How fixing shower heads helped Inverness Caley Jags to league glory

News imageSNS Inverness Caledonian Thistle head coach Scott Kellacher, dressed in black, joins the rest of the team celebrate the League One win on Saturday.SNS
Inverness Caledonian Thistle secured promotion to the Championship on Saturday

The owner of Inverness Caledonian Thistle says sorting out "simple things" helped the club recover from a financial crisis to becoming League One champions.

ICT was placed into administration in October 2024 after running up millions of pounds in debts.

Businessman Alan Savage stepped in with an initial injection of £1m of funding, and the club exited administration in September last year.

Recalling the actions taken to achieve that, Savage said: "It was about reassuring the staff, fixing things like shower heads, simple things that had gone wrong."

Inverness secured promotion to the Championship with a 2-1 win over Hamilton Academical on Saturday.

Savage told BBC Radio Scotland's Breakfast programme that administration had been the best way to "clean up" the club's debts.

"They were in a mess," he said.

"A few initiatives had gone south and I think it was looking like the club would be liquidated.

"They needed an injection of cash to pull it out of that and that is when I got involved."

News imageAlan Savage is sitting in the boardroom at Inverness Caledonian Thistle's stadium. He is an older man with white hair and clean shaven. He is wearing a black suit jacket over a white shirt.
Alan Savage said he wants ICT to be sustainable and not have to rely on bail-outs

Savage, who was the club's chairman between 2006 and 2008, said his ambition was to get ICT to a point where it was sustainable and no longer required bail-outs to survive.

He said new initiatives included establishing the club's stadium as a start point for the North Coast 500 tourist route and hosting music events.

"We want more than one day a fortnight of football. We are trying to get life into the stadium every day of the week," said Savage.

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