Time To Put-Up Or Shut-Up

SO, the McLeish has spoken; now comes the hard part - the talking is over, it's time to act: but will the blazers play their part.

I spent yesterday reading and re-reading the full 106 pages of part two of the McLeish Review and it is a fine body of work. Henry telt it like it is and I found very little to disagree with.

But, the guys he was mainly getting at, those SFA councillors from the wee teams in the lower divisions of the senior, will surely have to be dragged kicking and screaming like the former Rumanian dictator and his wife, in front of the firing squad. They will fight tooth and nail for their own very narrow but deeply vested interests. Having held Scottish football back for years, they will not go quietly - but go they must.

I applaud the obvious, yes, two different bodies over-seeing league football in Scotland is one too many. I welcome the long time coming realisation that there are two games in Scotland, the professional and the community. I just worry that perhaps the professional game will be given too-much of a say in the future: they haven't exactly covered themselves in glory in the past, and there are still at least two teams who think they are more important than the national side.

There, I've mentioned "the war", "the elephant in the room" - aka 'The Old Firm', because the grim truth is, whatever changes are made, these two clubs will still be main players.

The real problems will be in the changes to the professional game: what type of senior league structure will we end up with?

Let me lay my cards on the table - any club which isn't fully full-time cannot be a professional club - so, immediately we've taken the great mass of the SFL clubs out of the equation. These wee clubs also fail the professional test inasmuch as they do not meet the current SPL criteria in terms of stadia (6000 all-seater), pitch protection and so forth. They have to go down to the community game.

By their going they would also solve another anomaly which McLeish, sadly, didn't address - the fact we've got too-many senior clubs.

England's (and Wales's) 50 million population is served by 92 senior clubs - Scotland's 5 million population is served by 42 - that is clearly too many. There are suggestions from down south that Leagues One and Two ought to be regionalised, why not up here too?

McLeish seems to be advocating just 20 senior professional clubs, playing in a national league competition. I could live with this. However, McLeish falls into the old trap of advocating two separate ten-club divisions.

This is where I feel his review radical though his propsed changes are - fails through fear of being too-radical.

With SPL 1 and SPL 2, you create a two tier system. If you're in SPL 1, you have access to the money you make from being in the same division as the Old Firm - the benefits (and let's face it, occasional draw-backs) of their massive travelling support; the fact these two clubs are the real draw for the TV companies. If you're in SPL 2, you don't have as much access to the big money, immediately you're handicapped.

I'd far rather McLeish had advocated a North American-style system of one league, but two conferences of equal standing, leading to late season play-offs.

Ok, it's radical, it's never been done in this country, but, it has worked for decades in the NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB. If it works for the Chicago Bulls, Dallas Cowboys, Toronto Maple Leafs and New York Yankees, why cannot it work for Celtic, Rangers, Kilmarnock and St Johnstone?

In North American sport, you have minor league clubs which are feeders into the major leagues. You just might, if you are a regular fan of Hicksville Hounds in the mid-Western League, get an early glimpse of the next Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretsky. Who says this wouldn't or couldn't work in Scotland?

The true meaning of a league is a collection of individual organisations working for a common goal. That goal cannot be common if 10 of the 20 clubs in any league can be classed as "haves" and the others as "have nots" - your North American conference system levels-out this uneven playing field.

Celtic and Rangers will still have the biggest grounds, the largest followings; they will still generate most of the media interest, but, the current imbalance will be somewhat checked, not, as now, in favour of another ten clubs, but, via a North American system, another 18 clubs.

I welcome McLeish's findings - I just feel, he didn't go far enough.