Niculae

[L_G]

You are right we did not give them away Orion did buy them.

I don't think this saga has ended just yet.

[caleyboy]

As I said above, we have given 12% of our club to Orion into the bargain. So I'm not sure if it has all been a good move for ICT. It did serve it's purpose for Marius and Orion have done alright out of it, but I think in the long term ICT have lost any benefits they might have had, by the poor handling of this whole saga.

I am probably missing something but pray tell me how "Orion have done all right out of it"?

Typical "heathmount pub" dealing again by the looks of things

[Yngwie]

we have given 12% of our club to Orion into the bargain.  So I'm not sure if it has all been a good move for ICT.

The only people who suffer from giving away part of the club, or Orion getting a bargain, are the other shareholders, it doesn't really affect the club itself.

[CaleyD]

Steve Cairns from Orion

Steve Cairns is not employed by Orion, he has his own company called ROM Services.

[absent friend]

IF  we do manage to claim circa ?80,000 extra from the deal

IF  we do buy a good defender with it

IF  we therefore end up in the top six because of it

IF  we then make an improved income from our lofty league position

If    we then have an increased income from gate receipts

IF    we then pat the board on the head and say ''Well done!!'' - a good bit of business!

OR  as the majority of posters on here are implying - ''Dream on!!' - our Board are too stupid!

I hope my dream is more correct and we are able to see the full picture in the future and benefit from it!

[caley1980]

I simply can't believe any "deal" with Marius was only verbal.

If it was, then words fail me.

But yet again ICT are made to look like a shambles

I am afraid from the outside it looks like many of our activities off the field are strictly Highland League never mind SPL.

[BornCaley]

ICT are running the risk of other players refusing to sign for us if the board cant organise said p**s up in said brewery

This is the second player who has been somewhat messed about in our eyes in recent months, Mr Wyness t'other. And lastly ours & the clubs eyes should be on the future season coming up not on this shambles...

I would be interested to hear what CB thinks of this while he has been in Denmark

[Guest birdog]

This situation make it look more and more like ICT need to employ a managing director with experience of running a top company, time to admit that the directorship are too inexperienced at running a club at this level. Even if they have gotten things tied up properly and watertight there is no way they should have let the situation develop into this mess. There have been far too many feck ups to let them continue throwing away our club. We, the fans, built this club spending our hard earned cash on tickets and merchandise and now it's being thrown away by a bunch of numpties better suited to running a club like Brora or Clach.

Time for the "sack the board" protests. We Highlanders are far too meek for our own good we need to let the people who run our club know we are not happy, regardless of any threats from match directors etc.

[Yngwie]

Personally I'm waiting to see if the club have actually done anything wrong rather than adding to the many ill-informed attacks on this thread.

The only thing we know for sure is that Dinamo acted in an underhand and unprofessional manner by publishing those documents, which when you consider their motives for doing so perhaps lends credence to the theory that ICT conducted their business with integrity and have been the victims of a Niculae-Dinamo stitch-up. Perhaps they were too trusting, but time will tell.

[Guest birdog]

Personally I'm waiting to see if the club have actually done anything wrong rather than adding to the many ill-informed attacks on this thread.

The only thing we know for sure is that Dinamo acted in an underhand and unprofessional manner by publishing those documents, which when you consider their motives for doing so perhaps lends credence to the theory that ICT conducted their business with integrity and have been the victims of a Niculae-Dinamo stitch-up. Perhaps they were too trusting, but time will tell.

If they are victims of a stitch up as you say then their inexperience dictates that they should be removed, how many other businesses would put up with losing the amount of money that is being reported? If someone got the euro and pound symbols mixed up then why was it not checked, double checked and triple checked to insure accuracy? No matter what the excuse is that surfaces heads need to roll. This is one monumental feck up and the blame lies with every one of the people involved in this transfer. It is not just the Niculae transfer either, our club have been made to look a shambles in recent months.

SACK THE BOARD.

[Scotty]

Personally I'm waiting to see if the club have actually done anything wrong rather than adding to the many ill-informed attacks on this thread.

The only thing we know for sure is that Dinamo acted in an underhand and unprofessional manner by publishing those documents, which when you consider their motives for doing so perhaps lends credence to the theory that ICT conducted their business with integrity and have been the victims of a Niculae-Dinamo stitch-up. Perhaps they were too trusting, but time will tell.

I have received many little snippets of information during this whole saga - some I have used, some I have not - and if even half of them are true then the words p*** up and brewery do spring to mind. However, I tend to agree with you that we should try and wait until all is said and done before passing final judgement. Mind you, that is quite difficult when you have club officials contradicting themselves on an almost daily basis as CaleyD highlighted earlier in this thread.

Also .... arent you breaking your own rule and making an ill-informed attack on Dinamo and Niculae ? If you want to wait to see if the club have done anything wrong, how can you make the assertion that this is all a Dinamo-Niculae stitch up or that publishing the documents was unprofessional ?

[Guest birdog]

However, I tend to agree with you that we should try and wait until all is said and done before passing final judgement. Mind you, that is quite difficult when you have club officials contradicting themselves on an almost daily basis as CaleyD highlighted earlier in this thread.

Scotty there have been enough feck ups in the past, Brewster twice (going first, returning), Rankin, Wyness, the change in chairmanship and many more. Even if the board come out of the Niculae situation smelling of roses then surely to feck we can all see that they are not up to running a welfare club let alone an SPL outfit. It's time to move on.

[CaleyD]

With ICT claiming that no fee had been agreed or money received then Dinamo were, IMO, quite within their rights to publish the documents they did.

Maybe ICT could take a leaf out of their book and publish the documents showing that Marius isn't entitled to his contractually agreed % of the Transfer Fee?  Oh no, wait....they can't because it was apparently a verbal agreement!!!

Verbal contracts, although legally binding, can be very difficult to prove and often rely on them having been completed, at least in part, to prove their existence to a court of law.  

In this case it would seem that ICT have shot themselves in the foot if such an agreement existed.  If the Verbal Contract was "We will not agree to a transfer until you waive the rights to your %" (or something to that effect) then any lawyer half worth his salt would be able to stand up in a court and ask one question.....Why did ICT show acceptance of the offer by invoicing Dinamo for the agreed fee if a verbal contract existed with conditions that were a pre-requisite to them accepting any offer?

Whilst ICT might feel like they've been "stitched-up" I don't actually believe they have any legal recourse which wouldn't amount to them losing even more money.

If the Verbal Agreement existed and ICT never ensured it was fulfilled prior to accepting the Dinamo Offer then that's not "too trusting", that's naive and incompetent, and such people should not be handling large sums of money or making important decisions for any business belonging to someone else.

Someone at ICT has fecked up and unless there's something more solid than a claim that a "Verbal Agreement" was made, then they need to get out before we lose any more.  I don't believe they would have any legal recourse and paying solicitors would simply be a waste of money.  The longer this goes on, the more we risk losing IMO.

I think calls to "Sack the Board" are a little out of order.....some of those involved have done good things for ICT in the past and despite a catalogue of feck ups in the last couple of years we should show them a little respect and give them the opportunity to resign first.

[Guest birdog]

I think calls to "Sack the Board" are a little out of order.....some of those involved have done good things for ICT in the past and despite a catalogue of feck ups in the last couple of years we should show them a little respect and give them the opportunity to resign first.

:clapping03: :clapping03: :clapping03: :clapping03:

I'll give them until a week on Saturday.

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

Fair play that some of them have done good things - if not all of them - in the past. I am sure that many have ICT at heart but have been amateurish and conned professionally. We need somebody with a real business head at the front - Savage now looks as if he was very, very clever in the manner where he orchestarted his departure and almost looks like the wronged party. Sutherland was even sucked in or perhaps found him out too late.  What would have happened if Savage was still around when this debacle became clearer - Another case of I told you so and got slagged fer it.  :018:

[caleyboy]

IMO one or two have been in situ too long and believe the club couldn't survive without their wisdom - time to take stock and move on!

[L_G]

Steve Cairns from Orion

Steve Cairns is not employed by Orion, he has his own company called ROM Services.

Introduced as S C Business Development Manager with Orion.  He may have his own business rather than employed as such but he was speaking as an Orion person.

[Scotty]

Scotty there have been enough feck ups in the past, Brewster twice (going first, returning), Rankin, Wyness, the change in chairmanship and many more. Even if the board come out of the Niculae situation smelling of roses then surely to feck we can all see that they are not up to running a welfare club let alone an SPL outfit. It's time to move on.

Its kind of a double edged sword for me Birdog.

When anything happens, I still tend to get information sent to me from various sources and although that sometimes means I get a well rounded picture of events, just as often, I (or "we" as a website) only get one side of the story that someone wants to punt and when the other side comes out, the original story does not look so controversial. When I was over in April, I spoke to a fairly well connected friend of mine about other stories such as Rankin, Brewster and even Niculae and though I chose not to make most of the results of those discussions public, I feel that in the case of Rankin and Brew, I got a different viewpoint and one that was very close to the action as it were.

Dennis Wyness is another case in point. I love the guy as a player, he is and always will be an ICT legend, and he is basically a very nice human being and I just about blew a gasket when I heard of the contract offer being withdrawn. I will say that I feel the club got it wrong immediately after that came out by allowing various stories to be circulated - and these werent rumours, these were different official stories issued over the course of a couple of weeks. As I said on another thread, the final story from ICT actually rang a little more true - that his agent had tried to ask for more money right at the death - and that made it more understandable. If the club had said that this was the reason on the day the offer was withdrawn, it would not have been them who looked bad.

For me, it all goes back to PR. The club have none. Sure, they have someone who will prepare and issue statements for them when something goes pear-shaped but that is not good enough because its reactive rather than proactive. Like most other clubs in the SPL, they need a dedicated press officer who is well versed in the ways of the media (both traditional and "new media") and who will issue carefully prepared statements as well as reaching out to newspapers, websites or other outlets where the club can be portrayed in a positive light. It should not matter if a site is official or unofficial, whether it gets 1000 hits a year or 10000 a day ... if they can print something positive - which it would be as it would be in the club's own words - then they should receive that info.

For the avoidance of all doubt, I once again guarantee that we will print ICT related press releases in full and unedited when we receive them and allow fans to make up their own minds. We have carried releases from the club, from Orion, from David Sutherland and even from officials in the pre-Sutherland days.

When this site was official, it started off very well, I liaised with the likes of Ken Thomson and then with Kenny Cameron and there was a two way flow of information. The club were happy because things were positive, the fans were happy and positive because they felt listened to, and the upshot was that supporting both the team and the officials off the park was fun. As time wore on, and I can pinpoint the very day the deterioration started (the day that Kenny stepped down and Nigel whatshisname took his place and changes were made in the front office) getting anything other than commercial sales pitches was like pulling teeth. Getting proper information and news often took dozens of phonecalls because there was no longer any liaison. I lost count of the number of times press releases appeared in the Courier, Highland News, BBC, P&J or suchlike yet I had not been included in the mailing. Even when club officials told the person sending these releases that I had to be included, I still got nothing. Not sure if it was me, or because the person issuing them didnt regard "new media" as a legitimate journalistic avenue, but at the end of the day, the person issuing official press releases was not issuing them to the official site and that sums up the approach in a nutshell.

There seems to be a culture of secrecy surrounding the club these days which is far removed from what it was like just a few short years ago. Its almost as if they are scared to let anyone who is not an "insider" know anything of any relevance and that any story that comes out must be spun which is a problem when you dont have anyone capable of doing that and when the secret bunker has more holes than a colander. Whatever happened to the truth ! Be honest, be open, if you **** up then say 'oops, i ****ed up' and move on. A culture of collaboration with the fans is far more preferable to everyone than the culture of confrontation.

Having said all that, I actually believe that most of the people at the club are capable of doing their jobs to a reasonable level (or an acceptable level if you will) but are getting caught up in their own reactive policies. We seldom hear anything from the club unless it is in reaction to a negative story ... why not change that policy to one that is more pro-active and actually highlight what is good at the club, what is positive at the club. Talk to the fans, re-establish that collaborative feel. dont be scared to issue a positive press release in advance of something, dont be scared to clarify the club position when a one-sided rumour comes out ... in short, dont be scared to talk to all who will listen instead of just reacting days or weeks after the fact when the media and fans have had time to snowball a nothing story into the next controversy in Scottish football.

As I know this thread is being read by club officials, I will publicly make the same offer that I have made to the club privately over the last few years.

You trusted me to run your official website for many years. For the most part, you did not interfere in the day to day running of it or dictate that this subject or that subject was taboo on the message boards. It was a time of good collaboration between club and fans. (Almost) Everyone on here is an ICT fan and deep down they all want to be positive about the club, the staff, the officials, the management and the players ... work with us to achieve that.

We are not a rival to the official site, we would not have supplied you with a temporary official site and shop (at our cost) during the several months between the end of our official status and the launch of the PTV site if we were. We are not in competition with the official site - we told you we would not try to do anything that would affect your commercial offerings on the official site (text messages, mobile downloads, club shop etc). We feel that both sites can complement each other which is why we advertise yours prominently on our front page (and will do so for anyone else who is associated closely with the club). We can offer some things that you cant (especially forums which can be fraught with hassles on an official site). So work with us to make the fans feel wanted, work with us in making sure press releases are there for the fans so that speculation can be minimised, work with us so that many of the negative perceptions of the club (whether right or wrong) can be addressed. We want to do that, and I have told you that on numerous occasions .... but we cannot achieve it unless YOU want to do it too. The ball is in your court.

[MissICT]

I hope we can get to the end of this soon!

[mikeyrob73]

hey reedee

with your  "contacts" you should know whats going on no ?  :024:

[MissICT]

I just knew what the real story was!

[EWS]

This talk of a verbal agreement, is it not true that in Scots law a verbal agreement is in fact a legally binding contract?

[Joonya]

Regarding my previous posting yesterday on this thread, I apologise for making it seem like I am pointing fingers and adding fuel to the fire.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and the more this saga continues, the more ludicrous and meaningless opinions/postings we are going to recieve.

I thank Mr DS for his handling of things in his time at the club, the time and money he has invested into ICT and for the huge effort it must have taken to get an SPL standard ground sorted in such a short timescale. But my previous posting was not to offend, only to voice my own opinion (how ever ridiculaous it may seem to others) and thoughts on this entire affair. Seeing our major shareholder's name appearing more than our chairman's, it strikes me as exremely strange (or indeed coincidental) that monies recieved from this sale will probably not make its way into CB's transfer pool.

Once again I apologise for my previous posting that may have caused offence - it was only voiced as an observation/opinion

[CaleyD]

This talk of a verbal agreement, is it not true that in Scots law a verbal agreement is in fact a legally binding contract?

A Verbal Agreement can be legally binding in any part of the UK, but it depends on the circumstances.  The only difference is that Scotland has fewer situations where it is excluded than England.

It doesn't matter which side of the border your on though as you would still need to prove the agreement was made.

What I'm not entirely sure about is which "laws" would take jurisdiction in a cross border dispute, but I'd imagine that as it's an agreement between Marius and ICT then it will be Scotland, however if there's dispute between the contracts involving Dinamo and ICT then it could get more complicated and come down to European or International Laws of some kind.

[Guest birdog]

This talk of a verbal agreement, is it not true that in Scots law a verbal agreement is in fact a legally binding contract?

What I'm not entirely sure about is which "laws" would take jurisdiction in a cross border dispute, but I'd imagine that as it's an agreement between Marius and ICT then it will be Scotland, however if there's dispute between the contracts involving Dinamo and ICT then it could get more complicated and come down to European or International Laws of some kind.

A professional company would normally have the jurisdiction written into any agreement. I work for a company which is owned by the Scottish executive yet my contract states that any dispute will be settled under the jurisdiction of English law. It gets more complicated in that my pay office is in Guernsey but like I say a professional employer would have any doubts written into the agreement.

At the end of the day a verbal agreement is not worth the paper it's written on.