From the article I posted above....
Despite the undoubted success of Inverness, there remains some hardcore fans who feel the union should never have taken place. Bannerman, though, feels the dissenters have become largely an irrelevance.
“They could hold their agms in a phonebox,” he added. “When Caley and Thistle were in the Highland League, between them they were getting crowds of around 600. When ICT were in the SPL, their average gate was about 4000. That tells its own story. Aside from relegation last season, the whole thing has been a huge success.”
Funnily enough, I was actually talking to the Caley fan in work about this a couple of weeks ago, he only knows one person who stopped going and fell away from football. Said the crowd he'd be going to Hampden with were the same guys he watched Caledonian with in the Highland League.