If You Know Their History

I AM from a generation who were actually taught Scottish History at school - not just Wallace, Bruce, Mary Queen of Scots and John Knox. Sadly much of it has now "gone" from memory, but, there is one constant throughout the history of: "Ra greatest wee peeple Goad ever pit braith intae" - feuding and fighting.

Forget Montagu and Capulet, Hatfields and McCoys, English and Germans; if you want to see real mutual animosity, simply stand in the middle of any resedential street in Scotland - we truly are a war-like people, and if we cannot finttish nobles d an excuse to have a go at the common enemy, those awfully nice people south of the Tweed and the Solway, well, we'll simply fight amongst ourselves.

The clan wars gave way to Ayrshire Junior Football; the Border Reivers used to steal each other's cattle, now they make do with enticing rugby players to the next town to play; the religious wars of the 16th century are still fought at least four times per year at Ibrox and Celtic Park.

Braveheart was, in truth, a lot of tosh, but, that bit towards the end when the Scottish nobles rode away, leaving Mel and ra boays to face certain defeat at the hands of the English sort of sums Scotland up. Nothing in it for me, I'm out.

And that's the still-alive position which will in all probability derail hopes of real change in Scottish football. Rangers and Celtic will, as ever, do what best suits their common purpose, to lord it over everyone else: the diddy SPL teams, whose only goal is to keep their snouts in the Old Firm money bowl, will scream and scream until they are sick, to stay at the top table; we'll atrophy further, until, probably when we've nowhere else to go - the English will step in and bail us out, at vast cost to us.

Football in Scotland is in a real mess, the McLeish proposals were not perfect, but they offered us a possible way out of that mess - I just don't think the guys running the game have the wit to do what needs to be done.

Forget history, forget self-interest, just do what's best.