I AM currently indulging myself with some light bed-time reading: David Torrance's biography of Alex Salmond: 'Salmond - Against The Odds'. The book is a good read, thoroughly researched and with an extensive bibliography of written and broadcast sources.
There is, on page 154, a wee direct quote from the First Minister himself, which I think has great relevance to thee current travails of Scottish football.Speaking about the film 'Braveheart' and its (many) inaccuracies, its distorted view of Scottish history, Salmond said: "The real villains of the piece were the Scottish nobility"; adding: "I'm sure we've all got candidates as to who the modern counterparts might be".
Wee Eck is a shrewd cookie, so, if we extrapolate his comments re one of the truly great Scottish patriots forward to today's "90-minute patriots" - to use a timeless phrase dreamt-up by Salmond's one-time colleague turned enemy, Jim Sillars - and in particular those 90-minute patriots who wear SFA blazers, we start to get near the bottom of the current mess in Scottish football.
There are far-too-many "blazers" stalking Hampden's corridors of power who are in it for themselves and not for Scotland. These same men don't have any long-term strategy, Hell, they don't even have a short-term strategy, for getting Scotland out of its present mess and back to where we once were, far less where we think we once were.
Until we get shot of these men, we will continue to slide, slowly, towards the foot of the pile.
Sure, we can stand on the sidelines and criticise Alan Hutton, Gary Caldwell, Charlie Adam and Kenny Miller; just as we criticised Kris Boyd, Kris Iwelumo, Scott Brown, Barry Ferguson, Berti Vogts, George Burley and Craig Levein.
When results do not pick-up and we fail to qualify for Euro 2016, we will criticise Gordon Strachan and Mark McGhee. Of course, we will also abuse Stewart Regan, Neil Doncaster, Mark Wotte, Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble (not you Campbell, the Trumpton one), and Grubb and every Englishman from Boris Johnson to Uncle Tom Cobly.
Few will criticse the real villains - the modern day equivalent of the Scottish Norman knights who turned their backs on William Wallace - the club directors who refuse to rock the sinking Hampden hulk, who nod through spurious motions at meetings of the SFA, SPL and SFL, who put their own short-term interests above the nation's and who resolutely refuse to buy into the root and branch reforms which Scottish football needs.
And, while I am at it, the newspaper senior managers who will not have a go at these do nothing villains of the piece.
It is time the Scottish football public stood up and told them: YE CAN TAK THE PISS, BUT, YE CANNY TAK OOR FITBA.
IT IS of course sad to see the Dunfermline players being sacked out of hand. More-so for the young trainees who are being let go. My sympathy for the released first team players is tempered a wee bit by the knowledge that, whilst some perhaps all maybe lacked the natural ability to have risen above SFL1, one or two won international age group honours, but failed to train-on to full cap status.
They have ended-up where they are, because they lacked the wit and intelligence to realise, the harder they worked, the luckier they might get in football.
Dunfermline has been a potential basket case for years. I can recall in the John Yorston days, the club being heavily in debt, begging the fans to get behind them, but continuing to live beyond its means, recruiting foreign players on big salaries rather than local Fife boys on lower wages.
I remember turning-up at games at East End Park, when the Pars were a upper-mid-table SFL1 side, providing a half time buffet that was better than what you got at more than a few SPL grounds. You saw blazered club officials strutting around, and you wondered - what do half these people do?
The Pars were mis-managed for years, now the chickens have come home to roost. And, you know something, they will not be the last club to fall.
Scottish football as a whole has over-spent, under-invested and mis-managed for years. Gretna, Rangers and Dunfermline have been the worst cases; but, have Dundee, Motherwell, Livingston, Dundee United, Hearts, Morton or Kilmarnock been much better.
All these clubs have diced with death, re-trenched and somehow survived. But, none of them has flourished after their "heart attacks or strokes" - and, surely, others will have their wee episodes in the near future.
Scottish football aint working and it needs major surgery - when will this message sink in?
FINALLY, there was an interesting wee piece from ESPN this week, pointing out that Ajax was the most-successful nursery club in Europe. Manchester United, Britain's best, came 17th in the list, whilst the much-vaunted Barcelona Academy was only fourth-best when it came to producing good players.
Celtic? Rangers? indeed any Scottish club? Sorry, the ESPN data didn't go that far down, but, it did show that the poorest leagues when it came to producing good players included the SPL, where only some 10-15% of the first team players were "home grown".
Aye Scotland, the country which produced the "Scotch Professors" of the 19th century, who taught England how to play the game the English codified, who took football to Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, to name but three countries - now only found in that part of the world football map which reads: "here be hammer throwers".
Truly, the Flower of Scotland has withered - but, it aint dead just yet.
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