I AM still struggling somewhat to be arsed about the start of the new Scottish football season. I cannot be bothered with mince,when fillet steak is on offer all day, every day, on the BBC - which has, to the chagrin of some of my mates on the important pages on newspapers - those are the ones before the page after the centre-spread, since, in papers, the content gets siller the further from the front you get - gone totally ga-ga over the Olympics.
As one Editor I was speaking with last week said, more in sorrow than anger: "People are being massacred by their government in Syria and what's the main item on the BBC News? Some guy from Dunblane wins a game of tennis.
Well, look at it as if you were the Chairman of an SPL club. You are trying to persuade your local populace that you have a squad of top-quality, talented, dedicated footballers on offer: when the reality is some of them couldn't trap a bag of cement; their idea of a hard training schedule is about an hour a morning, four mornings per week; when you're paying them way over what they are worth and when they're a surly bunch, mostly only interested in which daft local burd they can get their end away with.
You are trying to persuade enough gullible locals to part with over £20 to come into your stadium to watch these "stars" "perform" - and the alternative is, the public remain in the comfort of their own homes to watch the best sportsmen and women in the world strut their stuff on TV. They can see real sports stars such as Andy Murray, who, at 15, went off to Spain to learn a new language, improve his tennis skills, learn to be professional and finally reap the benefits, or Chris Hoy, who had to uproot himself from his comfortable, middle-class life-style in Edinburgh for a small flat in Manchester and the chance to be part of the most-professional sports team in Britain, GB Cycling. Then there is Katherine Grainger, a graduate of Edinburgh University, who has spent the years since she got her degree chasing that elusive gold medal which she finally won last week.
Katherine could long ago have settled into a career, perhaps married an Edinburgh lawyer or corporate banker, had the nice house in Stockbridge, the two kids - Rebecca at Mary Erskine, Findlay at Watson's - and been doing the round of pilates, aero-biking, coffee mornings, maybe part-time work, involvement with a worthy charity, dinner parties and charity gatherings which are surely the life-style of some of her university contemporaries.
Instead she has endured over a decade of early-morning rows on cold lakes, of gruelling weights sessions, of training camps abroad as she pursued her goal. Along the way she has thrice fallen just short, but, she kept going and, in her 36th year, she achieved her goal. No, I cannot think of a Scottish professional footballer that driven, and that worthy of praise.
Team GB's successes have come because the men at the top of the various individual sports organisations have clear goals in sight, clear and concise plans in place and where there is a culture of excellence.
It is, I admit, easier for these "minority" sports to do well. British Cycling does, certainly, run Team Sky in the Tour de France for instance, but there aren't individual clubs: Manchester Sprinters (star men J Kennay and C Hoy); Manchester Keirin (C Hoy); Manchester Pursuit Team (Clancy, Thomas, Burke and Kennaugh) Manchester Ladies Pursuit Team (King, Trott and Rowsell) - there is simply Team GB.
But look at the business set-up of British Cycling: there is Dave Brailsford, THE main man, the Performance Director, who picks the various units and is in overall charge of strategy and direction - the Manager in football parlance. Below him there are the various specialist coaches, a squad of dieticians, nutritionalists, physios, psychologists mechanics and so forth. The British Cycling mantra is: "attention to detail" - nothing is too-small to be overlooked.
Compared to this, Britain's most-successful team (and also to the rowing team, which all but matches their cycling counterparts in ethos, attitude, search for perfection and attention to detail) with the haphazard manner in which our football teams are managed and run.
I can only hope that the real professionalism which has brought Team GB so-many medals at London 2012 will jump across to Scottish football and that the game up here can reap the benefit - now that would be a real, wonderful and lasting legacy of London 2012.
But, I am not holding my breath.
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