A Buddie Good Idea

THE city of Green Bay, Wisconsin and the town of Paisley, Renfrewshire each has a population of approximately 100,000. Each is home to a professional sports team - the American Football Green Bay Packers and the real football St Mirren.

That apart, besides the fact each was once managed by the arguably ultimate manager in their particular sport: Vince Lombardi of the Packers and Alex Ferguson of St Mirren - there's not much the two places have in common and the disparity is particularly obvious when you compare the two sports clubs. The Packers are one of the major teams in the multi-billion dollar NFL, Saints are apparently permanently rooted in the basement of the far from loaded SPL.

But, if on-going discussions come to fruition, the Packers and the Buddies might soon have another thing in common, both will be owned by their local communities. I don't know how it works, but unlike all the other NFL franchises, Green Bay is a community club, owned by the city and citizens of Green Bay. Now St Mirren is apparently about to become the property of a Community Trust of Paisley citizens, who are well down the road to purchasing the controlling interest in the club, put up for sale by the existing board.

This is a leap into the unknown for Scottish football, but, if it works it might be the blueprint for a successful and continuing future for Scottish football.

Of course most of the current buy-out interest is being generated just a few miles from Paisley, with Craig Whyte apparently moving closer to buying Rangers. However, if he succeeds, Rangers will simply change from being one rich businessman's plaything to being another's. Saints' sale will take us into comparatively uncharted waters.

Of course there are other community clubs in Scotland, over 150 of them if you look at the clubs in membership of the SJFA. Auchinleck Talbot, Linlithgow Rose, Bo'ness United, Tayport, Banks o' Dee, Pollok and the rest are almost all owned by their fans. Certainly there are cases of one or two well-to-do local businessmen if not owning the club outright, under-writing their continued existence, but, to all intents and purposes, these are community clubs.

I would like to think Saints could come up with a new template for how to run a Scottish club and that they succeed and their template is picked up elsewhere. For I believe community clubs are the long-term answer to the Old Firm hegemony which has lasted this past century and more.

If a community club is run properly there is the potential for every kid within the club 's catchment area to be ddirected towards that club - to want to pull on the first team strip. But only if the club really fuses with that community.

They ought to have community development officers, and first team players getting out into their community, organising the leagues, ensuring the local cup finals are played on the big pitch in New St Mirren Park. They should be getting into the schools, coaching, selling St Mirren and again, making certain all the schools cup finals are played at Greenhill Road; putting the Paisley Schools representative team into black and white stripes and so forth.

I do not think for a moment all the Old Firm fans in Paisley, of which there are many, will immediately burn their hoops and sashes and start learning to sing: "When the Saints Go Marching In", but, given time the outflow of Old Firm fans to the Glasgow Giants can be staunched.

It will take time, money and massive effort, but I wish the Community Trust well in their efforts to revive St Mirren and weave a Paisley pattern which can be picked up and exported.

Watching The Big Picture

WE have apparently stopped making things in Scotland. The best ships are no longer "Clyde-built"; the sun has surely stopped rising over Albion Motors; North British Loco lang syne ran out of puff.

Scotland, as was all-too-evident at The Emirates on Sunday, has also stopped producing top-flight footballers. We are in a raw state and what is happening? Well the Labour Party, for so long the inheritors of Sir William Wallace's late post as Guardian(s) of Scotland decided to embark on guarding us by trying its best to give everyone a government job, either as a civil servant, local authority employee or turning us into something memorably conjoured-up in an old Francie and Josie sketch: "sort of nobility - ra government peys us an allowance so as we don't hiv fur tae soil oor hauns wi toil" i.e. a statistic.

Our football clubs have gladly latched onto this social largesse, paying poor-quality players, quite a few of them non-Scots, a good living to demonstrate on a weekly basis: that while they can do brilliant headless chicken impressions, and they meet the first requirement for gaining a contract with an SPL side - that their second touch is a slide tackle in a desperate attempt to regain the possession they gave away with their first; they cannot trap a bag of cement; their spatial awareness is generally lacking; they can shoot, but not always hit even the goal frame; they cannot legally tackle anything more mobile than a fish supper.

We're in a mess. Arguably the two worst Old Firm squads ever have turned the SPL into a two-horse race. There is no money in the game (not that money is a panacea for all football's ills); the SFA commissions a Review, then, once its findings are published, because turkeys don't vote for Christmas, its findings are conveniently buried.

The great body of the football kirk, which has contributed nothing to the game for years does nothing in public, but is working feverishly behind the scenes to preserve their sole right - to exist.

And what, this spring of 2011, are the two main points of debate - that somebody threw a piece of fruit at a Brazilian and that some nasty Rangers fans sang some nasty songs, which were heard on TV and upset perhaps the most-influential religious body on earth.

Michty me, as Ma Broon might say.

Anent the banana: this one has me stumped. Throwing a banana just doesn't stack up with the usual behaviour of the Tartan Army. The fact it came from a section of the crowd which was almost 100% Brazilian also makes this a funny (peculiar rather than ha ha) one. Protests have been made on behalf of the good name of the TA, best leave it at that maybe.

Now, anent that sectarian singing, and I realise here I'm getting into perilous waters. Basically, in this year of the lord two thousand and eleven, why is there still a religious element invovled in Old Firm football? And what has guarding Derry's Walls or standing in the Fields of Athenry got to do with SCOTTISH Football anyway?

It beats me. I have seen no evidence of Rangers being formed as a "Protestant" club and while Celtic was certainly born in the Catholic faith and much of its early work involved lightening the lot of the (mainly Catholic) down-trodden of the East End of Glasgow, in its player recruitment policy it has always been non-denominational.

Rangers would I suggest need a very good advocate representing them to escape charges of, for much of its history, tacitly encouraging the support of those with an anti-Catholic agenda - but, since Sir David Murray took over, they have worked hard albeit still unsuccessfully, to eradicate any perceived anti-Catholic agenda within the club.

But, Rangers's pandering to Orangeism has I would suggest been more than matched by Celtic's historical playing of the "Oirish" card. If anything, I feel this has maybe grown somewhat in recent years.

When you see this, neutrals might think those singing that: "The Famine Is Over" might have a point (badly put though their point is).

Then there is the feeling, which I have heard voiced in some pubs in the admittedly "staunchly Protestant" former mining area where I live, that there is a cosey wee link-up between the Catholic Church, the Labour Party and Celtic. That when the Catholic Church makes noises about the Rangers' fans's sectarian singing, they are doing so on behalf of Celtic.

Given some of the scandals involving RC priests in recent years, it has been said, maybe that church should sort its own sinners out before turning on sinners from another faith.

Like wise, Celtic is now being increasingly seen as the opposition to the SFA. The SFA is by no means perfect, anything but in fact. But, Celtic has been a member of that body for over 120 years. The club has provided several important and influential administrators since 1888, so it is maybe a wee bit late in becoming a force for reform.

I know some sections of the Celtic "family" see themselves as the outsiders in Scottish football. Get real, you're some 70-odd trophies too late to play the "victim" card.

Both sides of the Old Firm need to be ever-more-vigilant in rooting-out the continuing cancerous element within their supporters. The battle will be a long one, but it can be won.

Celtic, certainly should be encouraged in their efforts to sort-out the failings of the SFA. But I suggest this mission would better be accomplished: "in the tent pishing oot, rather than oot o' the tent pishing in".

But, as Sunday at The Emirates showed - Scottish football has got bigger problems to overcome than sectarian singing from a fringe group of neanderthals - no matter how large.

Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life

I'VE HAD my rose-tinted specs on constantly since watching yesterday's friendly between Brazil and Scotland from the Emirates. And, by the way, STV's coverage was nothing like as poor as I feared it might be. However, even with these glasses on, I cannot be a positive spin on a match in which the final score was 2-0 going on 6-0.

Thankfully, this time around we didn't have a bit daft Angus "loon" like David Narey in our team and ready to score against them, thereby angering the Brazilians into really skelping oor bahookies.

We got off lightly, on which point, well-done Howard Webb. I've long believed you to be a crap referee; at least in confirming this impression you did us a favour by not awarding the Brazilians a stonewall penalty for that late hand-ball by Gary Caldwell.

But how demoralising is it to realise we - Scotland - the nation which invented team work, which pioneered close short passing, support play, pass and run, can no longer get close to the nation which best picked-up on what the Victorian English termed "the Scotch passing game".

Time and again they cut through us, like a knife through butter. In every aspect of the game, we were a poor second. Even Charlie Adam, the man onto whose shoulders the cape of Baxter and Co has fallen, couldn't adequately match-up with his opponents.

Charlie has made his reputation this season from his "World Cup passes", the 50 or 60 yard cross-field passes to free-running team mates. Sadly, on Sunday, he either over or under-hit his trade mark balls, although it must be said, it seemed to me his team mates didn't always read Charlie's passes properly.

Aye, it wis a sair fecht, and sadly I don't see it getting any better soon. We might still be good enough to finish second behind Spain in the Euro 2012 qualifiers, but Sunday only emphasised that, the first time we have to get past a decent team, we're doomed, doomed ah tell ye.

ENOUGH doom and gloom. At least we are aware of our failings and limitations. I had a good laugh at our southern neighbours' take on what was apparently a stroll in the park in beating Wales on Saturday.

England were, apparently, in cruise control. LIke Brazil against us, they won 2-0, but whereas Brazil rattled our goal fram a few times, missed at least three chances which I never expected to see a Brazilian player miss, and were of course denied that one stonewall penalty, and a possible other.

The English scored two and never looked like getting a third. But, so dire were Wales, they were never in danger.

Pardon me but, if England are as good as the English like to tell us they are, how come they could only score two goals in a cake walk? A top-class team, playing markedly inferior opponents, should score at least four or five.

I feel the English are still shite - but that fact hasn't yet hit home.

THE Spanish referee who sent him off, apparently has "form" when it comes to exiling managers to the grandstand. However, is there nobody within "the Celtic Family" able to tell Neil Lennon: "Screw the nut wee man".

Getting sent to the stand in a meaningless friendly will do him no favours with the SFA, who are truly out to get him any way they can.

At this rate Paul McBride QC will be easily the highest-paid man within Parkhead this season. Wonder if he can play in central defence, since they need a good defender.

MIND you, Celtic don't need a good QC as much as Rangers now the institutionalised power of the Catholic church is on their case. Their intervention after the sectarian singing at the League Cup Final is just about the last thing Rangers need and maybe now, at long last, the club will seriously have to do something about those of their fans who are hell-bent on pushing their right to free speech to the absolute extreme.

It can be done, but Rangers will need to be serious and consistent in their efforts to finally silence the bigots.

It's all very well going on about "their" bampot tendancy getting a fairly free ride. But as the old adages say: "People in glass houses etc" and "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone". But if you don't muck your own byre out regularly, you can hardly complain about a lingering pong.

Rooted To The Spot

WITH little or no domestic football this week, the Scottish papers have been going to town in building-up Sunday's friendly against Brazil at the Emirates - lengthy "I remember, I was playing" pieces from various Scots who have participated in our nine previous attempts to beat the successors to the ten Bangu boys introduced to the game by a dyer from Busby. And thank you to the Herald for Scotching the myth that it was an Anglo-Scot what introduced the Beautiful Game to Brazil. I would have believed the English introduced the game to Argentina, but never Brazil.

This morning's Scotsman went on at length about David Narey's "toe poke" and the Seville Fiesta of 1982, including the thoughts of Alan Rough on a game for which he has, over the years, taken some unkind criticism.

I am proud to call "Scruffy" a mate. He's a lovely man for whom I have loads of time, I have frequently had to defend him against the slurs of English media and fans who unfairly compare him to the mighty Clemence and Shilton - until that is, either I or some other "Sweaty" (Sweaty Sock - Jock) ask said Saxon to show me video footage of Roughie being nutmegged from three yards or being out-jumped by a five foot three coke-head. That usually shuts them up.

Anyway Roughie's statue impression as the Brazilian goals flew in is often held against him, but, as the man himself says: "Cubillas (in 1978), Zico, Rivelino, Falcao - not many ordinary players scoring against me there - sometimes you have to put your hand up and say, that goal was special".

Like Alan, I am a member of Lodge Number One of the freemasonry of goalkeepers - albeit at a somewhat lower level. It all starts on that first day of football practice at Primary School, as your "coach" puts you into positions.

Aye Billy - you're wee, ginger-headed, you'd start a fight in an empty hoose and you'd kick your grannie for the last sweetie in the jar - central midfield.

Tam - you're big, ugly, wan-fittit; ye canny pass, shoot, dae a step-ower or a Cruyff turn, but you're hard - centre half.

Alan - you've goat a perm, you're already tryin tae shag lassies and you're too nice son, awa in goals oot o herm's wey.

What they don't tell you is - all ten outfield players could in turn make a mistake as the opposition brings the ball upfield, but, if you can only touch the ball onto a post and it spins into the net - the goal was your fault. Very philosophical position goalkeeper.

Any way, given the quality of the opponent making Roughie look silly and given the Scottish goal was scored by David Narey - does the Brazilian goalie still get stick?

Someone who still gets stick is the Blessed Jimmy Hill. When you look at the current knighted footballers - leaving aside Messrs Charlton and Finney that is, why Hill, the man who fought for the over-turn of the maximum wage, who was a successful manager and chairman with Coventry, an FA Councillor, who almost single-handedly invented the way we broadcast football today and who is, by a country mile the best broadcasting analyst the game has ever seen isn't Sir Jimmy Hill is a mystery.

Not as big a mystery as is why it's Sir Geoff Hurst, but only Mr Denis Law and Mr Kenny Dalglish, but still a mystery.

I have always felt Hill, who has always stood up for Scottish football and who was a marvellous inside right to Graham Leggat at Fulham, has had a raw deal since 1982. He never called Narey's goal a "toe poke", but he did say "some might call it a toe poke", which isn't the same thing and he did add that for him it was still a good and welcome goal. We "Sweaties" can be a touchy and ungrateful lot.

Last night I was coerced into covering Ayr United v Forfar Athletic at Somerset Park. It was dire, 20 headless chickens racing around at 100 mph. At least, the match did show, we've got depth of talent among our current crop of goalkeepers with former Scotland Under-21 back stops Alan Martin (Ayr) and Scott Gallagher (Forfar) both, for me, enhancing burgeoning reputations.

Young Gallagher, on-loan with the Loons from Rangers certainly looks the part, he's big, athletic and agile and he commands his box. Martin has, according to the lads from the Ayrshire Post and Ayr Advertiser, been in awesome form since arriving from Leeds and if not as commanding a figure as Gallagher, he is still a good young keeper in the making. I will watch both kids' development with interest. For Gallagher in particular, should Rangers cash-in on "McShagger", who has a real chance to earn a big move if he plays at the Emirates on Sunday, then we could well hear a lot more about the boy currently with Forfar.

What was not so cheering about that Somerset match was the performance of referee Brian Colvin and his two assistants - shite would be too-kind a verdict. Forfar's Brian Deasley, who scored the only goal of the game, claimed afterwards he should have had a second goal in injury time, hooking one home when standing on the Ayr goal line.

"It was at least two yards over the line - how the linesman couldn't see that I'll never know", said the Forfar player - me neither Brian.

Even worse was Colvin's failure to give Ayr a penalty when Forfar defender Michael Bolochoweckyj flattened Ayr's Jonathan Tiffoney in the box. Mr Colvin indicated the Forfar man had got the ball - he didn't tell us if it was Tiffoney's right or left one, however, it certainly wasn't the one marked Mitre.

I can only assume Mr Colvin couldn't or didn't want to try to write down Bolochoweckyj.

Is It Me?

IS IT ME? Sir Terry Wogan, England's favourite Irishman used to ask that rhetorical question every morning on his BBC Radio 2 show - usually when some PC "talking head" was reported as coming up with a statement so blindingly-crass and wrong as to defy parody.

Now I ask it in respect of Sunday's League Cup Final at Hampden.

Is it me, or does anyone else think maybe keeping little Lennie as far away as was possible from the technical area, without banishing him entirely from the posh seats, helped make the important part of the National Stadium arena more like a football area and less like a war zone?

Maybe the SFA should banish the Celtic boss permanently to the stand - on police advice and in the interests of good order.

While Lennie was to a certain extent emasculated by his touchline ban - I cannot help thinking "Walter" let himself down somewhat with his wee moan about Craig Thomson's decision to rescind the first half penalty he had already given Rangers. The ref's second thought was better than his first and fair play to him for having the balls to think again.

There has been much talk over the past year or so about the use of TV technology in sorting out anomalies such as Frank Lampard's goal that wasn't given in the World Cup, or the Hand of Henry. As I've said before, the use of TMOs (Television Match Officials) is simple to introduce in stop-start sports such as cricket, tennis, rugby and American Football - a lot harder in football.

For example, within a couple of seconds of Lampard's shot spinning back into the German goalkeeper's arms, Germany were across the half-way line on a counter-attack: suppose they had managed to "score" before play was halted; cue World War III.

The extra officials introduced in the European games will, I suspect, be the road down which the game goes. They are not ideal, they still get the odd one wrong, but their input could be more-immediate than referal to a TV official somewhere else in the ground.

But, for contentious penalties such as Sunday's, where the game has stopped in any case - then referral to a TMO would work.

Sunday's other contentious issue was the late red card for Celtic's Honduran chappie - again perfectly justified. If Weiss had got away from him, regardless of the frantically back-tracking other Celtic players, he would have had a clear goal-scoring opportunity. This was denied him, so, red card.

I don't hold with this: "Aye well, it was in the 120th minute, he (Thomson) could maybe have let it go. Here I refer you to the wise words of Mr Thomas Wharton, late referee of the parish of Clarkston - during a discussion of a penalty he had awarded in an Inter-League game between the English and Scottish Leagues, at Ibrox.

English League captain Bobby Robson: "Come on ref, you don't give penalties in matches like this".

Wharton: "Mr Robson, when I see a penalty - I give it".

Clearly the Wharton legacy lives on.

That said, Wharton did give the spot kick after Davie Wilson of Rangers went down in the box - so maybe Thomson hasn't exactly followed the great "Tiny's" example.

Finally, with the top Scottish football writers sunning themselves, sorry, covering the national team's sojourn in La Manga, this would surely be a good week for any officials left back home in Scotland to release any bad news/possibly contentious stories they've been keeping out of the public domain.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Wee Lennie

YOU have to feel sorry for the SFA "Blazeratti" - corporate hostility at the Co-operative Insurance Cup Final, followed by a few days overseeing the national squad's get together, then a couple of days in London for the Brazil friendly; just the itinerary you need to ease you out of a long hard winter and into spring.

Then along comes Paul McBride QC, self-appointed caped (and be-wigged) crusader after justice for the down-trodden and oppressed, or, as we know him "Wee Lennie".

Not being one of the A Team or Lap Top Loyal or whatever you like to call those battlers after truth, justice and the big exclusive whose calling is to chronicle events involving what the provincials call the Axis of Evil or the Bigot Brothers, I have had few dealings with the Celtic manager. He has, however, always struck me as basically a misunderstood soul, whom it has to be said, doesn't go out of his way to either be understood or loved by anyone outwith 'the Celtic Family'.

But when, as I did the other evening, you observe a gentleman of the ROL (that's Rangers/Orange/Loyalist) persuasion, cease dragging his knuckles across the sawdust-strewn bar floor to place them round a pint glass, prior to adding his twopenseworth to the tap room debate: "See that wee cunt McBride, he makes yon wee shite Lennon seem like a nice guy", well you realise Mr McBride is not doing anything to enhance the reputation of the College of Advocates.

Philosophical argument from later in the same debate: should a prominent Celtic anything be a Queen's Counsel? - discuss further.

Of course any semi-competent lawyer could drive a coach and horses through the SFA's rules regulations and practices. This much has been acknowledged and to his credit, particularly in the field of disciplinary matters, Stewart Regan is making strenuous efforts to drag the body whose administration he leads into at least the 20th, if not the 21st century.

But, given that it's down to that long-ago-discredited bunch, the elected office bearers and councillors to decide on any changes, and given that whatever changes Regan and his professional advisors deem necessary will first of all have to be re-written in the style of a Janet and John book (and not the Terry Wogan Show version) before the representatives of the various county FAs can understand what they are meant to be voting on - don't hold your breath for change.

So while Mr McBride perhaps (do I judge him harshly?) gets a kick from his TV appearances, hearing his voice on radio and reading his press cuttings; I fear he is doing Celtic and Mr Lennon no favours.

Nobody likes a smart arse and when even the tabloid pit bulls of the hack pack hold you in contempt, you've got problems.

The trouble is, football's rules and regulations were set in stone back in the days of amateurism, when it was a case of the game for the game's sake - when the referee was indeed the sole judge of fact and you didn't have 23 camera angles to show, actually, he got it wrong.

These days are past, but in the past must they remain?

Once you let the lawyers in, you open an unsavoury can of worms, since justice and the law are not the same thing and these guys make their money out of that difference.

Look at parliament, a thoroughly discredited body after all the sex scandals and more particularly the expenses scandals of recent years. And which occupation has the greatest number of practitioners within the Palace of Westminster. Yup, got it in one - lawyers.

McBride's reading of the relevant SFA rules is that Lennie's latest ban, after the great Parkhead handbags huddle should run concurrently with his current four-match ban, might find favour with their Lordships inside Old Parliament Buildings in Edinburgh, it might have the backing of the regulars in Baird's Bar, but in few other places.

The fact is: Lennie was banned back in November. We can debate the rights and wrongs of what has since transpired since his Tynecastle melt down, but the fact is, had Lennie not appealed that ban and thereby set in motion the train of events which so delayed the implementation of that ban; he'd long since have served it and so this latest suspension from the technical area would have been (as it in fact is) a totally separate issue. He would have served one ban, been back on the touchline, then due to start serving a second ban.

The issue of concurrency has only arisen because of his initial appeal and the failure to speedily convene the relevant appeal tribunal then implement the first ban.

To the vast public body of the fans, whether or not "They" were out to get Lennie - had there not been the delays, this current situation would never have arisen.

In any case, am I alone in thinking this need by certain managers to be in the dug out is somewhat child like. By common consent, the view is awful; many coaches have told me, they get a far-better appreciation of what is happening on the field when watching from a higher vantage point in the stand. If Lennie (or any other coach for that matter) HAS to be in the technical area, doesn't it say something about his failings - he cannot trust his subordinates to properly get his message across to his players maybe; he needs to "frighten" them into doing his bidding by sheer force of personality perhaps; that it's just a long-ingrained habit - who knows.

In the North American sports: American Football, Basketball, Baseball or Ice Hockey, where there are rolling substitutions and different line-ups for different situations within the game, I can see the case for the coach being in the technical area at the side of the playing area, but with football, a much-more freestyle, flowing, evolving game with fewer natural or even staged breaks in the play, a coach is perhaps better-off high up, watching the panorama evolve below him, yet able to communicate with the technical area and have his tinkering done by his assistants.

Serve your ban then Lennie - you might learn and indeed benefit from it.

Research and Development Department

SKY BLUE thinking they cal it. It's one of these modern managementspeak dollups of shite; dunno exactly what it means, but I think it's something to do with imagining nothing can go wrong.

Aye right, that sort of thinking cuts right across the Scottish mindset which is part of our DNA - that bit best summed-up by McEwan's Corollary.

What the fuck is McEwan's Corollary? You ask. Simples, it's the Scotsman's traditional response to Murphy's Law (If it can go wrong it will). McEwan's Corollary is "That fucking Murphy always was an optimist".

Sky blue thinking is being called for in response to the perceived failings of Scottish football in terms of youth development. It is common knowledge that our development of young players has been failing for years. Ask for reasons and you get as many excuses as there are boys playing in boys club teams: Xboxes and other computer games, television, fear of paedophiles, nervous mummies who will not let their little dears outside, the teachers' strike, the extra traffic which means you cannot play football in the street, and so on and so forth.

Then of course we have the "fact" that so many of our youth team coaches are psychopaths, who encourage their kids to kill, maim and generally kick their way to victory.

But, one of the most-honest appraisals of the ills of youth development in Scotland came from a guy who works exclusively within that area and is a member of the SFA's Council - the parliament of the game in this country.

He told me: "The talent is still there, good, well-run Scottish boys club teams go abroad to these big youth tournaments every year and return with trophies. Our Under-14 and Under-15 teams have just as many naturally-talented young players as any other country, but, within a year of going into the professional clubs' development systems, these same kids are going backwards at a rate of knots. The clubs spoil far more players than they bring through".

A damning indictment, from a man who knows his stuff, has set a couple of boys on their way to full caps and a lot more to decent careers in the seniors, but who is, within the SFA, marginalised onto a couple of minor committees. He has done his years at the coal face and I would submit, done more good for Scottish football than the likes of George Peat.

Up until the inauguration of the World Cup in 1930, Scotland was arguably the best international team in the world. OK, we had been playing the game longer than any other country, apart from England obviously; but up until then, we generally beat England, our only real rivals for the 'Best in the World' title. Then came the Uruguayans, the Brazilians, the Austrians, Hungarians and Italians, not forgetting the Germans.

By the time the Home Nations deigned to compete in the World Cup in 1950, we were by no means the best team in the world, but had we gone to Brazil, we might reasonably have expected to have finished in the top ten. Today, we are barely top 50.

Scotland in football terms is kinda like British Leyland before its demise; a once-great product, now living on past glories, weighed-down by a bloated front office management structure, lacking real imagination in the design and technology departments, churning-out products the world no longer wanted to buy. Where once Scotland was the shop in which the English clubs shopped for essentials, today it's a shop they rartely enter.

We sold our best products to our biggest competitor for years, we sent them our best brains - all those "Scotch professors" who were the early stars, then became the grat managers, right up to Shankly, Busby, Dalglish and Ferguson.

Today, our stock cupboard is bare. Can I say here by the way, if its people have long been Scotland's biggest and best export and if therefore, the brightest and best have generally hit the high road to England and further afield, it stands to reason that our remaining genes pool has to be a wee bit shallow these days.

We've got to spend more on research and development, of the worthy successors to McMullan, Jackson, Dunne, Gallacher, James, Steel, Liddell, Bobby Johnstone, Docherty, Brown, Mackay and White, Law, Leggat, Ure, Gilzean, Collins, Bremner, Lorimer, McQueen, Jordan, Bob Wilson's mum and dad, David Harvey's dad, Bruce Rioch's dad, Masson, Gemmill, Souness, Dalglish, Hartford, McLintock, Hutchison, Green, Moncur and the many other lesser-known Scots who went south and lit-up the English game.

We've got to go back to the passing game - what won Spain the World Cup was basic, old-fashioned Scottish football, whereby you passed your way to success. We've forgotten how to do this, as we roar: "Get ra baw up ra park son" at any kid today with the embryonic gallusness of the young Baxter. Any kid today who went off on a Jinky Johnstone run past six men, would be hauled off by his coach and harangued as "ya greedy wee bastard".

We've got to spend money on facilities, from within football. It's no good clubs paying foreign mercenaries relatively big bucks pleading poverty and seeking public money for indoor pitches, if they haven't come up with cash themselves, or a plan whereby the public might benefit from this facility.

Scottish football, allegedly, has an over-fixation with England; this is supposedly bad. But, they might be ten times our size, but since the days of William Wallace it is against England that Scotland has measured itself. They might be bigger, we are better, is the Scottish mindset.

In football, we have played England in 109 official internationals, or, if you like - one-day wars. We've won 41,they've won 44, there have been 24 draws; this gives us a wins ratio of 40%.

Pre-World War II we'd won 29 of the 63 games, lost 19 and there had been 15 draws, a Scottish wins ratio of 46%.

Post-World War II we've won just 12 of the 46 games, drawn 9 and lost 25, a 26% wins ratio. If you take the professional's measurement of percentage of points won at 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, overall we've won 45% of the available points against England. Pre-World War II that percentage was 54%, post-World War II is is 33%.

So, we've been failing for at least 65 years, but have never actually done anything about stemming this tide of failure.

Scottish football is broken - fix it. But can we?

Groundsman Willie Was Right

HISTORY credits Groundsman Willie in The Simpsons with dubbing our Gallic cousins: "cheese-eating surrender monkeys". I always felt this showed the programme's American writers up for their failure to grasp the nuances of European history and the Auld Alliance.

An Englishmen might have had a rant about the French, not so a Scotsman, if only on the grounds that my enemy's enemy is my friend.

But, after watching yesterday's Calcutta Cup rugby match, I'm with Willie. L'arbiter, (referee to youse), Monsieur Poutre was shite. Admittedly not as shite as our man Peter Allen, the linesman who allowed Wales to take their illegal and ultimately match-winning quick line out at Cardiff, but, whenever he had a big call to make, he called it for that shower of white-shirted garbage we were playing and in the process further convinced the Barbouratti who so pollute Twickenham that God is indeed an Englishman.

Rant over: sensible head back on.

I long since worked out that for us to beat the English, certain things have to happen:

We have to play at the absolute top of our game - while they play shite. It further helps if they make one or two selectorial blunders and if their collective heads aren't quite right. In this latter respect the help of the English press corps is often an extra man for we Scots, as they overplay the "England Expects" (a World Cup win, a Grand Slam, an easy victory) card.

If everything comes together, more-so if we've got the greater number of world-class players, for once focussed on a common goal, we win; otherwise, they win.

On Sunday everything didn't quite happen, but, we still produced by far our best display of this Six Nations campaign and it wasn't enough.

I can live with that, what I cannot live with is the way our French referee so affected the outcome - by giving the bigger calls to England.

They got three points from a scrummage penalty, which ought to have gone to Scotland, but went England's way. There was a blatant forward pass in the build-up to their try. John Barclay's yellow card was a nonsense, while he missed the forearm smash which ended Kelly Brown's afternoon.

In a game as finely-balanced as Sunday's was, these sorts of calls made the difference. Home side bias by the ref - maybe; incompetence - perhaps.

However, what I do feel is that the referee's performance, coming as it did on the back of several other less-than-blameless performances from officials this year, shows that for all the fuss about Dougiegate, for all the referee-baiting and moaning by the Grumpy Govanite, the French Emir of the Emirates, the little ginger Lurgan Lout and every other manager/coach in the game, fitba isn't so bad.

The Laws of football may not be perfect; there might be different interpretations for every day of the week and while it is enshrined that: "the referee is the sole judge of fact", at least most intelligent people can follow the official's thought processes most of the time.

We might think he is blind, stupid, bent, incompetent, but, sitting at home with a lager to analyse events post-match, most reasonable people can see where the decision came from.

But in rugby, the game for hooligans played by gentlemen, it's not that easy. The laws of rugby are now so complex, it is all but impossible to referee fairly. So much is happening at every scrum, every breakdown, much of what the referee decides is pure guesswork. Now teams are encouraged to play to the referee's interpretation rather than play to the laws - since these laws are often asses.

Scotland got few breaks from the referee on Sunday, because, like so many officials today - he tended to come down on the side of the team which he thought was the superior one, the big team, the one which should win - in Sunday's case England.

Now suppose that happened in Scottish football, that the supposed bigger team got all the breaks from referees!!!

Naw, cannot see that happening either.

A final word on Sunday. What poor hosts the English were. The ref bends over backwards to help them, then, when he gets injured - it's the Scottish team doctor who goes on to assist him, not the English one.

Shocking bad manners what. Terrible hosts.

Deck of Cards

I HAVE, for some time, been meaning to pen a dissertation on discipline within football. I'm on fairly safe ground here, since there is no evident appetite within the game's corridors of power to do anything to discipline the weans who play it and the even-bigger weans who coach or manage.

After all, here is a game which, from right at the top: Blatter, Warner & Co, to the very bottom - the local Sunday pub league, the only rule is that there are few rules and those we have are there to be bent, twisted or simply ignored. The only rule which I see regularly adhered to is rule one in the Auchinleck version, as used in that charming Ayrshire spa town: "Nae bluid - nae foul".

I yearn for the day when the four Home Nations bite the bullet and decide to re-assert the United Kingdom's traditional role as the conscience of the game, by going into the annual IFAB junket with a common purpose, to clean-up the playing side of the game. I specify the playing side of the game, Hercules himself would struggle to cleanse football's Augean Stables of politics: FIFA, UEFA etc., right down to the FA, the English Premiership or the alleged Masonic conspiracy which is the SFA.

To clean-up the playing side, the law makers might like to have a look at how they do it in other sports, so here are a few ideas to consider.

In (field) hockey, umpires have three cards: green, yellow and red. The green card comes out for minor infringements, the yellow for more-serious and the red, as ever, means: "you're aff son"; two greens equal one yellow, which brings a minimum five minutes in the sin bin, while, as in football, two yellows equals one red.

Then, in basketball there is the personal foul, whereby each individual player is responsible for his own fouls, five fouls and you are out of the game, but can be substituted, while the number of team fouls is totted-up and after a certain number, every defensive foul thereafter - no matter where on the court it is committed - incurs a free throw, basketball's equivalent of the penalty kick.

Rugby has something which has long been advocated for football - the ten metres advance. With this, if you give away a penalty and either: do not immediately retreat ten metres, attempt to hold-up the penalty, tell the refereee you disagree, then he can advance the kick ten metres towards your goal. This has occasionally turned an unkickable penalty into a kickable one and I well-remember, some 40 years ago, watching a future leading Scottish administrator refuse to stop moaning at a referee, who advanced the penalty 40 metres, finally the dissent stopped, the penalty was kicked and the game consequently lost.

Said future administrator was, in that one incident, converted to a firm belief in no dissent.

Hockey and rugby both have sin bins for yellow cards and significantly in top-class rugby, any team going down to 14 men for ten minutes can expect to ship 17 points in that period.

The sin bin, of course, began in ice hockey. Now this sport has a reputation for rough and ready fighting, but, at its best is a fast, furious, spectacular game. To help keep it this way, there are some overlooked rules which might benefit football.

There is "icing", when a team simply lumps the puck up the ice to kill time, only to see it brought back for a face-off close to their goal.

Then there is a "delaying the game" call, when perhaps a goal tender deliberately knocks the puck out of the rink.

Ice hockey also differentiates between minor and major offences, while referees can decide that a foul has been deliberate and punish accordingly.

Now, imagine if football was to adapt some of these laws into the game. A mis-timed tackle, might bring a "cool it" lecture from the referee; a second might bring a green card, while a third would bring a yellow and a five minute spell in the sin bin. A third green could then follow - perhaps for another mis-timed challenge, before another yellow would see the miscreant going off. Of course a second yellow would still be available for major rather than minor fouls.

On the fifth foul, the player would automatically be off, but could be replaced.

The team fouls count might just be the best way of cleaning up the game. If the stupid "forward's tackle" which we see so-often in the middle of the park, could lead to conceding a penalty, once the team had gone over the threshold of team fouls, players just might cut them out.

The ten metre advance has been advocated for so long, everyone must be aware of it. I believe, after a team had conceded even one match-losing penalty, by having free kicks advanced into the box and converted to a the spot kick, the unseemly arguing and not retreating we see so often, would cease.

But, I have left my most-controversial idea to borrow from another game until last. In basketball they call it a technical foul, in ice hockey it is a bench penalty; this is a penalty called against a nippy coach, who repeatedly misbehaves on the side lines. If introduced into Scotland this would quickly become known as "Lenny's Law". Can anyone think who Lenny might be?

Basketball technical fouls can also be awarded against players: "Scott's Law or "Diouf's Discretion" anyone?

Football is indeed 'the Beautiful Game', but its fair visage is these days increasingly pock-marked by spiteful, petty fouling, by a lack of fair play - the men who run the game MUST, for the good of the game, sort this out.

Is the will to do this there?

No, I don't think so either - but we have to keep pressing for it.

No Laws For The Rich

THE choice of the green ink today may or may not be significant - let's just say I'm in, if not Colonel Angry of Tonbridge Wells mode; however, I might be mistaken for Pissed-Off of Possil.

What has got me reaching for the green ink - the traditional writing fluid of the clinically deranged/killer bees in his bonnet sufferer?

It's the continued outbreak of, if not lawlessness, then certainly a belief that: "the laws don't apply to me" in football.

When did Law V, paragraph 1 get repealed? That's the bit which says: "The referee is the sole judge of fact". Ergo, whether he makes an honest mistake - throws a wobbler - is a cheating Masonic so-and-so - is hopelessly and dangerously out of his depth: whatever the man with the whistle says, goes.

For over a century, since the oiks began playing soccer and a referee had to be introduced, since they couldn't agree in the same way as the public school chaps who had hitherto played the game - the referee's word was law. And even when the man in the middle did make a mistake, that was accepted an an honest error, since it was inconceivable that anyone wielding that much power might be corrupt.

These days, with the mind-boggling sums of money involved in football, the viscreal need for success at the top end, these old-fashioned standards of behaviour have gone out of the window. Where once club directors were driven by the remnants of Victorian civic largesse: "tha's made a good deal of money out of t' good people of Grimethorpe Alderman Higginbottom, time to put summat back by getting onto board of football club and buying us a Scotch wing half". Today increasingly it's: "Alexei has bought a Spanish football team, Pavel owns one in Germany, I've made just as much as them out of oil and gas; Sergei, buy me a club in the Premiership so that I may enjoy sporting success".

The multi-millionaires now running the big clubs don't have that background of civic pride, they've ducked, dived, cheated and bent rules to make their squillions, they're not going to allow some rules and precedents, set in stone by a bunch of Victorian public school boys, stop them getting the success they feel is theirs by right.

And, if football's rules and regulations get in their way, they always know a compliant lawyer who will argue the toss on their behalf.

Remember that Monty Python sketch about the faculty rules in a university in the Australian outback? Rules 2,5,7,9 and 11 were the same: "No poofters".

Well, if the SFA ever get around to implementing any of Henry McLeish's review body proposals (I know, it's a huge IF), then might I suggest they adopt two along similar lines: "No politicians" and "No advocates".

I specifically pinpoint advocates here, rather than general run-of-the-mill lawyers. While I have little time for lawyers of any hue, Scottish football history ought to warn us against advocates. Look at the bother Donald Finlay, one of the best advocates in the business, caused Rangers when he was allowed to dominate a karaoke mike.

Now Celtic has unearthed this guy Paul McBride QC; it'll all end in tears, I warn you. Not only that, they have also got the Rt Hon. Lord Reid as chairman - a man of such sterling qualities the movers and shakers of Scottish Labour hate him even more than the Tories. What a character reference to have on your CV: "His friends dislike me even more than my enemies".

Ladies and Gentlemen, there might be ship-loads of money circulating within football today, but, at the heart of it: there is no difference between wee Tam, Erchie, Shuggie, Wullie, Davie and Rab taking off their jaikets and putting them down as goal posts, telling Jimmy, since he's hopeless he's in goal and enjoying a quick game of three-and-in during morning play time at the primary and Messi, Xavi, Ianesta, Fabregas and Co playing in front of over 100,000 in the ground and millions more watching on TV. It's just a daft game.

Of course you have to have rules, but where you have rules, there must be a readiness to obey these rules - that seems to be absent from the top end of the game these days.

Down here in darkest Ayrshire, when your team allegedly went out of the Junior Cup in an away tie, on alighting from the bus back home, the secretary would be asked a number of searching questions:

Q1. Did you win?
A1. Naw.
Q2. Did you draw?
A2. Naw.
Q3. Did you get a protest?

Everyone connected with senior football had a good laugh at the juniors' refusal to accept defeat until that defeat had been tested within the game's corridors of power - it aint so funny now the seniors are increasingly adopting this stance.

We all know it's an old junior football tradition to elect the village idiot to the local club committee; a sign of how they do things differently in the juniors.

It's not so funny now this tradition has been picked-up by the senior game.

Of course, for there to be a return to sanity, there has to be a lead from the top. That means FIFA, Herr Blatter, the blessed Jack Warner and friends. Therefore, it aint gonna happen any time soon.

But, I live in hope that there might be, within the ranks of the (English) FA, the FA of Wales, the (Northern) Irish FA and the SFA, enough good men and true, prepared to re-establish Britain's moral guardianship of all that's fair in football, to drive a re-assertion of fair play and respect for the laws of the game through the next meeting of IFAB and from there into football across the world.

Time to make a stand.

The World Is Your Lobster Arry My Son

I HAVE only had to speak to Harry Redknapp twice - at pre-season games against SPL opposition. Basically, what you see on the box is what you get in real life - a 24 carat, jellied eels, boiled beef and carrots-eating, pearlie king in mufti Cockney diamond geezer.

Our Arry is an SFL manager in comparison to the Fab Four of Busby, Ferguson, Shankly and Stein; he has produced few quotes which will stand alongside those of Shankly and the Doc, but I must admit a liking for his best line: "I've never worked for a chairman who was as rich as me".

So I was delighted that his Spurs team frustrate AC Milan last night to reach the last eight of the Champions League.

I have a soft spot for Spurs, ever since that marvellous double-winning team of 1961, Bill Brown in goal, Dave Mackay, Danny Blanchflower and John White in midfield and Cliff Jones on the wing, augmented by some fine English journeymen such as Bobby Smith, Maurice Norman, Ron Henry and Les Allen.

I saw them murder Rangers at Ibrox in a Cup-Winners Cup clash in 1963, in which John White was barely seen - apart from providing the passes for the Spurs goals.

In later years the cockrel has been worn with pride by the likes of the wonderful Alan Gilzean and Jimmy Greaves, Glen Hoddle and Chris Waddle, Gazza at his best, Pat Jennings, and the great foreign imports, Jurgen Klingsman and David Ginola.

Great to see them getting a good result then. But, I thought their weakness on the night was Carluka at right back, just how does he get a game before Alan Hutton?

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I OPTED out of the Scottish Football Writers Association many years ago, I could never master the hand shake; so I will not have a say in the Manager of the Year voting. But, if I did have a vote, I think I'd be inclined to go for Barry Smith at Dundee.

What he and his players have managed in the face of that swingeing 25 point deduction is nothing short of miraculous and they thoroughly deserve, should they beat Queen of the South on Saturday, to wipe from the record books the unbeaten run of the 1962 immortals: Liney, Hamilton, Cox, Seith, Ure and Wishart, Smith, Penman, Cousin, Gilzean and Robertson from the record books. High time this club was put on a proper financial footing and back in the SPL.

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AFTER you-know-who being paired together in the last 16 of THE Scottish Cup, Irvine Meadow and Auchinleck Talbot have been drawn together in the quarter-finals of the Emirates Scottish Junior Cup (funny how the company which sponsors AC Milan and Arsenal amongst others has its name on the Junior Cup while the main Scottish Cup is sponsorless).

With the final probably heading again for Rugby Park, that's the pairing most-likely to provide a truly bumper crowd on the big Sunday in May, but there they are, drawn together two rounds previously.

Did somebody lose the oval and square balls of legend somewhere in the SFA's move from Park Gardens to Hampden?

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REFEREES, as we all know, don't have a sense of humour, so well done to English official Mr Mutch, who forget his yellow and red cards at the Birmingham City and Everton clash this week, but went ahead and brandished an imaginary card when required.

Much better than Dougie Smith booking Gazza, after he picked up Smith's dropped yellow card and brandished it at the Troon official. But, to be fair to Dougie, after the large number of Auchinleck Talbot v Cumnock games he refereed while he was the Number One referee in the Ayrshire Junior League, he had long since lost his sense of humour in the face of unrelenting misery. Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is what Dougie suffered from.

Harumph, harumph, order, order

MY old mate Tom English has penned a very good piece in today's Scotsman, in which he deconstructs wonderfully the politicos' take on yesterday's Old Firm Summit in St Andrew's House.

Tom cuts to the chase with a what they said/what they meant piece. Mind you, my attitude to politics is the same as that put forward by the late Peter Cook on a BBC radio election night special: Don't vote - it only encourages them.

Of course the Old Firm has a few nutters among its massed following. Certainly we could argue from now till Judgement Day as to which half is better or worse, but, for all that, they are NOT to blame for all of Scottish society's ills.

That said, however, the clubs could do more to help themselves.

Just suppose Rangers said: "We are a Scottish football team - therefore, the only flags you will be allowed to wave will be Saltires or Lion Rampants, anything else, we will take them off you".

In response Celtic say: "While mindful of the club's Irish heritage, we are a Scottish club, we have been since 1888, so the only flags we will allow our fans to display are Saltires or Lion Rampants".

With modern technology, clubs can pinpoint where singing is originating; so they could immediately pinpoint the source of the party songs. One offence, warning, second offence, short suspension, third offence - banned.

This would in particular force the supporters clubs to self-police and drive out the nutters and would in particular silence the serial offenders in the clubs' away support.

But, the clubs' first stop has to be their own dressing rooms, insisting on a zero tolerance approach to players' self-discipline. I think maybe EHD is beyone help, that man has so many demons inside his head he would, for me, best be re-patriated to Senegal. But the other serial offenders, Brown and Lafferty - surely it's not beyond the clubs to sort them out.

Neil Lennon might, I fear be another EHD. Yes, he's in a pressure job, yes he winds-up people, and in return is wound-up by others, but surely his club can help him rise above things to reach the level of behaviour expected of a man in his position.

Then, when the clubs have mucked-out their own byres, the politicians can do their bit - by doing away with separate schools. This is the long-term strategy and I fear I will be long gone before it works. But, if our future generations were to realise that wee Liam is no different from wee Billy and they can sit side-by-side in the classrooms; as adults they might be able to sit side-by-side at the football, one supporting Celtic, the other Rangers.

I know, it might seem a pipe dream, but it could work.

I am not, by the way, in putting this suggestion forward attacking Catholic schools, in my last staff post with a newspaper, I spent a fair bit of time covering sport in the local schools and where I was working the most-impressive school in terms of the ambience within and the staff's encouragment of sporting prowess was one of the Catholic ones. I can think of a few "Protestant" schools which could benefit from the standards applied by the excellent staff in that Catholic school.

I simply feel religion is something which ought to begin at home and not be delegated to teachers, they have other, more important matters such as the passing-on of knowledge to worry about.

When I worked in England 30-odd years ago, I lived in what my Yorkshire neighbours dubbed: "First white street past Khyber Pass", my work place was situated in what the locals dubbed "Little Kashmir".

Every afternoon at just after three we would see all the kids walking home from school, and at four, they would be walking to the mosque for religious school. The English state didn't subsidise their religious education - so why should this happen on behalf of another religion, in Scotland?

The Harder I Work The Luckier I Get

JOCK Stein used to insist that Scotland's national dress wasn't the kilt - it was the boiler suit - and he certainly insisted on a high work rate on the park and on the training ground from his sides.

Today, I don't think Scottish football works hard enough across the board. I don't just mean the so-called professionals, whose working day begins at 10.30 am and is over two hours later, four days per week, before, if they're picked, comprising 90 minutes on a Saturday, Sunday or Monday night, depending on the demands of the ESPN/Sky paymasters.

No I mean everyone, from the guys running the Under-11 boys club teams right up to Craig Levein.

I was lucky enough to go to a school which played both football and rugby. In Ayrshire when I was growing up there there were two types of secondary schools - junior and senior secondaries. The senior secondaries: Ardrossan, Ayr, Cumnock, Irvine Royal and Kilmarnock Academies, Marr College, Speirs School and St Joseph's and St Michael's RC Academies were all six year schools; the junior secondaries took everyone else up to the age of 15, in their home villages. The brighter kids were, at 11+ hived off to the relevant senior secondary, the less-bright stayed in their home town, but, there was a system in place whereby, late developers could stay on at the senior secondary until they were 18.

Of the nine senior secondaries, the two RC schools only played football, while of the other seven, only Cumnock and Irvine Royal played both football and rugby; I went to Cumnock, so I had the chance to play both codes.

There were teachers at each of these schools who were unofficial scouts and agents for junior and senior football clubs or were recruiting sergeants for the local rugby clubs - there were a few boys clubs, Saxone in Kilmarnock being the top dogs, but, by and large the next generation of footballers learned the game in the play ground or with the school team.

Today school football and rugby is a pale shadow of the past, youth development is either in the hands of the clubs through the pro-youth scheme or through the various boys club teams affiliated to the SYFA.

A little learning might be a dangerous thing, but I suggest that since the teachers were side-lined after the industrial unrest of the early eighties, escalating a decline which had started during the rise of boys club football in the mid-to-late sixties, the decline of Scottish football has accelerated pro rata.

Schools rugby was also hit by the teachers' strikes. OK this had little effect on the public schools, which, thanks to their links to Murrayfield have carried-on as before, but, it meant that the smaller clubs had to get their act together to keep going, since the recruiting sergeants were either retiring or increasingly finding other things to do of a Saturday, rather than running rugby.

So began the rise of the Mini and Midi sections, which meant that, from the age of seven or eight, kids were inside the club, wearing the strip, being coached by the first team players, getting to know them.

Ayr RFC have been one of the best examples of making this work. Ayr were a junior club 50 years ago, they didn't get into the then unofficial championship until 1967, today, they are one of the top clubs in Scotland - indeed their feat in reaching the last eight of this season's British and Irish Cup is a beacon of shining light midst the otherwise despair and gloom of this season.

While Ayr were scrambling to establish themselves in the top flight in rugby, taking heavy beatings from Gala, Hawick and Heriot's, Ayr United under Ally MacLeod's first spell in charge were a force in the land.

Today the situation is reversed - Ayr RFC is arguably the third force behind the two SRU-funded fully-professional sides - Dundee United or Hearts if you like, while Ayr United are in the Irn Bru Second Division, the 24th or 25th best team in Scotland.

Ayr RFC go out there and actively recruit then coach boys, Ayr United, like so many Scottish clubs, hope the cream will rise to the top and they can syphon off enough to survive. To be fair to Brian Reid and his coaches, there is an Academy system at Somerset Park which is, for their level, a good one, but, I would suggest -compared to how Ayr RFC run their youth development programme, Ayr United isn't doing as well.

The Ayr RFC captain, Damien "Skippy" Kelly, a giant Australian, spends Monday to Friday promoting rugby in local schools, he organises the Ayrshire Schools Cup and actively sells rugby in schools locally. Glen Tippett, another Ayr first team squad member is the SRU's Youth Development Officer for the area. Between them these two guys, who are on-show in the first team on a Saturday, are out there selling rugby to the school kids from Monday to Friday.

Ayr United don't have that profile locally and it's showing - you'll see as much pink and black, the rugby club's colours, in Ayr these days as you will United's traditional black and white.

Ayr RFC's current first team squad contains Mark Bennett, who at 18 is already in the Scotland Under-20 side and is seen as "the next big thing" in Scottish rugby - he will play for Glasgow Warriors next season. There is also Mark Beckwith, another 18-year-old in the Scotland age group programme while 17-year schoolboy Robbie Fergusson scored a try in Ayr's British and Irish Cup quarter-final at Bristol on Sunday and is another being hotly-tipped for the top. Another half dozen Under-21 players have featured in the Ayr first team this season.

Ayr United don't have any youngsters of that quality and while admittedly Bennett and Beckwith came through the club development programmes at Cumnock and Marr respectively, they were on Ayr's radar at an early age and passed on readily by the junior clubs - their advance I submit shows that rugby is doing better than football and finding and developing young talent.

I've just finished that excellent book by Michael Grant and Rob Robertson 'The Management', all about Scotland's great managers, past and present. In that book is set out a staunch defence of "the Largs Mafia".

OK, I'm now convinced, the Largs system works in producing good coaches; the SFA's system is respected across world football and some terrific coaches, not least Ferguson and Mourinho have come through the ranks there.

So, why aren't we doing better at youth development? Why is our standing at world and European level so low? I can only conclude it's in the quality, or lack of it, in the people actually running our clubs and the SFA.

Example 1 - George Peat, President, the SFA. How did he get there? dunno.

What is his football experience? Ran Airdrie into the ground, then switched to Stenhousemuir to protect his SFA place?

Best-known for? Bringing a plastic dinosaur to a press conference and falling-out with everyone, particularly Celtic.

Example 2 - Ian McLauchlan, President the SRU. 43 international caps for Scotland, captain 19 times; eight caps for the British & Irish Lions, captained the Lions in non-Test games. Known across the world as "Mighty Mouse". Scored winning try in First Lions' Test v New Zealand in 1971; member of "the Invincibles", the unbeaten British Lions in South Africa in 1974. Former pe teacher, then ran his own pr company. During his playing career he was known as the most technically-proficient player in his position of loose-head prop, frequently destroying much bigger men in the scrum.

Not a lot between them really.

To go back to Ayr, Ayr RFC's Director of Rugby is Jock Craig, a former first team player, who, but for illness would have played for Scotland. He's been 50 years at the club. All the club officials are former players. At Ayr United, the only director who used to play is Alex Ingram. OK, "Dixie" is an iconic figure in the town, but when it comes to service to the club, commitment, any measurement you like - again Ayr United comes a poor second to the rugby club.

EXCEPT in one crucial area. For all the rugby club's work, for all their recent success - the Premiership in 2009, the Scottish Cup in 2010 - still in the mix for a possible league and cup double in 2011 - Ayr United, even in the Second Division, carries a bigger core support than the rugby club.

Football will always be the top sport in Scotland - it's just that right now the lunatics are running the asylum.

Let Us Entertain You

JIMMY, one of my readers who comes on here regularly to assure me I'm talking shite, yesterday cast doubts on the concept of "entertainment" in Scottish football. I can see where he's coming from; one of the reasons behind the SFA's hands off approach to Olympic Games football is this - the Olympian ethos of "the glory is not in winning but in having taken part" is outwith the reasoning of any Scot.

We don't play to take part, we play to win. And this Caledonian attitude might well mitigate against making Scottish football entertaining.

Maybe it's a throwback to the age of the clans, but Scottish football gets its energy from winning local derbies. Be it Scotland v England, Rangers v Celtic, Hearts v Hibs, Auchinleck Talbot v Cumnock, The Red Lion v The Black Horse in the local pub league. Football in Scotland is not Kiplingesque - it matters one hell of a lot whether you won or lost - how you played the game isn't so important.

By common consent, Celtic played what little football there was on show at Celtic Park last Wednesday. But, just supposing Rangers had made their solitary chance count, then held on through half an hour of extra time to win on penalties - would many Rangers fans have turned round and said: "Fucking hell, we got out of jail there; jammy or what"?

No way, they'd have been giving it: "Get it right up youse": LARGE.

We all accept that it's nice to win with flair, style and panache, but, a win by any means is still a win.

Back in 1967 Denis Law wanted to thump the World Champions England at Wembley by as many goals as possible - Jim Baxter wouldn't have it: "Naw, we'll humiliate them 1-0 ken," was his approach, which, given he was a Fifer and had spent longer in his native country, was a much-more Scottish assessment of what to do than that being offered by the more-Anglicised Aberdonian.

Baxter then went out and earned immortality - but, if you were a neutral and had seen, as I have, the English highlights edit, you would think that Scotland had been one jammy lot that never to be forgotten day.

So, how do we encourage entertaining, winning football?

Well we could start by encouraging attacking football. How about doing away with draws? Play every game to a finish, and have declining bonus points according to how well you win. E.g. offer say seven points for a win inside 90 minutes; if the game is all-square play one 15 minute period of extra time under the "silver goal" rule, so if a 2-2 at 90 minutes has become a 3-2 one after 105, the winning team gets say five points, the losers one point.

Still all-square, play a second 15 minute extra time period, but under the "golden goal", rule, or as we called it in the school playground: next goal's the winner. Perhaps a 4-1 points division this time.

Still level, penalty kicks, winning team gets three points, losers two.

We might take a notion from rugby and award bonus points for scoring three or more goals, and losing bonus points for a one goal defeat. It might take a wee while to break through the years of conservative coaches thinking, but, if we made goals count for more, maybe teams would be prepared to go out and go for them.

You never know, it might work.