Yes We Can

SUCH is Scottish popular culture that if either STV or BBC Scotland were ever to raise the comedy bar beyond "couthy" and come up with something akin to the legendary 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch (Four Fifers anyone?), there would have to be a football element.

I could see the Pars' fan putting-up Alex Edwards, Alex Ferguson, Willie Cunningham and Jackie Sinclair; back would come the East Fifer weighing-in with Allan Brown, "Legs" Fleming, George Aitken and Jimmy Bonthrone; only to be trumped by the two-word response from the Starks Parker: "Jim Baxter".

I slalom down this back road of whimsey after looking at a piece in this morning's Scotsman, in their 'From the Archives' feature. This is a great wallow in nostalgia, I just wish Donald Walker and his terrific team on the Hootsman's sports desk would up their production values and try to find archive features matching the date of use.

As an Ayrshireman I'm always happy to read about triumphs by Ayrshire sides and today's was all about that glorious day, 24 April, 1965, when Killie went to Tynecastle, won 2-0 and lifted the League Championship for the only time.

Worth celebrating certainly, but maybe not specifically in October, 2010. But, enough carping, that great win got me thinking. Back in 1965, that victorious Kilmarnock team contained just one current Scotland cap (i.e. one player who had played for Scotland that season) - centre half Jackie McGrory. Yes, injured goalkeeper Campbell Forsyth was also capped that season, while Bobby Ferguson, the young reserve whose late save from Alan Gordon secured the title would go on to be capped the following season. Right back Andy King was an Under-23 regular, Tommy McLean would go on to greatness, but for the rest, Under-23 or Scottish League recognition would be the best they could hope for; while such as Matt Watson were scandalously overlooked for any representative honours.

The Hearts team they beat also included one just one current Scotland cap, Willie Wallace, who had made his debut against Northern Ireland earlier that season; but the Hearts XI also included an already capped goalkeeper in Jim Cruickshanks, Davie Holt, capped at left back the previous season and various players such as Billy Higgins, Roy Barry and Johnny Hamilton who had played in Under-23 or League internationals.

Dunfermline finished third with a squad similarly lacking in international names: then came Hibs, whose only capped player that season, Neil Martin, didn't make his Scotland debut until the following month. Rangers, who then as now could have fielded a team of full internationalists were fifth, while Celtic, managed by Jock Stein and with all bar Wallace and Ronnie Simpson of the Lisbon Lions already in place and five current Scotland internationalists in their ranks finished that season eighth, behind Dundee and Clyde.

Back then, the provincial clubs already were at a fiscal disadvantage against the Old Firm - they were always at the mercy of English raiders, picking-off their better players, but, they competed, they gave the Big Two a run for their money and beat them more often than they do today.

I would suggest that notwithstanding their huge advantage in support, it ought to be easier to compete with the Old Firm today. Back then, Celtic and Rangers could afford to pay more than most English First Division sides; then as now, they could offer virtually-guaranteed European football - they would not have lost first team players to Second Division sides in England (Championship sides today). The playing field is flatter today, every Scottish club is vulnerable to player loss because of the riches in the south.

But, in spite of this, the Old Firm is more dominant than ever.

WHY?

Where is the determination from club directors and managers to get their players to have a real go at the big two? There are riches to be had for the first club brave enough and determined enough to say: "We can beat them".

I long to see another 1965, with the Old Firm trotting in with the other also-rans, what a boost that would be for Scottish football.

Where is Scottish football's Obama? - crying out: "Yes We Can".

The Wrong Target

I THOUGHT I would post in green ink today - the traditional colour of the deluded bampot.

And no, I am not having a go at those members of "the Celtic Family" who have turned on Willie Collum following that penalty on Sunday - best to ignore these serial whingers and sufferers from myopia.

Of course football at the top end long ago ceased to be a game, it is a business, and a pretty unsavoury one at times. I do feel for referees, they are the last vestage of decency and good sense in a sport which gets weirder by the year. And, as the moral guardians of an increasingly immoral game, they are becoming increasingly pilloried.

Sadly, I don't see things changing shortly. Can we not get a couple of strong Queen's Park men into positions of power within the SFA, so that once again it might be all about "The game for the game's sake", that wonderfully-inspiring club motto, dreamed up by those visionaries who so-influenced football from the first Hampden Park?

Today, it's not so much the game for the game's sake, more: Me, for my sake, in football's corridors of power.

Rant over, back on topic.

In having a go at Willie Collum for awarding a penalty for what, I've even heard decent Rangers supporters (and yes, there are such beings) admit was a pretty innocuous challenge on Kirk Broadfoot, one met by what looked like a bit of play-acting - the referee's critics are aiming at the wrong target.

Yes big Kirk went down far too easily for a man of six foot five inches and 14 stones, but instead of blaming him for going down and the referee for awarding the penalty - shouldn't our ire be directed at the last two or three generations of football's law makers, the guys who have allowed this climate of going down easily in order to get penalties flourish.

In all probability, players have gone down easily inside the box since the penalty kick was introduced. I can only go back to the late fifties in personal experience, but certainly, by 1960 Davie Wilson of Rangers was known as a serial "diver"; indeed the teenaged John Greig's party piece at Rangers' training was an impression of Wilson bursting to the edge of the box then falling spectacularly.

John McDonald, a later successor (though not half the player) to Wilson in the number 11 Rangers' shirt, was known as 'Polaris' for his proclavity for going down under challenge around the box,while a whole Panzer Division of Germans, led by gruppenfuhrer Jurgen Klinsmann showed that the Stuka wasn't the only German thing which dived steeply and made a lot of noise about it. I am also rather proud of a line I came up with in the Herald Diary, when I suggested, after his first World Diving Championship win, that the teenaged Tom Daley must be one helluva diver, to beat: Larsson of Sweden, Petrov of Bulgaria and Nakamura of Japan to the title.

So why hasn't football done something about the practice? And this is an area where Britain can lead, after all, with our bloc vote on IFAB, the International Board, the English, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh FAs can lead the world, they can if they work together, force change and get us back to a situation where good old-fashioned British fair play and respect for the law is a force for good.

But, where are the football statesmen, the men of vision, to do this? Certainly not in the craven ranks of the Greed is Good English or Scottish Premierships.

Get the right men in place and we can start to clean up football - but hurry, it may be too late.

A Precedent Worth Following

A pre-World War I Scottish international rugby referee once made a statement which, the more time passes, becomes ever more credible. This gentleman, whose name escapes me said, of English protests at a disputed try in the inaugural rugby international back in 1871: "As a general rule, I find the team which is making the greater noise about a dispute generally has less grounds for complaint".

I commend this viewpoint to Mr Neil Lennon and the other of "the Celtic Family" who are feeling hard done by today, following Willie Collum's award of a penalty in Sunday's Old Firm clash at Celtic Park.

Now Celtic complaints about decisions going to Rangers is nothing new, I suppose it's been a recurring theme since 1888 and the needle is now wearing a bit thin.

It's not as if the decision turned the game - Rangers were already 2-1 up and in control of the game. So, no penalty, Rangers still win 2-1; what is there to complain about.

This comes hard on the heels of the penalty Celtic were given, then had taken away from them at Tannadice the previous week. Again, had the decision gone their way and had Celtic scored from it - they'd have won 3-1 rather than 2-1.

A period of silence regarding refereeing decisions from within Celtic Park might be no bad thing. But, you know how it is, once a victim, always a victim - it's a wee bit like Scottish politicians and the Westminster parliament - it's always their fault.

Another old maxim from football's past was the player who, disputing a goal against his side, told the referee: "Ref, that was never a goal".

Only to be told: "Well you look in tomorrow's paper and see if it's a goal or not".

It is written into the Laws of the Game of Association Football: "The referee is the sole judge of fact". So, it doesn't matter what you think, what I think, what everyone inside Sunday's 60,000 Celtic Park crowd thought - only Willie Collum's opinion mattered and in his opinion, it was a penalty.

We may think him wrong, it doesn't matter. He was the man who had the balls to make that call, he made it honestly and without favour. Give him credit for making it and remember, if we've not got referees, we've not got football.

What's the alternative to referees? A toss of the coin at every disputed incident? A "square go" between the rival captains (Davie Weir v Shaun Maloney, come-on!!)?

Let's get the lawyers involved: each match would last ten years, by the time Celtic have taken their appeal to the European Court of Justice then the UN, would cost several million pounds and would end up with a result nobody wanted.

No, let's leave it to referees, like democracy, it's better than the alternatives.

Aye no bad

AYE, no bad passes for extravagant praise in some parts of Scotland, you know what a hard lot we are to please. This Caledonian trait can be taken to extremes, I well-remember the late John McKenzie, the original "Voice of Football" greeting a Denis Law hat trick against Norway with calls for the Lawman to be dropped. As if Denis only scoring three times was the reason we allowed the Norwegians to score four at the other end.

But, having had a closer look at the drip feeds regarding the proposed changes to the senior leagues: my view is now: aye, no bad.

I'm not entirely sure about SPL 1 and SPL 2 for instance, even though I feel reducing the number of clubs playing in national leagues from 42 to 26 or 28 does make sense.

We have too-many "senior" clubs as it is and any reduction will be welcome. A lot of the diddy teams in the lower leagues have, for years, been interested in just one thing - survival as senior clubs and if they are forced to drop into regional leagues, after they get over the initial shock, some might actually prosper.

No mention of a pyramid though, something which surely has to happen sooner rather than later - maybe Henry McLeish has that up his sleeve.

But, to get back to SPL1 and SPL 2, I'd rather see an American-style conference system for the first part of the season, with the top four in each conference forming the top eight for the second half of the season. If Rangers were in one conference, Celtic in the other, ditto Aberdeen and Dundee United, Hearts and Hibs, and so on, it would spread the money around more, the first half of the season would have an extra edge, we wouldn't be diluting the appeal of meaningful local derbies, since for these to happen, both clubs would have to qualify for the top eight.

But, this minor criticism apart, I think it might work.

I'm also all for the big teams' reserve sides playing in the regional leagues, as Under-23 sides. This is a positive step, we're not very good at player development in Scotland and I think this will help.

an forward tho I canna see - I guess and fear

APOLOGIES for re-writing Burns there, but he never had to write-up a dire display by Ayr United at Somerset Park, and I've done too-many of these.

My qualms about the future today concern the soon-to-happen changes to the format of our senior leagues. We are being drip-fed the news that, sooner rather than later, there will be no more SPL Top 12, no more SFL Divisions 1, 2 and 3 of ten clubs each.

The idea of a 14-team SPL is being touted, while there may be, it is suggested, changes to the end-of-season split and play-off formats.

I am not impressed. On the face of it a 14-club SPL makes sense, except, it's not all about the SPL, taking an additional two teams out of the SFL Division One would inevitably weaken that brand, since there would be more part-time clubs in the tier below the top level.

Also, the idea being promoted of the Old Firm and perhaps the big city clubs putting their reserve teams into the SFL's three divisions, might not go down well with such ambitious non-league clubs as Cove Rangers, Spartan, Preston Athletic and the like, who, having seen recent new admissions to the senior leagues, particularly Inverness CT and Ross County flourish, will not take kindly to the door being slammed on them by bigger clubs' wee teams.

Change is needed, but while some of the suggestions going the round today have merit, I feel a wee bit more thought is needed.

More on this later.

Money is the root of all evil

MONEY is the root of all evil is one of the more-misquoted passages from the Bible.

The more accurate quotation is that: "The love of money....etc", while some classical Greek scholars insist the passage from St Paul's first letter to Timothy, chapter six, verse ten should read: "The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil".

You pays your money, you takes your choice, while doubtless down Ibrox way, some re-incarnation of Robbie Coltranes's immortal character Mason Boyne is muttering: "See the bother thae Tims cause".

But, in football at the top level at least, the love of money has got us into a pretty pickle. Take yon Wayne Rooney for instance. Now to me he's simply the latest in a long line of players to be dubbed: "The best English player of his generation". This is a damning phrase, dreamt-up by the most-myopic and xenophobic media on the planet.

The boy is good, by present day standards maybe very good - but for me, not nearly as good as the English make him out to be. He suffers from the commonest failing among British footballers - he's as thick as shite in the neck of a bottle.

He is paid a ridiculously over-blown salary, he's going through a crisis at present, so he wants away - leaving Manchester United with a problem.

Do they say: "Good riddance" and punt him across the city to their near neighbours, probably the solitary English team who could afford the salary and conditions Rooney's agent will attempt to wrestle from him; or do they find some (monetary) way of keeping him sweet and at Old Trafford.

Option one, they get the £50 million quoted price, most of which they immediately have to pay out for a less-good replacement. Option two, his already obscene salary increases.

Another club in England is his solitary option, because I don't see too-many of the big Spanish or Italian clubs coming in for him, they've been badly-burned too-often by English players, who travel about as well as Belgian wine.

Whatever happens, an awful lot of money will change hands and football will sink lower into the mire of being disliked by even more people.

Money has ruined British football and the madness shows no sign of abating. Dundee have lived beyond their means for years and are paying the price, but you still expect some well-heeled Dundonian to come in, pick up the pieces and help the club stagger-on for a few more years.

Rangers' debts are down to £27 million or thereabouts, praise the Lord and pass the Buckie. They are still over-paying some fairly average players, who are not Rangers' class - Lee McCulloch wearing Jim Baxter's number six jersey: I rest my case.

And when it comes to delusions, what about their Chairman hailing Walter Smith as the club's greatest manager - If there is an earthquake around Craigton Cemetry this week, it's only been caused by Bill Struth spinning in his grave.

Football needs to urgently wean itself off its over-dependence on ludicrous sums of money, or the reckoning, which is coming, will make anything which has happened in recent years seem small beer.

After all, if all those highly-trained pilots who fly Harriers can be so casually binned, why should we care about some Scouse scally who has become a millionaire through his ability to make a five yard pass to a team mate?

Nearly Famous

MALCOLM Allison, who died last week, aged 83, was fondly remembered by all the national newspapers, and rightly so. For a trade which is the embodiment of power without responsibility, particularly in what the late, great Ian 'Dan' Archer used to refer to as: "the comics section", i.e. the sports pages, 'Big Mal' was a gift.

He arrived on the scene just as the celebrity manager became popular. The hitherto near-anonymous boss, tribly-wearind, besuited, probably a pipe smoker, was being replaced by the new-style track-suited boss. Tommy Docherty, Bill Shankly, Don Revie, Bill Nicholson, Jock Stein - mostly post-war players, who, even as managers, still thought like players, were replacing the previous generation - foremen were taking over from managers if you like; or perhaps the officer class: Busby, Symon etc were ceding power on the training field to ncos.

Allison was a big man with a big personality, who provided "good copy" to the papers, who were, back then, fighting to hold on to their near-monopoly on football coverage from the ever-encroaching tentacles of TV. The papers needed managers who were outrageous and Allison, like Docherty and Brian Clough, fitted the new bill.

Allison was, let there be no doubting this, a good coach, maybe a great coach - working on the training field, he could improve individual players and make a good team better. However, he wasn't much cop as a manager.

In this country, his best work was done as number two to Joe Mercer, one of the officer class (albeit having risen through the ranks as it were). Mercer could temper his assistant's more-outlandish statements and ideas with more than a little common sense; he could also come up with good copy for the press, without, as Allison never managed, straying into the realms of the ridiculous.

Allison also did reasonably well abroad, where they don't have British-style managers, but coaches who primarily coach, with the running of the club and the general direction left to a general manager. But, the grim fact is, when he was Honcho at a British club, he was hopeless.

He was perhaps a better number two than number one. There just might be an erudite book in analysing great British managerial pairings.

Would Bill Shankly have been as good without the input of Bob Paisley? As the successon continued, how might Paisley, like Shankly before him, have managed without the boot room 'think tank' putting in their two-penceworth? Just how big was Jimmy Murphy's largely-unheralded part in creating the legend of Busby? How come Cloughie didn't do as well without Peter Taylor?

Great coaches and innovators such as Allison sometimes go too far, they need a steadying hand to rein them in, Mercer did this so well, nobody else could.

Today we celebrate managers more than ever. But, as they have become almost as big as, and in some cases, such as Fergie and "The Chosen One" bigger than their players, the fact is, managers no longer have the power to influence clubs as they once did.

Managers such as Willie Maley, Bill Struth, Herbert Chapman, "Sailor" Hunter at Motherwell, reigned for decades; they were allowed to set the complete agenda for their clubs. The directors, usually local small businessmen or entrepreneurs, enjoyed the benefits of their status at the local Masonic Lodges, Conservative Clubs and the like; their was largely a hands-off role, leaving the running of the club to the manager.

Today, basking in reflected glory down the Lodge or at the golf club isn't enough for the directors. In different economic times, they have to spend more time checking-out their investments; the players might still be barely-educated working-class boys, but they are now as rich as, if not richer than the directors. Being a director is harder today, the fans want instant success, which transmits into added pressure coming down on the manager from the board room.

Guys like Malcolm Allison brought this about - maybe he should have stuck to coaching players on the training park, he might have had an easier life.

But, we, the fans, would have lost out on reading about the adventures and mis-adventures of a one-off.

Thinking the unthinkable

WHILE I was growing-up in an Ayrshire mining village, there was "the store", ie the local branch of the Co-op, the sub-post office - a typical example of such, with the essential postal business supplemented by selling greetings cards and the likes, while Annie Kelly ran a sort of micro Spar shop from the big room in her typical two-roomed cottage in one of the miners' rows.

Then, as the miners were moved out of the rows into the new scheme, and very much as an after-thought, they built a row of shops: the Co-operative "supermarket" (in reality about half the size of a present-day Spar), the new sub-post office, an ironmonger's, a paper shop and a bakery.

But, already, as more and more of the miners could afford cars, the weekly big shop was done in the nearest towns and the wee corner shops were struggling.

Today, we all shop in Asda, Tesco, Morrison's or Sainsbury's; what small, local shops that are left are either owned by Spar or one of the lesser such chains, or are boarded-up - and hundreds of guys are now, from the local opencasts, producing more coal than the thousands of their fathers and grand-fathers ever did.

What's this got to do with Scottish football? You ask. Simple, Scotland's long-established way of life has changed enormously in the past 40 years - so why should football be immune to these changes?

Wee Eck Salmond is throwing his weight behind Henry McLeish's still to be published review panel's plans for change to the way the game is run here. The probability that Henry will suggest that the SFA, SPL and SFL merge is already being widely trailed. Of course, this makes sense. But since when did sense have anything to do with Scottish football?

McLeish and Salmond might be experienced in navigating the treacherous schoals of Scottish politics - these are calm mill ponds compared to the in-fighting which goes on in Scottish football. I suppose, as ever, it will come down to whatever suits the Old Firm, if they back it, change will happen - if not, forget it.

Time now to think the unthinkable. Might it not be a good thing, were Dundee FC to fold, Dens Park be flattened and houses built there?

I know, the ghosts of Bobby Cox, Billy Steel, Bill Brown and Alex Hamilton would rise up and terrorise us. The big club in Scotland's fourth city must not die; I've heard all the arguments.

But think on this: if all these wee corner shops that have vanished over the past 40 years, all those local butchers, bakers, individual clothing shops, paper shops, dairies, sub-post offices and the like, once considered essential to local life, can be allowed to die - why should a football club which can no longer garner the support of sufficient numbers of the population of Scotland's fourth-largest city be allowed to carry-on.

Dundee has been mis-managed for years, certainly; the club has lived beyond its means, surely; the football which a succession of managers have coaxed and cajoled from players not fit to lace the boots of the icons mentioned above has not been good enough.

The suspicion has to be that the club has, for years, been run by a bunch of chancers. Dundee doesn't deserve to survive. The City of Discovery should maybe make the discovery - it can no longer support two full-time professional sides and allow one to die.

It will be very sad, particularly for the remaining hard core Dens devotees who will still turn up to watch the club during its death throes, but Dundee FC is a basket case - shut that basket and move on.

Liney/Slater; Hamilton and Cox; Seith, Ure and Wishart; Smith, Penman, Cousin, Gilzean and Robertson will never be forgotten - likewise Brown, Steel, Cowie, Boyd, Gallagher, Geddes, Wallace, Hendry, Robinson and hundreds of others.

But, better to kill-off the club now and allow a single club to represent Dundee - in today's Scotland, that city cannot support two.

Scotland - the roller-coaster fitba nation

COMING slowly out of Commonwealth Games mode back into fitba mode has not been easy, but, I'm trying.

Like the majority of the population, I was somewhat dreading Friday night's game in Prague. All Craig Levein's pre-match comments were decidedly defensive and had me worried. These worries increased markedly once it became obvious that we were about to use that ridiculous 4-6 formation and when play actually began, oh dear!

I must admit, I felt like switching-off the TV after ten minutes. By then it was obvious that the Czechs weren't much good, and we were still not going to have a go at a team which was decidedly beatable.

In the end, the performance was worse than in the Iran game in 1978, hitherto my benchmark for how bad Scotland can be. Woeful.

Then, from the depths of despair, came some kind of recovery, in the way we battled back from 0-2 down to pull level with Spain, before, typically Scottish, an individual error saw us beaten.

The performances over the two games beggar the question - why did we hand the initiative to a beatable team, then have a go at a team which, on current form, will beat us 99 times out of 100?

I accept, that if you're playing an (on paper) better team, it makes sense to have a go, to make things hard for them; because if you sit back and defend, you're playing into their hands.

But, I cannot acccept the same tactics against a team which is, at the very least of a similar standard to you. If Craig Levein genuinely thought the Czechs were better than us, then he ought to resign. All the evidence over recent internationals showed them to be living off past reputations and to be there for the taking - except we didn't even try.

I've never been one to blame all of Scottish football's many ills on 'the Largs Mafia'. It's not as if Andy Roxburgh, Craig Brown and Co get our would-be coaches down there and brain wash them into thinking: "defence, defence, defence": "don't attack" "keep it tight at all times" - to think that is to misunderstand what they do there.

The Largs experience is all about teaching coaches how to coach, to pass on good habits, to make good players better. It's not about telling the students: "this is the only way to play football".

The problem is, once they go back to their clubs - the coaches are free to do what they feel is the best thing, with the players they've got, to get results and keep themselves in a job.

It's all about if not winning, then surviving - so there is no incentive to take risks, to be positive and to have a go; because to have a go, is the risky option which leads to the sack.

Our football is dominated by the fear factor, the players don't know how to play without fear of losing, of being dropped, of failure - and until we take away the fear factor, we will struggle.

Another thing is, the international team is an after-thought. Our game is structured around the clubs and keeping them sweet. We don't appear to have a proper structure which allows the international team to have precedence over the clubs and until we do, we'll be on the outside looking in, at the big tournaments.