THIS is the weekend on which reality bites for the SPL. They've had the grand opening weekend, which left the Scottish football public distinctly under-whelmed. They were given a reality check, when more fans turned up for Rangers' first home game - a Tuesday night cup tie against East Fife - than for the five SPL opening games which didn't feature Celtic combined. Now, with Celtic otherwise engaged, the rest have to try to attract a following.
The Edinburgh Derby will take care of itself, but it is a racing certainty that the largest caravan of travelling fans this weekend will comprise the Bears on buses who will follow-follow as far as Peterhead.
Of course, ~Rangers' support will wane this season, but, there remains a sufficiently-large hard core of supporters who will turn out to emphasise just which club is the big beast in Scotland.
Rangers had to be punished, but, starting this weekend, the SPL clubs will surely begin their season-long process of regreting the way they chose to inflict that punishment.
I AM currently researching an article on Scotland's oldest living former internationalists. This has involved a part of this job which I love - poring over old newspaper reports from the days when the selection of the Scotland team was in the hands of the less than magnificent seven members of the SFA's Selection Committee.
Today, when a Scotland game hoves onto the horizon, the hack pack is summoned to Hampden; we are ushered into a big room, wherein we are handed the squad list. Craig Levein then emerges, does a set-piece presentation, which is mainly for the benefit of the TV and radio companies, before sitting down in turn at two round tables - at the first of which sit the men from the dailies, with the Sunday guys at the second. That's where he answers the (not so) hard questions which form the basis of the papers' stories on the squad.
Back in the day, the hack pack would stand outside Carlton Place or Park Gardens and await the distribution of the list, no questions were allowed, which permitted speculation and comment - often barbed. There was one ocassion, way back in the 1880s, when the gentlemen of the press were allowed into the room to watch the selection committee at work, but that, apparently, was a once-only aberration by the SFA.
For instance, checking-out a Scotland team from the immediate post-war era I noticed, in addition to the chosen XI, the selectors announced a reserve team, from which replacements would be called-up if required. One particular reserve team I noticed had Sammy Cox (then playing left half for Rangers) listed as reserve right back and reserve right half, while Jimmy Stephen, who actually played left back for the Scotland team, was also listed as reserve left back.
The team was badly beaten, seven changes were made for the next international, five weeks later but while both the right back and right half were dropped - Sammy Cox didn't get either gig in the second match. Talk about team building.
When the selectors ruled, it was not uncommon for unheralded Anglo-Scots to be picked, particularly for the annual clash with the English. Many of these guys were "one-cap wonders" - goalkeeper Ian Black of Southampton, v England in 1948, Willie Moir of Bolton Wanderers, v England in 1950 and John Dick of West Ham at Wembley in 1959 being the stand-out post-war examples, while Tiny Bradshaw of Bury was surely the ultimate "one-cap wonder", getting his solitary cap as one of the 1928 "Wembley Wizards".
These "one-cap wonders" were probably justification for the selectors' huge expenses incurred while scouting for talent in England; but, in reality, is there any real difference between the likes of Black, Moir and Dick and some of the current Scotland squad, such as the two Blackpool Matts - Phillips and Gilks - other than the fact Black, Moir and Dick all had Scottish rather than English accents?
Mind you, these old-time Anglo-Scots could all play a bit, not something I have always ascertained about some of the guys picked of late under the grand-parents rule; but, that said, the worst individual performance I ever saw in a Scotland shirt was produced by a Home Scot. Nobody has ever, for my money, been as bad as Motherwell's Jim Forrest was in his solitary international, against England, at Hampden in 1958.
Another thing I love about the old ways is the way the football writers of the time could write with authority: "I suggest the selectors should pick the following team" the Waverleys and Rexes would thunder, then be lucky if they got six of the eleven names announced correct.
Of course, this merely gave them the freedom to get stuck into the seven faceless "blazers" if Scotland played badly.
The worst/best example of the selectors getting it in the neck from the press was surely during the end of season European tour of June 1963. After the tour opener, a 3-4 loss to Norway in Bergen, John McKenzie, the Daily Express's "Voice of Football" thundered that Denis Law should never play for Scotland again. The Lawman had scored all three Scottish goals.
The caravan moved on to Dublin, where they lost 0-1 to the Republic Of Ireland, after which McKenzie was not alone in calling for the tour to be abandoned there and then, before Scotland were humiliated in the final game, against Spain in the Bernabau.
Remember that game - Sunday, 13 June, 1963? The final score was Spain 2 Scotland 6 and less than a year later that Spanish team were European Champions.
But, that's the joy of following Scotland, the sheer unpredictability. It has often been said that the real Tartan Army, the Jocks of the old 51st and 52nd divisions of the British Army would follow their English public school-educated officers anywhere - mostly out of a sense of morbid fascination as to what kind of pickle they would lead them into - I would suggest the same thought processes are still at work with the modern day footballing Tartan Army.
FINALLY, Australia has had, by all accounts, a dire Olympics; they been nowhere in their usual stronghold, the swimming pool, only the wonderful Sally Pearson has performed on the track and as I write, Advance Australia Fair has only been heard seven times to the 25 times we've heard God Save The Queen. This is not good news for the Aussies, so we can safely put our money on the men in green and gold to beat Scotland at Easter Road in midweek.
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