'd struggle to get an objective measure of either club which backed up your case. Evidence to the contrary is easy to find: In 1993 Caley reportedly paid Thistle ?8500 for the services of Billy Skinner.

Caley's wage bill in (I think) 92-93 was ?130,000, larger than most clubs in the SFL div 2 at the time.

Finally, in looking at the relative size of the merger partners, it's obvious that any residual hatred is one-way.

Now just compare this to County - ICT (they hate us, we don't really care) and even Scotland - England.

The hatred's always one way...... why would this be?

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We Thistle supporters, I was never a member, were more than aware at we were to be the junior members of the merged club.

Nevertheless,most of us could see the merit in swallowing a bit of pride for the greater good. There's no doubt that at the time of the merger Caley were, in relative terms, the wealthier and more successful club although the Jags had had some wonderful purple patches in thier history the early nineties wasn't one of them. Nor for that matter was it a great spell for Caley with Steve Paterson's Huntly being the dominant force in the Highland League at the time.

There were a great number of Caley hard liners who would have preferred to go it alone but, in my opinion, despite their club's greater clout, that would have been misguided as there was strong competition, especially from Gala' a sizeable town in an area of the country with no league representation. I strongy suspect that if Caley had attempted a solo bid it would have one the way of Thistle's bid in the seventies at a time when the Jags were riding high both on an off the field and even Jock MacDonald's then standing and influence in the wasn't enough to secure league entry in the face of competition from Ferranti Thistle.

The Caley hardliners were more numerous and certainly less reasonable than the dissenters on the Thitle side and had to be appeased hence, for example, theclub taking to the field in our firt season in a strip that was hardly disinquishable from the one Caley had worn in the Highland League the previous season, that together with a number of other petty slights was an unnecessarily unpleasant way of rubbing the noses of those Thistle fans who has arguably sacraficed more than the Caley ones to bring league football to Inverness.

It says a lot for those on both sides that the club survived that and the move from Telford Street to more neutral territory, albeit called the Caledonian Stadium cerainly helped.

That said, who provided what at the outset quicly became academic as those assets were quickly spent and before long the most important assets came neither from Caley or Thistle but from the share issue and the grant from the CGF without which the fledgling club would have died on it's feet and the starting capital provided by the realisation of former Caley and Thitle assets lost forever.

Without those life saving injections of capital Caley and Thistle fans would still be arguing about how much, apart from their football, clubs they had respectively lost in an ill starred venture rather than, thankfully as is the case how much we, together with subsequent generations ofInverness football followers have all gained.

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I've always had sympathy for the ex-jaggies who, as Kingsmills said, probably gave up more.

I think Inverness was always fated to succeed in the ballot though.

The reason being that the big clubs who had no axe to grind got 4 votes, whereas the diddy clubs got only 1. So the self interest of clubs such as East Stirling, which kept Thistle out in 1973, was going to carry no weight trhis time. So the 68 votes gathered by CT must have been largely from the Premier clubs.

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bottom line - I firmly believe we would not be where we are now without the contributions of both of the founding clubs of Caledonian Thistle and percentages are immaterial.

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I strongy suspect that if Caley had attempted a solo bid it would have one the way of Thistle's bid in the seventies at a time when the Jags were riding high both on an off the field

Cant agree with that. Caley were the biggest, most sucsessfull team in the HL...thats a hard fact! They were regarded as the highest profile Non League team in UK by several well regarded publications at the time.

Inverness was always going to get represented in the SFL one way or another when the places became available. Tell me why Ross Co would have got in and not a lone Inverness Caley bid?

I believe had Thistle attempted a lone bid (pressuming Caley werent intrested) they would have gotten in.

Why do Thistle fans feel they have the right to feel harder done by than Caley fans? Both sets of fans suffered via loosing the teams they supported.

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Yes.....I believe Elgin would have been in ahead of  County had certain events not taken place. I think Elgin were the 4th most sucsessfull team in the HL history and light years ahead of County in stature within the professional setup in Scotalnd.

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