Why Inverness Caledonian Thistle are relocating training base 140 miles away...to Fife

Inverness Caledonian Thistle have signed a new partnership deal with Kelty Hearts to use its facilities at new Central Stadium. The move takes effect from the start of its pre-season in June, and will allow the Highlands club to access the 3G pitch, onsite grass pitches and offices for coaching staff. It comes days after Thistle dropped out of the Championship into League One, where Kelty also play.

Thistle said the deal was part of a “planned strategic restructure of the club” - but the team will continue to play out of Caledonian Stadium in Inverness. The aim of the move is to be able to attract players to the club by offering training facilities in the central belt

In a statement, it said: “The last few years have seen the geographic challenges in getting players to move to the Highlands become ever harder for a number of reasons. Caledonian Stadium will always be our home, but other factors in Scottish football have changed and where we train should not be an impediment to the quality of the players we can attract to Caley Thistle, or to our potential to progress.

“The commercial success of the city of Inverness, both as a tourist destination and a place to live, has led to very high prices for the accommodation we require to house players. In addition to these high costs which our competitors do not carry, the extremely limited housing stock in Inverness continues to be both a challenge and a huge factor working against us.

“Increased playing budgets in and around the central belt has meant that on many occasions, even when we have offered players more favourable terms than our competitors, sometimes even agreed deals, we have then been told that the player has changed his mind due to challenges relocating their families. Support structures in and around the families of players may all be in and around the central belt, partners will have jobs where they live and moving kids schools to the Highlands and moving home itself can just be seen as impractical for a one or two year contract.”

It said those conditions made it “particularly challenging” when it came to signing senior players and its geographical location meant it had missed out on the opportunity of signing promising players from the larger clubs in Scotland, on loan or otherwise.

The club added: “For the avoidance of any doubt we absolutely intend to continue to develop our own homegrown Highland boys and we will take the appropriate steps to make sure that by being creative, innovative and practical, they do not miss out on the chance to have a pathway to first team football with their team. We have a proud tradition of introducing local players in to our first team and this will absolutely continue.

“We obviously never intended to be in the same division as Kelty when originally exploring this concept, but football throws strange things at you sometimes and having reassessed the proposition and judged that the pros still far outweigh the cons.”