It hasn't been a great week for the local community aspect of Scottish football.

Last Friday it was announced the resolution to ban plastic pitches from the top flight has been passed by Premiership clubs. This means lower-league sides coming up from the second tier following the conclusion of the 2025/26 campaign will have to install grass pitches, if they don't have them already, in order to be admitted for promotion. For the likes of Raith Rovers, Airdrieonians, Falkirk and the recently-relegated Livingston, this could have a tremendous impact on their relationship with the local community, which was covered in last week's column.

This news arrived amid the backdrop of an ongoing farrago involving Inverness Caledonian Thistle, Kelty Hearts, Fife Council and thousands of angry ICT supporters after the Highland club announced a deal to move their first-team football operations 136 miles from home. At the time of writing, the deal is still set to go ahead, though chairman Ross Morrison did admit on a recent episode of the excellent Wyness Shuffle podcast that Caley Thistle could potentially still back out.

The deal has been met with rancour and ridicule from every corner of the country, from supporters to the national media, to former players and managers, and with good reason.

Football clubs are essential institutions for communities across Scotland. They represent so much more than just watching a team for 90 minutes every second Saturday. Even if your only interaction outwith matchdays is to walk past a team's stadium or training base, you feel that affinity deep inside of you whenever you do. You know within those walls there is work going on to try and benefit something you hold very dear to your heart. This attachment is what allows players, who previously had no prior relationship, to be immediately adored by hundreds or thousands of strangers. It's deeper than the colours they wear on their strip and the badge on their chest.

We may not literally open the door for them on a physical level, but there's an emotional tie, perhaps even a spiritual one. By going to work every day in the community, for a cause we're united behind, they become one of us. Then there are those who fully embrace their new surroundings and begin to think of it as home in the same way we do. These are the players whose legacies persevere for years and sometimes decades after they stop pulling on our favoured colours.

ICT fans are now having to deal with a reality where this could be ripped away from them; taken from their back door and plomped in a completely different part of the country. Their team will be strangers in their own city. Players will still play in the colours and wear the badge, but it further shatters the illusion that these guys are so much more than just paid mercenaries.

The board have made this decision for two reasons. The first is that they want to make it easier to attract players from the central belt because it's difficult to get guys to either relocate to the Highlands or to move up there, which is especially difficult for those with families. Undoubtedly Inverness' locality in regards to the hub of Scottish football is a challenge, but a maddening part of all this is that there are no guarantees it will lead to greater success on the football pitch.

It immediately sends out the wrong message for a start. Over the years there have been countless Inverness heroes who have moved to the city from the central belt or further afield. It takes sacrifice, it requires steeliness, it demands desire. It encourages focus. It pushes players into bonding with new team-mates. All things which can make players better. You want someone who is hungry, who wants to prove themselves outside their comfort zone. You don't just want those who are comfortable.

There are disadvantages with regards to the available player pool, of course, but the better Inverness managers and club stewards have used the positives to their advantage over the years as the club racked up achievement after achievement following their controversial 1994 birth: lower-league promotions, twice eliminating Celtic from cup, reaching the SPL, qualifying for Europe, and, of course, beating Falkirk at Hampden Park in the 2015 Scottish Cup final.

The second reason for the move is financial. Inverness CT owe £300,000 to creditors and Morrison reckons the Kelty move could save them between £200,000-400,000, which would stop any need for a part-time model, stay away from administration and safeguard the existence of the youth academy. Although, on the subject of the latter, former chairman Alan Savage has since come out and said he is investing funds to make sure it remains operational regardless of whether the switch to Kelty goes through.

Just like the first reason, there remain flaws in the financial argument which the club didn’t seem to consider, mainly how supporters would react to the news. Hundreds of fans from an already diminishing base are now promising to boycott buying season tickets, while there's a call-to-arms in place which could see up to £200,000 of collective capital go to the supporters’ trust instead. So much for saving money.

Understandably, fans are completely out of faith with those who run the club. A succession of poor decisions with regards to managerial hires, alternative revenue streams (like the rejected battery farm proposal or the failed concert company) and the general state of club finances have all combined to erode any goodwill. There have been calls for Morrison and CEO Scot Gardiner to step down.

Inverness CT have just suffered relegation to the third tier for the first time this century under a manager who is universally unpopular with supporters. Duncan Ferguson plays what is widely perceived to be a negative brand of football and is on such big wages (even with a pay cut) a year into an inexplicable three-year deal that the club can't afford to sack him. His hiring always felt like something of a vanity signing by those in charge. They had the chance to bring in someone who was a big name in not only Scottish but British football, someone who would get them and the club some attention, and they didn’t consider whether he was a good fit for the club or football at that level.

Caley Thistle fans may not succeed in getting Ferguson removed and another manager put in his place, but there is still hope they'll be able to force the board to U-turn on this Kelty move.

There is a lesson Morrison, Gardiner and the rest of the board need to learn in all of this, and this goes for any chairman or CEO across the country: you may be in charge, you may own the deeds, but this club does not belong to you. It belongs to the supporters. It belongs to the people who give it purpose and keep it alive. It belongs to the community. You are there to look after it as best you can and then be on your merry way. Just try not to do too much damage before that happens.