ICTFC INTRODUCING GAELIC TANNOY ANNOUNCEMENTS AT GAMES.

ICTFC are delighted to announce that the club will be introducing Gaelic translations of our Club’s Tannoy announcements. 

The project has come about following meetings between ICTFC, Comunn na Gaidhlig and UHI to celebrate the National Mod coming to Inverness this year. Discussions on various topics about introducing the native language were brought up. 

Alasdair Barnett who is the Convenor of the National Mod 2020, which is run by the charity An Common Gaidhealach, is a huge ICTFC fan and he approached the club last year about the club being involved in promoting the National Mod on its return to Inverness.

Alasdair said “I know several people at the club and spoke with them about ICTFC possibly hosting some fund raising events at the stadium. The club invited myself and some others from the Gaelic community in to a meeting and several projects around the Gaelic language have emerged from that initial meeting. The first initiative to take place is the Gaelic announcements at home games” 

Others who attended the initial meeting were Alana Macleod and Donald John MacIntyre from UHI and Hazel MacRae the Gaelic teacher from CullodenAcademy.

Donald John, or DJ as he is better known, is the Gaelic Officer at UHI and he is delighted that the club are embracing the Gaelic language.

DJ said “We were aware that ICTFC have a number of Gaelic speaking players on their books and it is fantastic that the club wants to get more involved. It will be great to hear the school kids speaking Gaelic over the tannoy” 

The translations will be done by pupils studying Gaelic in the Inverness Academy’s. The first person to feature will be 13 year old Natalie Christie from Culloden Academy.  Natalie’s teacher at Culloden is Hazel MacRae and she and a number of her pupils visited the stadium last week to familiarise themselves with the Tannoy Announcers room.

After her visit to the stadium Hazel said “I have had some very excited pupils in my class since I told them about the opportunity to be a Gaelic announcer at ICTFC. We visited the club earlier this week and were shown around the ground and in to the Tannoy booth high above the park. The pupils got the opportunity to practice using the equipment and are looking forward to their debuts for ICT”

The other local Academy’s who are interested in the project are Inverness Royal Academy, Millburn and Charleston and they will work on a rota system. 

Scot Gardiner CEO at ICTFC said “With the National Mod coming to Inverness this year and the fact that 3 or 4 of our younger players speak Gaelic, we started to have a natural discussion on how we could and should be looking at a greater Gaelic presence at the club.”

“After all we are in the Highland Capital and we were becoming ever more aware of the resurgence of the language in the area and therefore it was only right that we look at it seriously. First Team player Roddy MacGregor went along to speak on our behalf at a Gaelic careers day at Culloden Academy and it went extremely well.”

“I met some of the parents and students who are going to be taking part in this season’s Gaelic tannoy announcers project and everyone seemed very excited.”

“We hope this and some of the other initiatives we have discussed become a permanent feature at Caledonian Stadium and I believe it is a project which everyone can be rightfully proud of and something that helps stimulate further engagement with the wider Gaelic speaking community”.