Tackling the Elephants

IN the day job, I spend a lot of time trawling through Scottish football archives, which can be fascinating stuff, given that Scottish football's past is more interesting than its present and a lot less worrying than its future.

Over this close season I've been looking in particular at post World War II league football and trying to figure out what it can teach us.

We all know that the Old Firm are much-bigger than the rest of Scottish football, but I must admit even I was surprised at just how much bigger they were. In the SPL years, we've become familiar with the concept of the Old Firm disputing the destination of the league flag, with the rest trailing in, a distance adrift. If you know your football history you will say it was ever thus; well not quite.

The 20 years post-WWII and pre-Jock Stein's return to Celtic Park as manager, are seen as the golden years, when we did have competition in Scotland. These are the years when Hibs, with their Smith, Johnstone, Reilly, Turnbull and Ormond "Famous Five": Hearts under Tommy Walker, with the "Terrible Trio" of Conn, Bauld and Wardhaugh, backed-up by the likes of Dave Mackay and John Cumming: the Motherwell team of Paton, Kilmarnock and Shaw: and the Aberdeen of Archie Glen, Paddy Buckley and Jackie Hather all won trophies.

It was a time when Kilmarnock under Willie Waddell could win the league, regularly contest cup finals and, along with Hearts provide real competition to Rangers. Clyde could twice win the Scottish Cup, Dundee could lift the league with a squad: Liney; Hamilton and Cox; Seith, Ure and Wishart; Smith, Penman, Cousin, Gilzean and Robertson, which is still the benchmark for Tayside teams and the Paisley Saints could march into Hampden and out again with the Scottish Cup safe in the arms of Davie Lapsley.

Yet, for all this provincial success, there have only been two post-war seasons, 1959-60 and 1964-65 in which both halves of the Old Firm have finished outside the top two in the league. In these 65 post-WWII seasons we've had an Old Firm League Champion on 53 occasions; they've finished first and second 24 times and the last non-Old Firm team to win the league was Aberdeen in 1985, 26 seasons ago.

If you take those 65 seasons as a single league table, Rangers are top, with 3736 points from 2300 games - that's 71.9 per cent of the available total, while they've won 62.4% of these matches. Celtic have 3616 points, 69.6% of those available, while they've won 59.5% of the matches they've played. Third are Aberdeen, the only other side to have been ever-present in Scotland's top division since 1945. The Dons have accumulated 2796 points, 53.8% of the total available to them, winning 44% of their matches.

These three clubs, the two Edinburgh clubs are the only sides to have taken more than 50% of the available points: Hearts have taken 53.7% of the points they might have, Hibs 50.5%, while Dundee United are just under the 50% mark.

In all 33 clubs have graced Scotland's top flight since 1945, from the three ever-presents to one-season-wonders such as Albion Rovers, East Stirlingshire and Gretna. The fact that ambitious new clubs such as Clydebank, Gretna, Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Livingston can join the senior ranks and progress to spend even a season mixing it with the big boys is to the credit of the Scottish football system.

But the fact that Third Lanark, who folded in 1967 are still, overall, the 19th best side in post-war Scottish League football, perhaps indicates that the tail is still wagging the dog.

Only 18 of our 42 "senior" clubs have enjoyed top-flight football this 21st century. Raith Rovers, Morton, Airdrie (whether 'onians, United or Clydebank) have never featured in the SPL. Ayr United and Dumbarton last graced the top table in the dark days pre-Graeme Souness; Arbroath, East Fife, Stirling Albion and Cowdenbeath had their last days in the sunshine back when there were just two divisions in Scotland while Albion Rovers, East Stirlingshire, Queen of the South, Queen's Park and Third Lanark were last jousting with the big boys in the years when Jock Stein was making his way as a manager and Alex Ferguson, Craig Brown and Walter Smith were playing.

You might think pre-determination, that 18th century Church of Scotland belief of such as Holy Wullie, that: "wha it pleases best thine sel, sends ain tae heaven and nine tae hell, awe fur thine glory" is still gospel in Scottish football. The Old Firm and the city clubs can play on the big park, most of the others cannot.

The reality is, we don't have four levels of senior football, too many clubs and officials are all about merely surviving as senior clubs and administrators - when the reality is the juniors are in a lot of cases more professional.

When will we face reality and make the necessary changes? We're tinkering around the edges, we're wallowing in the way it has always been and we're going nowhere fast.

The fact is, if you take the two elephants out of the room, Scottish football has a thin, competitive layer floating above some pretty rotten undergrowth. We cannot get shot of the elephants, so we have to give the rest a firmer footing from which to take them on.

But, we have to do something, doing nothing is not an option.