What's the Splash

IN newspaper parlance, the Splash is the big front-page headline - the those few words of type above the fold which will grab the attention of a passing punter and make he or she want to buy your particular paper.

These come in several types - War Declared: King Dead: PM Resigns: in the days before instant TV or radio news, these were the staples, massive stories guaranteed to boost sales. I don't suppose we've seen a headline of that impact since Mo Joins Rangers (or whatever actual wording the Sun put on that story).

Then there are the classics: rumour has it the Press & Journal's announcement of the Titanic sinking was a bit more dramatic than: North East Man Lost At Sea - but that's the one everyone apparently remembers, while surely THE most-memorable headlines of all time were the Sun's epics: Gotcha! for the Belgrano sinking and: Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster.

In sports headlines the two most-quoted are again Sun headlines: Swedes 2 Turnips 1, after England were humbled in the 1992 European Championships and SupercallygoballisticCelticare atrocious - although to be fair, that was a re-hash of an older Sun headline from Ian Callaghan's time with Liverpool.

My favourite, however is a Guardian headline from the early seventies: Queen in Palace Brawl, after Gerry Queen was sent off while playing for the Selhurst Park club.

Another hardy annual in the old sepia-tinted days was: King Football Is Back, used to mark the Saturday when cricket bats, golf clubs and spiked running shoes were put away, out came the Manfield Hotspurs and football returned to dominate the sporting landscape.

Sport had seasons then. Sure there have always been overlaps, but by and large, in Britain apparently, all football kicked off on the same day and immediately after the FA Cup had been paraded round the winning club's home town, it shut down and cricket took over.

We Scots were always a wee bit more-obsessed with the beautiful game, but a trawl through the excellent newspaper files in the Mitchell Library will show that, even as Celtic were topping off Scottish football's annus marabilis of 1967 with that Lisbon victory, the (Glasgow) Herald sports pages contained reports of sports and events which never get in in today's world of 24/7 football coverage.

These days could return though. It is evident that with the bead counters holding increasing sway in newspaper offices, the Old Firm's summer forays to the USA and Australia are not the part-holiday "jollies" which the papers' Chief Football Writers once enjoyed - one hour's work per day to break up a long-distance extended summer holiday.

But, back home, football is almost limping apologetically into the new season. The SFL's League Challenge Cup kicks off today, followed by the League Cup, then the Irn-Bru League gets going, before the SPL finally kicks off in mid-August.

Of course, we know Scottish football hasn't a clue about marketing itself, so I will not ask the obvious question, but really - if our "product" is as good as the Hampden blazers apparently think it is - where's the big launch?

Of course, football is a branch of the entertainment industry and as such there have to be rehearsals and shake-downs. But, if you want to create an interest, put bums on seats for the big day, you need to work at it - it Sam Goldywin parlance: "begin with an earthquake and then build up to a shattering climax".

And, while the entertainment business does have a place for the hired assassin - he will surely get his comeuppance before the end. Ross Tokeley would never have survived unscathed through a single John Wayne movie.

In the current economic climate, football needs to sell itself better. Build more interest, market itself properly. In Scotland, the press has long done football's marketing work for it. Given the budget cuts, the way increasingly papers are taking bland, production-line journalism from a single source for all but the really big stories, football has to sharpen-up its act to continue to put those bums on seats.