CELTIC Park was 80 per cent full for Saturday's SPL opener against Aberdeen, before which last season's Championship flag was unfurled. Last night, Ibrox was 75 per cent full for new Rangers' first home game, against East Fife.
We can deduce from that that the Old Firm's core fan base is holding-up pretty well in these strained times. But what of elsewhere? What happened to all this internet big talk about big crowds for the big kick-off, of the fans rolling back now that the traditional Old Firm hegemony at the top of the Scottish game had been temporarily perhaps broken?
Not a lot in truth. Ross County's little Victoria Park was 80 per cent full for their SPL bow, Tynecastle was 80 per cent full for the Jambos' march to the head of the SPL table, at the expense of St Johnstone, while on Sunday, Tannadice was 52 per cent full for the Arabs' win over Hibs.
Overall, in the first of the 38 rounds of SPL games, only two-thirds of the available SPL seats had bums on them. Take Celtic out of the arithmetic and on the opening day of the most-eagerly-anticipated season in years, only 54 per cent of the available seats were occupied - hardly a resounding vote of confidence for the Rangers-free SPL.
The two lowest percentages of bums on seats were reported at Rugby Park and at new St Mirren Park, where respectively only 36 and 39 per cent of the available seats were occupied.
I saw for myself that, at Rugby Park, visitors Dundee, the manner of whose entry into the top flight was, like so many other matters, woefully mis-handled by the SPL, brought a good support, many no doubt anxious to be able to claim: "I was there" on the day the 'Dee ended their top-flight exile - but, yet again, there was a shrug of disinterest among my fellow Ayrshiremen and women.
We're a funny lot here in God's County, I have long felt the comparative lack of real home-grown Ayrshiremen in the team is Killie's Achilles Heel, when it comes to attracting a crowd, that, plus the lingering damage done by many years of playing merely to survive rather than to entertain and win - while the economic downturn of recent years has hit Ayrshire and in particular Kilmarnock hard.
To walk around Killie these days is to be conscious of a town on the downward slope; the place looks shabby, the people even shabbier. Maybe if Barclay's was still producing railway locomotives, Massey Ferguson tractors and combines, Saxone shoes, BMK carpets, Glazier motor industry components, Glenfield & Kennedy heavy engineering equipment and they still bottled Johnnie Walker Whisky in Kilmarnock, there would be more people in work in the town and with spare cash to spend at Rugby Park. Maybe if today's Killie Kids had Frank Beattie as a role model, rather than "Starvin Marvin" from 'The Scheme', or if the charismatic Bobby Fleeting was still Chairman, rather than the charisma-free Michael Johnson, things might be better.
Up at St Mirren, Scotland's Largest Town's proximity to Glasgow will always be a drawback to locals following the Buddies rather than the Bhoys or the Bears. They've got a great stadium, a good, hard-working board, a hard core of fanatics, but here again, Paisley's great days as a manufacturing town, like Kilmarnock's are gone and those working class men with spare cash have found places other than across the turnstiles at St Mirren Park in which to spend it.
The SPL is over-priced, the product isn't that good and I feel that, until the clubs re-discover their roots in the local community, and start filling-up their squad places with local players, the game in Scotland will not recover.
A good start might be made by NOT hurrying through league re-construction, purely as a basis for getting Rangers back to the top flight sooner. Knee-jerk reactions are never good ones.
Right now, we have too-many "Senior" clubs, too-few home-grown players and we're charging first rate prices for a third-rate product. Find a way to freshen-up the senior game, while sorting-out these deficiencies, and we might, in time, have a game in Scotland which the public will wish to support in numbers.
But, getting the product and the mix right will be a tough job and, in all honesty, I don't see the men to make the tough calls and implement the tough changes necessary as being inside Hampden's corridors of powers today.
I AM a trifle under-whelmed by Craig Levein's latest Scotland squad, for the upcoming Easter Road clash with Australia. I appreciate the game will be a glorified squad run-out prior to the start of the World Cup qualifying later in the Autumn, so he has to go with what he considers his core squad.
But, the timing is wrong, the home-based players will be going into the game on the back of at best four competitive games, which will be four more than the Anglos will have had. Maybe the game should have been scheduled for a couple of weeks later-on; but then, I am not up to scratch with UEFA and FIFA edicts as to when internationals may be played, so perhaps it had to be next week.
I also feel, it might be better if he didn't play a full-strength team (assuming we have such a thing). He needs to get guys like Matt Gilks "blooded", so we know if they have what it takes to play for Scotland. In truth, the whole exercise doesn't enthuse me for the World Cup matches to come.
In fact, the entire Scotland set-up I feel, needs freshening-up. There doesn't seem to me to be a pathway of progression, from age group teams to the full squad. Berti Vogts introduced "Futures" internationals and "B" internationals - something which the German FA play frequently. But this idea was never popular with either the Hampden blazers or the Scotia Nostra in the press seats - which was a pity.
The trouble with UK football is, in my opinion, that the clubs, overwhelmingly come first, well ahead of the national team, and, until we sort this out and make Scotland our main focus, we will, I believe, continue to be on the outside, gaping in, when the big internaitonal tournaments are being played.
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