THE first Old Firm clash of the new season has come and gone. As far as I know Glasgow has not been sacked in the aftermath; the Riot Act did not require to be read from the steps of the City Chambers and life goes on pretty much as normal.

Rangers now have a four-point lead over their arch-rivals at the top of the two-horse race which is the SPL, but, if anyone thinks it's all over - they will surely have a few rude awakenings between now and May 2012.

The ratio of good goals to comedy cuts was three to two, there were some excellent passages of play and little in the way of controversy. One hopes the politicians who attended, in pursuit of the rapidly being discredited anti-sectarian legislation learned a thing or two, but, having a healthy scepticism where politicians are concerned, I doubt it.

Of course the fact that the match earned such a good "press" ought not to deflect us from the main concern in Scottish Football in this year of 2011 AD - the fact we are shite.

We have, as we have always had in Scotland, one or two players who are better than average and it was arguably the contributions of two of that apparently dwindling number of Scottish-based professionals: the two Steves, Davis and Naismith, which made the difference yesterday.

Certainly there was the rare sight of Allan McGregor making a mistake, but, by the law of goalkeeping averages, he was due a howler, but, over the piece, Davis and Naismith as much as anyone made the difference.

Rangers will push on from here, Celtic will re-group and continue the chase; the rest - well with each successive year in which it boils down to Celtic or Rangers, Scottish Football goes backwards and becomes more and more irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

Let's face it, for all their excellence yesterday, neither Davis nor Naismith is going to get anywhere near anyone's who has any lengthy relationship with the Ibrox club's  All-Time Rangers XI. Similarly nobody in yesterday's Celtic contingent is going to challenge for a place in the AT Celtic XI. Indeed, I might suggest you'd be down to about the seventh or eighth teams before any current player's name would be thrown into the selection mix - yet still they dominate.

The onus falls not on Celtic or Rangers to lift Scottish Football our of the current doldrums, it falls on the other ten clubs.

If they raise their game - the Old Firm will be forced to raise theirs in response and we might see Scottish clubs in Europe beyond August on merit rather than on the whims of what passes for football "justice".

It our current masters are not regularly and seriously challenged, the increasingly vocal successors to Private Fraser and Victor Meldrew will b ecome ever-more vocal and their protestations that we are all doomed will be accepted as fact.

One Old Firm remembered for the football rather than the arguments does not signal the end of the bad times. It doesn't even signal a sighting of the light at the end of the tunnel.

Scottish Football is more than the Old Firm; it is time for the rest to remember that and do something about the status quo, if the good times are to return.

Call Them Out

SOME years ago, when we still had sufficient footballers of the quality which at least partially endorsed Scottish football's collective self-image - ie players who could trap something livelier than a bag of cement, whose second touch wasn't a desperate slide tackle, intended to regain the possession their initial mis-kick off either shin had lost them and who weren't labouring under the misapprehension that tactics were small, white mint sweets -  during a late-night "brains trust" amidst a bevvy of football writers, I threw-in a curve ball.

"Why not", I mused, as we discussed the impending announcement of the Scotland squad to face San Marino, Andorra, Luxembourg or England, one of the real diddy teams of Europe: "Select Auchinleck Talbot en bloc?"

After the shouts of: "Taxi for Socrates"; "Nae mair drink fur him"; "Ye aye were a bag o' piss, but wi that yin ye went too far"; had subsided, I was invited to  explain my: "Rush of shite to the brain".

Simples. The perennial minnows of European competition - Andorra, San Marino, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Malta, Faroe Islands and the like have lang syne adapted their game to their talents. They "park the bus" and defy their allegedly more-talented opponents to break them down; they break-up play, waste time, frustrate and seldom if ever cross the half-way line, for fear of an immediate nose bleed.

So, my plan was, embarrass them into having a go, by deliberately selecting a team, some way below our optimum squad and thereby inviting our opposition to answer our slur by attacking us.

I reckoned that if a team of part-timers - postmen, electricians, white van men, couldn't entice a team of waiters, barmen or fishermen to break the habits of a life time and have a go - nobody could.

I further reckoned that the likes of any given Auchinleck Talbot side, given the chance to represent Scotland at the top level, would show a bit more passion and commitment than the over-hyped and over-paid "stars" of the SPL or EPL.

These guys would be fans who would metaphorically die for the jersey and since there wouldn't be that much difference in ability, our perceived greater organisation would carry the day.

Craig Brown, when I suggested this ploy to him, didn't laugh out of hand; but then "Granpaw Broon" has never been anything less than a gentleman - he maybe thought I was mad, but was too well-brought-up to say so.

I would be tempted to offer this pick our diddy team scenario as a potential means of getting the required three points from our up-coming clash with Leichtenstein, except, if we do put out a diddy team, Craig Levein would be as well sticking with what he's got in his regular squad - we have sunk that far.

THOSE Celtic fans who remain concerned as to the possibility of their club being re-instated to the Europe League are, I feel, right to air these concerns. Little if anything is ever black and white where football politics is concerned; UEFA and FIFA have a long and tarnished track record in reaching puzzling decisions, so why should the menage a trois between UEFA, FC Sion and Celtic be any different?

On the face of it, Sion broke the rules when they signed the players when banned from so doing and ought to be flung-out on their ears. But, on the other hand, given they had signed them before they kicked a ball - they ought probably never to have been allowed to play them.

Then there is the disputed definition of the length of the ban; something doesn't add up there. Finally, there is what I see as the main bone of contention. The way Sion are using the Swiss courts to embarrass UEFA and FIFA.

Both these organisations are Swiss-based, therefore, they would, one would think, be tied to Swiss civil law. The two governing bodies are sticking to their assertion that they are the law as far as football is concerned, and the Swiss law cannot intervene in football matters.

Against this, there is the convention that every organisation within any given country ought to be law-abiding as far as the law of that country is concerned and the perception that the laws of the land ought to carry more weight and hold primacy over the laws of the game.

In which case, if the Swiss civil courts say the players can play - UEFA and FIFA have to bow before this and let Sion field these players.

It's a complex one, but, if I was Celtic-minded, I wouldn't be checking out Ryanair's and Easyjet's prices to Madrid just yet.

POOR wee Robert Earnshaw, missing that golden chance to put a spoke in England's wheels at Wembley the other night. Never mind wee man - the day will come, perhaps when you are old and bald, when the thought of the miss doesn't flash through your consciousness at least once every ten minutes.

Do We Really Want To Succeed?

ONE of my oldest friends in journalism switched off his laptop at the end of the 2009-2010 season, to concentrate on other things, such as (so far very successfully) fighting-off the cancer cells which were attacking his body, completing his grand tour of every state in the USA and keeping fit.

Last season, as a favour,he helped-out his successor by covering a couple of games, but otherwise he is happily out of the football coverage rat race and, he says, all the better for it.

This now retired gentleman tells a great story about his time as the Scottish Football Writers Association's liaison officer with the SFA. His first meeting inside Hampden in that post involved the planning meeting for a World Cup qualifier. My mate arived with a dossier on what the football writers might require to allow them and their friends following the opposition to fulfill their role properly; he had some suggestions to put forward, but never got the chance.

"The bulk of the meeting was taken-up with a discussion as to which wines and of which vintage would be served at the post-match banquet", he recalls.

"For the SFA that was the most-important thing, making sure they had the right trough in which to place their snouts".

As far as I know, a couple of decades on, little has changed at Hampden. The football and the needs of the guys working at it come a long way second to the requirements of the "blazers", as the Hampden High Heid Yins are called.

To take a slight diversion here - I always preferred the now somewhat old hat description of the rugby equivalent of the "blazers" - the 'Alickadoos', as in: "Him, all he can do is talk".

Let's face it, Scotland, particularly now Craig Levein is down to the bare bones of his squad, are by no means a shoo-in to beat Lithuania tonight. We ought still be able to get a draw, but I am far from confident in our ability to beat them.

If we don't, it's not so much Goodnight Vienna as goodnight Warsaw and Kiev; we'll have to endure another early summer of wall-to-wall televised "Ingerlund, Ingerlund, Ingerlund" in nine months time.

But, the blazers' bandwagon will roll on. Our guys who have secured their places on the various UEFA sub-committees, our own committee-men, the very guys who have presided over our tournament qualifying travails, they'll be OK, out there in Poland and Ukraine on their UEFA/SFA funded "jollies", meeting and greeting, quaffing fine wines and eating fine food - they'll be fine. It will be the usual suspects, the PBI of the Tartan Army, back home growing frustrated in their confinement to Scotland, who will be suffering.

When we fail- that failure may well be signalled tonight, or when, as past Scottish form suggests it might be by only drawing with Leichtenstein, or when the Spanish matadors are awarded Darren Fletcher's ears and McShagger's cojones after the final game - the disapproval of a nation will rumble down on the head of poor Craig Levein.

He will be castigated left, right and centre - he might even be forced from office, signalling the start of a lengthy process before the next patsie is unveiled to a somewhat disinterested world at Hampden - whereupon the whole sorry pantomime will start up again.

Or he may limp on, forced to carry the nation's aspirations on a rickety wheelbarrow, with a flat tyre, holes in the side and unequal-length forks.

The guys who got us into this mess - the directors who actually run our clubs and our game, they will escape censure and will get back to doing what they do best - arguing about Sauvignon over Shiraz, over Merlot and whether they have cheesecake or profitterols for dessert.

They don't have to worry about results, about what pot we are in for tournament draws, about national co-efficients. So long as they get their accustomed five-star luxury, everything is fine.

And until we shake them up, force them to make the necessary changes - we will get nowhere other than an ever-lower place in football's European and world pecking order.

The fact that none of us, press or fans, are taking to task the ment at the top, the ones we ought to be taking to task forces me to again consider the question at the top of this post - and conclude: WE DON'T REALLY WANT TO SUCCEED.

Otherwise, we'd have done something long ago.

Don't Blame The Referee

MY friends of a Celtic persuasion - yes, I have a couple - have been somewhat jubilant since Peter Lawwell was voted onto the new SFA Professional Game Board; feeling that after what they have perceived as generations of por-Rangers bias within Hampden's corridors of power, bringing a Celtic big wig on-board would mean a new and better future for Scottish football.

Well, at least, in the wake of Saturday's disappointing draw agbainst the Czech Republic, we can sign-up for Celtic-style revisionism and excuse-making. It was indeed a conspiracy, we were unable to win because of a perverse follower of the Princes of Oranje - Dutch referee Kevin Blom.

Mr Blom might not agree - he came across during his time in Scotland as the sort of arrogant prat who is ideally suited to life as a referee - but he didn't have the best of games at Hampden. To me, he got the really big calls - the Czech penalty he awarded and the Scottish one he didn't - wrong. But, that said, I thought he also got it wrong on an earlier possible Czech penalty. So, not the match official's best game.

But, at least his inadequacies allow us to play the old Scottish "We wuz robbed" card.

After around 50 years of such post-match bleating, I'm a wee bit fed-up with reading how Scotland was robbed, didn't get the rub of the green, was shunned by Lady Luck. Poor us, it's no fair, we never get the breaks.

Maybe, in not getting the benefit of so-many contentious calls, we get what we deserve, which maybe isn't a lot. Perhaps it's time for us to to stop feeling so hard-done-by and realise: we get the luck we deserve. I honestly don't think we here in Scotland exactly buy-into Gary Player's old aphorism: "The harder I work, the luckier I get".

Take a look at our team yesterday. Hutton didn't look match-fit; Fletcher got bye on sheer class; Naismith wasn't fully-fit; Scott Brown proved, yet again, at international level he's a liability - with a silly booking. Kenny Miller also copped a stupid yellow card - but, don't worry - it was all the referee's fault.

OK, the Berra booking was a joke, but when are we going to stop self-harming through picking-up needless bookings? When are we going to realise, the sort of clumsy challenges which are allowed every week in the SPL will not be tolerated in Europe.

Rugby internationals today are so-often settled by what the referees will and will not allow: fair enough, that's rugby's problem, but, when will our football teams, like our rugby teams, start playing the referee? Have him watched, find-out his wee foibles, what he will jump on, what he will allow. It's called preparation. You know what they say: "Fail to prepare - prepare to fail".

There is one way to avoid the sort of situations like yesterday, when refereeing errors cost us. That is, simply, take the referee out of the equation. Control the tempo of the game, take your chances, score your goals and the referee cannot influence matters with his mistakes.

But that would call for players with technical qualities over and above those of the current Scotland squad. It would call for greater concentration on the essentials of football - ball control, touch, vision, team work, the ability to make your passes, your crosses and your attempts on goal matter.

These are qualities Scotland hasn't shown, when it matters, much of late. Until we get back to playing the game properly, we aint gonna qualify for the major trophy finals.

Blame our own inadequacies, the way we've allowed Scottish football to stagnate, deteriorate and repeatedly fail; the way we've stopped producing truly world-class players - but, don't blame the referee, that's no excuse for our own failings.

Don't Throw Stones - The Window's Closed

SO, that's the transfer window closed for another four months; for the remainder of 2011 managers will have to piss with the cock they've got (forgive the profanity - but in Scotland at any rate they do generally piss-about).

It says much for the poverty (in every respect) of Scottish football that there were no 'jings, crivvens, help ma Boab' moments, even during the frenetic final hours, as one club or another pulled a veritable rabbit from the hat with an eye-popping signing. It might well be that you need the sort of silly pocket money sloshing around in England for a club to be so self-indulgent.

I have never been a fan of the window. Certainly it mitigates against the former fashion, whereby a rich club, or a club with an indulgent bank manager, finding itself in trouble in or just above the relegation zone, could perhaps buy its way out of trouble. But, for me, it would be better were transfer activity to be kept strictly to the close season; on midnight, on the eve of the first competitive game of any new season, the window closes - thereafter, you go with what you've got.

Perhaps, if we had the winter shut-down we deserve, it could re-open during that closure, but, again, at midnight on the eve of the re-start, down would come the grilles - if I had my way.

So, who are the winners and losers from this window? Only time will tell, of course. For instance, Celtic's new Moroccan left back might be the business, but he could just as easily flop.

Rangers had already recruited well in advance of the last day shenanigans, spending the final hours off-loading. Messrs Little and Fleck now know, they have to impress during their loan spells, or they have no Ibrox future. Beattie being off-loaded was hardly surprising. On form and talent, he should have blossomed in Glasgow, sadly for him - he didn't.

Clearly, Alistair McCoist has been told from the top: "Go with the kids if we have a spate of injuries". His squad is lighter than Celtic's in terms of numbers, but he has versatility in his squad. Kirk Broadfoot has his critics in Scotland, but, in our domestic league he can play in every position across the back four; Steven Whittaker has yet to find his pre-new contract form, but he too can fill-in on both rear flanks, as a second centre half and as a midfielder; Lee McCulloch and Kyle Bartley can both switch from midfield to defence if required, while, where a big target man was called for, McCulloch could do a job as well.

Maurice Edu is another capable of playing in various roles, as are Steve Davis, Steve Naismith and Kyle Lafferty. Of the kids, Jordan McMillan is a versatile player, as he has shown with Queen of th South - so the lack of numbers at Ibrox ought not, in the purely Scottish context of this season, be a problem to McCoist.

Neil Lennon does have numbers at his disposal. His problem is, too-many of his players are either - unfamiliar with the particular demands of playing for the Old Firm in a domestic context, or as yet unproven. With a highly-demanding fan base, desperate to see an end to Rangers' run of SPL titles, the Celtic new boys will not be permitted the luxury of easing themselves into Scottish football.

On paper, Celtic has the stronger squad and ought to be stronger than last season and capable of over-taking Rangers. On grass, things might become tricky if there are any more St Johnstone-type performances.

I do feel, when push comes to shove, Lennon might regret the lack of a true-green, brought-up in the faith Celtic fan in his squad; a Neil Lennon, a Roy Aitken, a Tommy Burns. Celtic NEED a guy like that, Rangers, in Davis, Lafferty, Broadfoot and McCulloch have several of that type and in the end, they could maybe tip the balance away from a football-wise, more-talented Celtic squad.

After all, the most-important part of a sportsman's being is the six inches between the ears; the part which refuses to countenance defeat and here, I think, Rangers are collectively stronger than Celtic.

You will notice, I do not mention the rest of the SPL. I do hope for a consistent challenge to the Old Firm from Hearts, Motherwell and Kilmarnock. I discount Dundee United, they have sadly been too-weakened by departures to mount a challenge I feel. But, unless Paulo Sergio can work miracles at Tynecastle, and Stuart McCall can keep his first-choice players on the park, I fear another two-horse race.

But, the window is now closed, the clubs have to get on with things - let's go.

I HAD intended steering clear of the fall-out from the Neil Lennon assault case, but, needs must.

I have maintained from the start, attempting to hurry through anti-sectarian law was guaranteed to end in tears. It is a highly-emotive and divisive subject. From what little I know of Scots Law, it appears the case against Watson failed because the Crown Office failed to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that his actions were motivated by bigotry or sectarianism.

Given that only one witness mentioned any kind of religious bias by the accused and the lack of corroboration - that leg of the prosecution case was always going to fall and with it the assault charge.

Several persons with legal training have maintained that existing law is good enough to tackle such cases, but, the reformers are in charge, so reform we must apparently have. They (the reformers) have fallen at the first hurdle.

Had the Crown Office prosecuted under existing assault charges, it seems likely they would have won; indeed, there is anecdotal evidence Mr Watson would have pled guilty to assault - had the sectarian element of the charge been dropped.

Own goal by the Crown Office then.

Where now for football and for the two clubs (three if you include Hearts) who, apparently have a sectarian element within their support.

Until the clubs bite the bullet and pro-actively root-out the bigots themselves, the law will not leave them alone. Rangers, to be fair, have taken action against a reported 3000 fans, banning over 500; Celtic do not appear to have been so energetic in pursuing the bigots; Hearts are, apparently still in denial.

That's a poor start, so the clubs HAVE to do more. If they do, legislation might be avoided. The ball is in their court, and if they kick it properly football will stay out of the law courts.