Comment: I've offered cash to ICT twice - training move would help

“You deserve to be stripped of your OBE,” wailed one keyboard warrior, angered by the pugnacious, vituperative comments in my last column in this blatt.

I argued then, and I still believe today, to help secure success and therein financial security for Inverness Caledonian Thistle, the club’s training facilities have to be in the Central Belt of Scotland.

I grew up in Inverness and one day I will return to my hometown, because I love it. But young professional footballers might not want to live there if it means they have to up sticks and move their family from Glasgow or Edinburgh.

Caley Thistle v Stenhousemuir lat weekend. Image: Peter Paul.

Stranraer Athletic have done it, Queen of the South have done it, even Kilmarnock have done it.

I doubt His Majesty the King cares enough about football to worry about the future of ICT, nor has he yet decreed that my training relocation opinion is worthy of him asking for my OBE back.

And having been to war twice, the online abuse I received from fans for my views merited not even a bead of sweat, far less any tears or blood.

To survive, we need the best players and the best players are based in Glasgow and Edinburgh and don’t want to live in Inverness. There, I’ve said it again.

One man who did not agree with me, and having exhorted people to speak their minds down 40 years as a journalist, it would be churlish of me to disregard his view, was putative knight in shining armour, Alan Savage.

He said the club’s training operation would remain at Fort George and the previously mooted plan of a move to Kelty would be shelved.

Still waiting for reply after offer to help dedicated Savage

Club consultant and former chairman Alan Savage during an ICT press conference. Image: SNS.

I didn’t get the chance to talk to Mr Savage, although I thought I was going to.

Two years ago, I emailed the club offering them an interest-free loan, or a share purchase to the value of just under £500,000, and my services for free as a
strategic communications consultant.

But after a while, when I received no reply to my email, I invested the money elsewhere.

And although I am a lifelong fan, originally from the blue side of the town, I’m glad I did, because, as things have panned out, I would surely have lost my money.

Then came the Epiphany for the club with the announcement Alan Savage was back. Everybody breathed a huge sigh of relief and we all looked forward to
returning to top-flight football, and then – we all dared to pray – Europe.

But it seems that the task at hand is too big and too complicated for even as dedicated a fan and a financier as Savage.

One day shortly after his return, I was in a board meeting of a charity and received a call from an unrecognised number. During the coffee break, I called back and spoke to an executive at GRM marketing, the Glasgow-based agency the club had hired to look for new investment.

I explained I had disposed of the cash I had promised in 2022, but could possibly generate additional funding. I also reiterated my desire to join the board and again offered the club free comms advice, because the way the previous regime had communicated with the fans surrounding Kelty etc., had been a shambles.

I am still waiting for a reply. Maybe it’s just me.

I’ve covered clubs’ cash strife – and now it looks like my team are next

I have never met Scot Gardiner or Ross Morrison and my forte is words, knowing more about bedsheets than balance sheets, so I never had any inkling of the financial problems at the club.

But it seems the issues are profound, and despite Alan Savage and his shining light of hope a few weeks ago, administration is staring us in the face.

We are looking into an abyss from which we may never recover.

When I was a journalist with STV, I covered both Celtic and Rangers coming within hours of going out of business.

I was at Glasgow Airport when Fergus McCann then arrived to save the day at Celtic and got to know him quite well.

I was at Ibrox when the administrators Paul Clark and David Whitehouse from Duff and Phelps arrived.

Ibrox on the day that Rangers served notice of their intention to go into administration in 2012. Image: SNS.

This was all big city slicker stuff, with sums of money in the tens of millions of pounds bandied about – in the end the two Glasgow clubs, who meant the world to their millions of fans, but nothing to me, survived.

Instead, the club I love is standing at the brink.

I must be the only potential investor in ICT who was willing to part with significant readies to help my club not once, but twice and hear nothing back.

I fear that if things go down the administration route, there will not be a club left for me to offer to help a third time.