We're All Village People

LONDON, we are told, is a series of inter-linked villages. I believe this observation is even truer of Scotland, particularly when it comes to football. The backbone of the Scottish game is in the juniors - if you've no backbone, the unlocked-up psychos in the junior game will soon break you - and it's in the juniors that the ethos of the game in Scotland was forged.

The mutual animosity between Auchinleck and Cumnock, Bo'ness and Linlithgow, Pollok and Arthurlie and so on is mirrored, albeit in greater numbers between Ayr and Kilmarnock, Hearts and Hibs, at both ends of Tannadice Street, Dundee, across Fife and Lanarkshire and, with an added politico-religious flavour between those loveable Bigot Brothers in Glasgow.

So, since we are all Village People - we ought to Go West in our search for a cure to Scotland's football ills. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single league, up to its neck in shit, should maybe start again.

We've been down the traditional Scottish Ayebeenism road of tinkering round the edges of the status quo, maybe we should look seriously at the North American system - a suggestion I've put forward before, but, few were listening.

Hallalujah, however, regular reader of this drivel, 'Sausage Fingers', an "Arab" now relocated to the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, feels I might be onto something.

We've tried the traditional Scottish way, why don't we try the North American pattern?

If the alleged top teams HAVE to run their own major league, then that show ought - like the American Major Leagues, be as professional as possible. It should also, like the American models be a properly democratic entity. Sure, in the USA the likes of the New York Yankees, the LA Lakers, Boston Bruins or the Dallas Cowboys might be "bigger" clubs, have larger fan bases or attract the bigger stars. But, when it comes to running their particular leagues, they are no bigger than their smaller rival franchises.

That's another thing about North American sport - they are franchises. The entire league membership decides how many teams they can carry and that's how many you have. There is no promotion or relegation, in fact, they go out of their way to try to level the playing field.

Each team has to meet stringent rules when it comes to stadia, facilities, management and funding. They don't have reserve teams, at the top end it is all about a single team, trying as hard as it can to win its league. There might not be a Yankees reserve team in Major League Baseball, for instance, but there are feeder teams in the minor leagues, tied to the Yankees organisation and bringing through new talent.

There is also the wonderful American Collegiate sports system, organised by the CAAA, the Collegiate Athletics Association, which organises college sports. Sporting talent will get even the poorest out of the ghetto in America. On the frace of it, over here sporting talent will get even the poorest out of our lowest sink schemes - the difference is: if the American kid doesn't make it to the professionals, and most don't, at least he has a university education - one which perhaps, without his or her sporting talent, he probably would not have had - to fall back on.

Over here, the talented young footballer from places like Easterhouse, Muirhouse or Pilton or Onthank usually leaves school at 16 to join a football team. Here he is assessed annually and can be tossed aside at any time. After that, he's on his own. If he's lucky, he is picked up by another full-time team, to try again with no greater guarantee of a long-term career. Otherwise it's down to him to find a Monday to Friday job and a Saturday berth with a part-time team, either in the lower reaches of the SFL or in the Juniors.

How many young players have been cast aside by this unfair system? How many guys who wrongly backed their talent to release them from poverty are back, on the broo, or existing in dead end jobs?

Let's start again. Have an SPL by all means. I would suggest we cannot afford more than a maximum of 20 clubs. And let's not have SPL 1 and 2. Let's have one SPL, with two equal conferences.

There might be a case for a national league below that, of maybe 12 or 16 teams, part-time maybe but with infrastructure and aspirations to enter the SPL proper, should it be a success and should the clubs feel it should expand.

Below that we should have regional leagues, involving proper community clubs. The SPL clubs should, Champions League style, be limited to say 25 players, but should be linked to one or more regional community clubs for player development and when necessary, temporary recruitment of players if required by an injury crisis. These minor league clubs MUST have links to schools, further education colleges or universities, so that the youngsters who don't make it into the SPL or to similar leagues outwith Scotland have an alternative career to fall back on.

These minor leagues should also have an upper age limit of 23. Yes, occasionally a late-developer will break through, but, by and large, if a player hasn't made it by 23, he isn't going to.

As in North America, the best will come through the system, while the sporting failures still can have successful careers ouside the game, and might well continue playing for fun in the amateur leagues.

Who knows, there mightr even be a case for a North American type draft system each close season for filling gaps in the top clubs' playing rosters.

We've guddled through with a flawed system for over a century. The North American system has worked over there for 100 years. Why cannot it work over here too?

I realise there are a lot of shoulds, mights, maybes, could bes, not to say speculation in this post. But, all our certainties in Scottish football in the past have come to little. Doing nothing isn't an option, so if we must do something, let's do something different.