What's In It For Me

WITH precious little football to actually report over the weekend, my esteemed colleagues on the Scottish newspapers' football desks were forced to keep the pot boiling, in the wake of the announcement of part two of the Henry McLeish review.

And, just as was widely predicted: the self-interest which Henry highlighted as a blight on the game up here, has kicked in with a vengeance. Fortunately perhaps, the SPL meeting, due for today, which would have had a first look at that league's own proposals for change, which in truth don't deviate that far from what came out of the McLeish Review, has been postponed.

Had it gone ahead, I fear there would have been blood in the Hampden corridors of power. There doubtless still will be, when these discussions do get under way in the New Year, but they (the clubs) now have a window of opportunity, in which to perhaps find compromise.

As I see it, in the early 21st century, more-so even than in the late 19th and entire 20th centuries, the other clubs are deeply in thrall to the Old Firm. We all know the big two generate more than half of the fans who watch Scottish Football in any season, so, the other SPL clubs budget for the season on the basis of at least six home OF games per season.

Say you are Michael Johnston, the Kilmarnock chairman and one of those officials thought to be against a return to a ten-club top flight: if it is a case of six games at an average of say 11,000 fans, plus 13 games at an average of 5,000 from the current 12-club league, against perhaps 18 games at an average of 5,000 if your club is in SPL2 - well, that's hardly an incentive for change.

If the SPL is to be expanded to 16, 18, 20 or 24 clubs - then it has to become a properly democratic league, with steps taken to make the playing field as level as possible. As I have said before, the only way this can be done is to go down the North American road of two equal conferences, leading to cross-conference play-downs to a Grand Final, a sort of Scottish Super Bowl.

And if that comes to pass, with the SPL, which I suppose will have to be renamed either the Scottish Senior League or the Scottish Major League - since amalgamation of the SPL and SFL is such a no-brainer it must happen then we have to find a sop to those "diddy" teams consigned to the regionalised lower slopes of a Scottish football pyramid.

Here again, we should go North American, with feeder teams, alighned to the top league clubs to bring through the fresh talent. Queen's Park could be Rangers' feeder team; Albion Rovers could do that job for Celtic, Cowdenbeath and East Fife would do the same job for Dunfermline and Raith, the Angus clubs for the two Dundee teams and Aberdeen and so forth.

And before you shout about tradition and history, be realistic - for most of my 60-plus years on this planet, these diddy teams have been taking-out rather more than they have putting-in to Scottish football. For years their reason d' etre has been to survive as "senior" clubs.

We have far too many "senior" clubs. Of the 42 clubs with such status, approximately half are part-time ones. Why should we continue to subsidise part-time operations to the detriment of full-time ones - because of history and tradition?

Henry McLeish has produced an honest document. Scottish football, if it is to survive, has to be honest in its approach to implementing his findings. If, as it looks as if they will - they fudge round the edges and don't side line narrow self-interest for the greater good - we're doomed, doomed ah tell ye.