Caledonian/thistle Last Ever

[Scotty]

This is turning into a merger thread (what a surprise  :004:) so here's my tuppenceworth as an ex-Caley fan.

If Caley and Thistle had gone it alone and County had also applied at the same time, I believe that Caley and Thistle would both have got in at the expense of County. The main reason for this belief is the name recognition amongst teams from the south and the SFL contacts that were present within the boardrooms (where Thistle were well ahead of Caley). County might have scraped in ahead of Gretna, Elgin, Peterhead etc when they got in later.

The bigger question is what would have happened had they both got in as separate entities ?

Without going into loads of hypotheticals, I think we would be looking at a lot different football landscape in Inverness had that been the case. This is my opinion .....

[li]Caley and Thistle would both be lower league teams perhaps comparable to the likes of Queen of the South who yo-yo from top end to bottom end of Div1 or like County who reached the heights of Div1 before falling away and having to rebuild in Div2.  [/li]
[li]We would not have a purpose built stadium able to be upgraded to SPL status.  [/li]
[li]We would not have had the benefit of handouts from the council.  [/li]
[li]We would be unlikely to have had benefactors like David Sutherland favouring one team over the other for fear of alienating one half of the city and affecting his real business. [/li]
[li]Both teams would be struggling for supporters from an already small pool of Inverness fans.[/li]

In short, there would be a lot more politics taking place on a daily basis had we not borne the pain (and politics) at the start of the process and life would be far less enjoyable as an Inverness football fan.

The merger is done, what-ifs are pointless, and we are one team now whether some like it or not. We should never forget the history of both of our 'parents' but as a now teenage child of the merger, Inverness Caledonian Thistle must make its own way in the world and I think we are all happy to note that it is doing just that, and doing it quite succesfully.

[Charles Bannerman]

?8500 plus VAT for Billy which took it above the 10 grand Jock wanted the transfer to go through for. Am off to dentist so it may be a little time before I can reply in detail to the more recent posts on this fascinating thread.... but I will!

[Scotty]

Am off to dentist so it may be a little time before I can reply in detail to the more recent posts on this fascinating thread.... but I will!

root canal ? far less painful than merger debates  :015:

[SMEE]

This is turning into a merger thread (what a surprise  :004:)

Didnt see that coming!!

[RednBlackComeback]

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.

Exactly !! Hence my aversion to the 'junior partner' label. It's maybe a well kent term in business but we're talking about two football clubs. Football is more like 90% emotion and 10% business.....(to get back to the percentages again !! :003:). We'd not have enough clubs in existence to make up one league if football clubs were run solely as business ventures.

The 'important' was referring to the junior partner label. Doesn't it mean having a lower status ie. less important? I view the status of both clubs as equal. ICT wouldn't have happened without both clubs.

'Hatred' is a strong term. I don't think I've ever 'hated' caley, although I've sung the song many times !!! :015:. If I truly hated caley then I could not and would not have become an ICT fan.

[Proctor]

Don't forget that Elgin were regarded as very strong contenders until certain unfortunate events at Borough Briggs came to light.

Forgive me for being ignorant but what would these be?

[Scotty]

Don't forget that Elgin were regarded as very strong contenders until certain unfortunate events at Borough Briggs came to light.

Forgive me for being ignorant but what would these be?

fixture rigging apparently - most online articles refer only to the fact the title was stripped from them, but I did find this from the Sunday Herald

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn41...109/ai_n9625050

edit - also found this on P&B which explains it a bit better - about 2/3 of the way down the page.

http://pieandbovril.com/forum/lofiversion/...php/t59494.html

[The Mantis]

Can't reach P&B but I can tell you what happened.

Elgin got their final fixture against Forres brought forward to Friday as they had a friendly against Dundee on the Sunday.

They beat Forres 6-0 and clinched the trophy.

Caley and Cove then played a meaningless draw on the Saturday.

A few days later it transpired that John Teasdale and John McDonald would have been suspended for the Forres game if it had been on the Saturday.

The League considered deducting the 3 points won by Elgin (but as Caley and Cove had drawn, Elgin had now won the championship by more than 3 points). So they decided to suspend the championship.

[Charles Bannerman]

The last several posts have been very enjoyable to read and very informed. I would, however, dispute a couple of statements.

Firstly, I think SMEE (not atypically of ex Caley fans) has got his rose coloured spectacles out. Yes, Caley were a very successful club, especially in the 1980s, but by the time the merger came around, they were very much in a dip in fortunes and had a very poor recent record of trophy wins. In the first chapter of Against all Odds, I argue that one of the main factors which made an unlikely merger possible is that at the time neither club was going through a particularly successful phase.

I'm also not at all convinced that Caley AND Thistle would both have got in at the expense of County. A double Inverness application would have split the vote and County scored very highly anyway since the mounted a great campaign. Indeed the fear was that a double application could have ended in NEITHER Inverness club getting in... which seemed a big danger before in very latterly became apparent that Elgin's challenge was much weaker than most had thought.

Mantis' version of the Teasdale Affair is, as I understand it, spot on.

[SMEE]

Firstly, I think SMEE (not atypically of ex Caley fans) has got his rose coloured spectacles out. Yes, Caley were a very successful club, especially in the 1980s

So Caley arent (to this day) THE most sucsessfull, highest profile club in the history of the HL Charles? I think you will find they have littered the honours list throught the history of the HL....not just the 80's!

[Scotty]

http://www.rsssf.com/tabless/scot-highchamp.html

[SMEE]

I think both Caley and Clach have won the HL 19 times each.....but i was including ALL honours, The League Cup, Scottish Quatlifying Cup etc also

[Charles Bannerman]

Let's look at the history of the Highland League from the 80s onwards. You will see from the winners' list that Caley won three consecutive titles in 82-84 and then won it for the last time in 1988. During that period there were corresponding wins in other competitions, especially the Q Cup. Thistle had a very successful period in the late 1980s and in 1988 these two Inverness teams had a complete carve up of just about all that was going in the HL.

Then they both began to go into decline. Thistle won virtually nothing and Caley's 1991 Q Cup win was about all they had in the 1989-93 period. Basically what happened was that Elgin (under Pele) and then Ross County (under Bobby Wilson) became supreme. Therefore, as the merger negotiations started, BOTH clubs were very much lacking in the success of which they had both enjoyed so much just 5 years previously. I believe that was an integral factor in making even the notion of a merger acceptable on either side of the river.

I argue this case in detail in the first chapter of Against All Odds so won't go into the detail here. But as far as the most successful team is concerned, it's a difficult one to call.  Older results are less relevant in the context of any discussion of Scottish League entry, and you will notice that post war Elgin won more HL titles than anyone else.

Caley were big, but I suggest not as overwhelming as a lot of Caley fans (understandably) suggest.

[Kingsmills]

The history of the Scottish Cupm is peppered with Highland League clubs taking league clubs to replays and more than occasionally beating them.

That's why as supporters of Highland Leagur clubs we all relished the competition so much. That, together with the rare thrill of hearing your team's name read out in the BBC's UK classified results.

That said, I believe that the St Johnstone replay might have been a first; the firsttime that a Highland League side had featured in a full commentary match on BBC Scotland. Charles will no doubt correct me if I'm wrong on that one.

[The Mantis]

Ach this is an old argument and I'm on my way out for the night and can hardly be ersed.

But I seem to recall arguing that Caley have knocked out Scottish League clubs about 19 times while the nearest any other club gets is about 9. And amongst the 19 were some pretty strong sides, not just the occasional East Stirling or Alloa. And not knocking the jeggies at all, but let's be clear about their only significant Cup win. Kilmarnock may be a big club but they were at their lowest ebb and were in div 2, the lowest division at the time.

[Charles Bannerman]

I would boil my thesis on this one down to two propositions.

1) In all respects, including on the field, Caley was a significantly more substantial entity than Thistle. (On the field, the Jags at best could claim advantage in the early 70s and to have matched Caley in the 86-88 period.) Hence the necessarily unequal nature of the merger.

2) Caley, although generally ahead of Thistle and really right up there, were certainly not, over time, streets ahead of all other Highland League clubs. (This is perhaps a romantic notion which tends to burgeon with a) the passing of time b) the introduction of threads like this and c) a few post match snifters in the Social Club of a Saturday night!  :003:)

Kingsmills.... I'm pretty sure Highland League clubs very occasionally featured in commentaries before 1992. For instance I sourced a commentary of Elgin City's 1968 Scottish Cup tie at Cappielow (incidentally thay remain the ONLY Highland League club ever to have reached the quarter finals).

Caley 108.. I don't think you can take a single result v St. Johnstone (or even the run of three which also included defeats of Stenhousemuir and Clyde) as indicative that by 1992 Caley were enjoying a golden age. Caley won their last Highland League title in 1988. Later that year they were demolished by Jags in the Q Cup replay (which equally I wouldn't recognise as evidence of a fundamental Thistle supremacy) and indeed won very little indeed after that, except the 1991 Qualifying Cup and the 1994 North Cup in their very last weeks. However I would also point to the Airdrie victory in 1990 which further emphasises that this was still a side which, if past its best, could still pull off one offs from time to time.

Equally, the Jags' 3-0 defeat of Kilmarnock in 1985 (which is indeed a very rare event of its type) is not evidence that this was a brilliant Thistle team although it was just a couple of seasons short of a period where Caley and Thistle jointly dominated Highland League football.

Then in the late 80s there began a joint decline, coinciding with the rise of Elgin, then County then Huntly, to the relative low point of 1993.

This I believe is crucial to any understanding of the merger - which went ahead at a time of relative weakness on the part of both clubs but which I believe would never have happened if it had come along earlier or especially in 1987 or 88.

[SMEE]

Ok Charles.....hypothetical scenario here for you.

Circa 1992-93.....the SFA ask you to nominate ONE team from the HL that you think would contribute the most to the SFL. Who would you have nominated? Am just curious to see what answer you give!

[Charles Bannerman]

SMEE, you choose a very interesting time window, since in 1992 I might just have gone for Elgin City if I was being objective enough to ignore the fact that I am an Invernessian. They certainly had the more recent pedigree of being the top club, having held all five HL trohpies at one point in 1989 and Borough Briggs possibly had the edge over, for instance, Telford Street. Ross County were at that time the top Highland League team but weren't far enough on from their spell of debt and amateur status to earn a full nomination. Caley certainly would have been seriously considered as well because it was a very well run club wuith a good pedigree in the relatively recent past and had had a "letter of intent" lodged with the SFL since 1986.

Into 1993 the situation changes because in April of that year, Elgin City became embroiled in the Teasdale Affair which did no good at all to a case which was weakening by the day. That then brings your scenario down to a straight fight between Caley and an ever strengthening Ross County. But then the whole question becomes completely hypothetical since in May 1993, INE came up with the merger proposal which was clearly (and has now proved to be so) a much more robust option.

Now, given how well Ross County have done in the intervening years (and you can't say that geting to Division 1 and developing a 4000+ seater stadium is bad) I might indeed have been justified in backing an ever strenghtening County against a "go it alone" bid from Caley which I have always suspected would have become another Stenhousemuir, Forfar or Arbroath since it would have stagnated in the absence of the serious money which I believe only a unified bid was capable of attracting.

But as it turns out, the merged Inverness bid and the Ross County bid were by far the strongest, and that was clearly backed up by the overwhelming nature of the vote in January 1994.

[Yngwie]

I think SMEE just wanted a one word answer (but picked the wrong person for that  :004: )

[SMEE]

:029:

[Guest sophia]

All you middle aged men gazing at your navels is making me feel queasy!

I?m sure that there have been many great triumphs within the local league.

But wait, here I am as a supporter of a team playing at the top level in Scotland but I cannot name the current Highland League champions.

Or the last one.

Or the last one.

Mmm.

[Kingsmills]

Sophia perhaps makes the best point in this whole thread.

[The Mantis]

Sophos........ pearls before swine!

Oink.

[tm4tj]

In their heyday, Elgin City have been the most accomplished side from the Highlands, that was a tremendous achievement reaching the quarter finals and only losing 2-1 to Morton away from home.  They played in front of a crowd 12,608 during their cup run at home (Arbroath) and cetainly did the Highland League proud.

[Guest sophia]

Sorry boys, I didn?t mean to put a dampener on the debate.

Anyway...

Even though they didn?t carry quite as big a support as Caley, maybe 300 at a run of the mill game to Caley?s 350, I always thought The Jags played a more attractive brand of football.

I seem to remember Caley to be more of a long ball team.