THE last post herein was devoted to a run-down of how the SFA works (or doesn't). I bet not many of you knew how important the Forfarshire, Stirlingshire, West of Scotland or Southern Counties FAs were in running the national game.
These bodies may not do sweet FA, but some of the competitions they run have as much relevance to modern football as Ye all-England Jousting Tournament have to the efficiency and potency of our armed forces. I deliberately wrote all-England there, the all-Scotland Jousting Tournament is still running, it is now called the Emirates Scottish Junior Cup.
I note also that I am not the solitary cynic abounding in Scottish football, young Michael Grant in the Herald has joined me in pointing-out what a pointless exercise Henry McLeish's review will become - with nobody taking a blind bit of notice of his findings
YOU have to hand it to those lovely people at Ibrox - they don't do irony. There is Walter Smith, a manager who would rather crawl over broken glass than put-on a young player complaining that Scottish Football is letting down young players, while Martin Bain, a man who is deeply complicit in bringing some only slightly better than useless while remarkable over-priced "talent" to Ibrox, crying out for a government hand-out for the game in Scotland.
OK Government investment in Scottish sport is a joke. Millions are poured into SportScotland or whatever it's called this week - this has created an industry of sports developers, who don't develop sport, facilitators, who don't facilitate and providers who fail to provide. The last thing we want to do is make sport yet another arm of state provision in Scotland. Mind you, the second-last thing we want to do is allow a lot of the people from within sport today to continue to run it.
Just a thought you understand - it's the press's job to point these things out, you see we don't have to resolve the problems.
I note this morning that fans-owned Stirling Albion are doing away with complimentary tickets - and about time too.
(I know, this is rich coming from a journalist who gets free entry to every game through his press pass).
But, comps are a pure racket and while stopping them at a stroke may make Albion some money, it will cost them in terms of friends within the game; we don't use the term "freemasonry of football" loosely, a lot is still done via nods, winks and friendships.
Another part of the comps racket which needs overhauling is in the murky world of press box passes. Particularly where the Old Firm is concerned, you will find in any press pack, supposedly working at the game, perhaps a team (i.e. an XI) of "journalists" who are there purely as spectators.
The expansion of the internet has not helped. You now have the ever-expanding army of website operators turning up and getting press priveleges. Last season one First Division club was followed by a crew of eight embedded "journalists", writing for fanzines and websites associated with that club. Not one was a qualified or recognised journalist. These people truly were: "fans with lap tops" and football is encouraging them.
One very-well-respected freelance football writer, whose work finds favour right across the board of journalism, from "red-top" tabloid to patrician broadsheet was telling me recently, he was covering a midweek Alba Cup match for one of the red-tops; there were six "journalists" in the press box, he was the solitary, full-time, qualified, card-carrying journalist. It is very wrong.
AND finally, Anthony Stokes is off to Celtic for, depending on which paper you read, between £800,000 and £1,200,000.
Good business by Celtic - they've got him cheaply, Hibs are immediately down a few goals, while with the service he should get at Celtic, he'll score a few.
Already Rod Petrie is getting pelters for selling his top-scorer so cheaply. Might it be a case of Hibs thinking they are well-rid of a disruptive dressing room influence. Team dynamic often plays a part in such moves.
I remember, some years ago, asking Craig Brown what had possessed him to buy a particular, very ordinary player, a man of more clubs that Jack Nicklaus.
"Aye well, when you've got him - you've got one happy dressing room", was the Motherwell Mauler's response.
Similarly I remember a St Mirren dressing room which went very flat when a particular "donkey defender" left, but cheered up very quickly thereafter when another player, who felt (wrongly) he was a star because he had once been on the bench for the Rangers first team was off-loaded.
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