TWO refereeing errors during last weekend’s games, have focussed Highland football fans’ minds. The point gained by Ross County against Celtic at Dingwall courtesy of Alex Schalk’s aerobatics, meant they are eight points above the relegation spot with only 15 points left to contest.
In contrast near neighbours and local rivals Inverness Caledonian Thistle suffered a cruel blow at Motherwell. Having fought back from two down, their efforts didn’t count. Referee Willie Collum and his linesman saw the ball cross the Inverness goal line, when nobody else in the stadium did.
Inverness manager Richie Foran must fear the gods of football fortune have turned their back on his team, which now sits all alone at the bottom of the league.
It is still possible that both, or indeed neither of the Highland teams will be relegated, but things look increasingly grim for ICT. This has left County fans, including this writer, pondering life without Caley in the top tier. Publicly a collective schadenfreude is on display. When the County supporters’ buses, returning from Hamilton recently, were passing ICT’s stadium at the southern end of the Kessock Bridge, there was a spontaneous rendition of a version of Status Quo’s Down Down.
Certainly much humour would be enjoyed at Caley’s expense. After all these are the supporters who when playing County last year, after the Dingwall side’s League Cup Final triumph, kept singing “Small team, small cup. Big team, big cup,” referencing their winning of the Scottish Cup the previous year. But privately many Staggies admit that life wouldn’t be the same without Caley. Not having the local derby – El Kessocko – to look forward to, clearly would be a miss. Not least when the next nearest premiership team is Aberdeen 116 miles away.
However it is more than that. Having both Highland teams in the top flight means a lot to the Highland sense of identity. Their remarkable rise from the Highland League since 1994 helped underline that the area is no longer the social/economic basket case it was historically.
There is also mutual enjoyment that central belt teams still complain how far away Inverness and Dingwall are, apparently convinced it is further to travel north than the Highlanders’ journey south every second week.
Stuart Cosgrove on the wonderful Off the Ball (a programme whose contribution to Scottish life is not sufficiently recognised – couple of honorary degrees anyone?) talked recently about how many football fans in Glasgow seemed to resent the Highlanders’ presence, particularly that of Ross County.
It is unlikely such “central beltism” is just about distance. Dingwall, with a population smaller than its football ground’s capacity, is deemed undeserving of top flight status by some.
But this is a source of local pride. Roy MacGregor, County’s chairman, enjoys talking about ICT being the “the city club” and the County fans with some justification chant “We are the Highlands”, coming from as far afield as Skye, Sutherland and sometimes the Outer Isles.
But what would be the point if Caley weren’t around?
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel