Caledonian Stadium - History

History

Inverness Caledonian Thistle was formed in 1994 by the merging of two Highland League clubs, Caledonian and Inverness Thistle. Between 1994 and 1996, the new club played their home matches at Telford Street Park, which had been the home ground of Caledonian. However, one of the pledges made to gain entrance into the Scottish Football League (SFL) was that they would move to a newly-built ground by August 1995. Four sites were considered until early in 1995, when Highland Council gave approval to a site called East Longman, next to the A9 road and the Kessock Bridge. This site had to overcome concerns of the local Harbour Trust that the stadium floodlights would interfere with traffic in the Moray Firth and the need for an access road to relieve traffic from the A9. Inverness District Council approved the plans and authorised £900,000 of public funds to cover a funding gap.

The SFL extended the deadline for a new stadium to 1996, but the District Council was provided legal advice that the public funds could only be provided under set conditions, which caused further delay. The club threatened to resign from the SFL if the funds were not forthcoming, but eventually the District Council granted the funds in December 1995. The new stadium opened in November 1996 and hosted its first SFL match, a 1–1 draw between Caley Thistle and Albion Rovers. The stadium held 5,000 supporters at opening and cost £5.2 million. This was funded by selling the old grounds of Caledonian and Inverness Thistle for £1.1 million, the grant from Inverness District Council, £500,000 from the Football Trust and the rest was provided by the Inverness and Nairn Enterprise Board, sponsors and supporters.

When the club won the First Division in 2004, they faced a problem in that the Caledonian Stadium did not meet the Scottish Premier League (SPL) rules on stadium criteria, which said that a stadium needed to have 10,000 seats. The Caledonian Stadium had a total capacity of 6,280 and only 2,280 seats. Inverness CT agreed to groundshare with Aberdeen at Pittodrie. The SPL initially rejected the groundsharing application, but accepted it on appeal. The SPL also voted to reduce the 10,000 seat requirement to 6,000. Inverness CT played at Pittodrie for the first two rounds of fixtures of the 2004–05 season, while redevelopment works were carried out at the Caledonian Stadium.

The redevelopment in 2004–05 included the construction of two new stands at either end of the ground, which made the stadium all-seater and increased its capacity to over 7,500. These stands were built in a remarkable 47 days by the Tulloch Construction Company who are also the club's biggest shareholder. As Tulloch also paid part of the development cost, the stadium had the Tulloch name added to it on completion of the work.

The club added a very small stand, opposite the Main Stand called "the West Stand." With a capacity of around 400, the stand was the smallest free-standing football stand in the Scottish Premier League. There are plans to build a full scale west-stand which would look very much like that of the Main Stand though a gas pipe in the area may cause a problem. If a full scale west stand was added to would take the capacity of the ground to around 10,000 seats. There may also be plans in the future to join the Main Stand with the North Stand to give the ground an even larger capacity.