The Scots - Great Fighters, Among Themselves

IT HAS to be something in the water, this thing which makes us Scots the most-crabbit, greetin-faced, flytin besoms in the world. Nae wonder that puir wee Thatcher wummin was never liked up here.

Her first words on entering Downing Street were from St Francis of Assissi - all about peace and love and understanding; up here it's a case of: where there is conflict, let's get tore right in there and make it worse.

Look at the way the names Macdonald and Campbell can still cause ructions in some parts of the Heilans, while there are noble Scottish families still tainted by whichever side they took back in the days of Wallace and Bruce or the Stuarts and the Hanoverians.

Tainted - there's a word I used in the last paragraph, which is being tossed around a lot this week, apropos Celtic's latest title success. The cries of: "tainted title" are, naturally, coming mostly from the followers of the club which has just won the Scottish Football League's Third Division title; this makes that club Scotland's 33rd best side, while Celtic is Scotland's Number One one.

I find it somewhat ironic that the followers of Rangers, the heirs to the working-class followers of the old "Orange" Scottish Unionist Party, the Tories who in both votes cast and parliamentary seats gained in 1955, are today, like the Scottish Labour Party when it confronts the SNP government, crying foul and denegrating the work of the hated enemy which has usurped their "right" to govern.

IF Celtic's 44th domestic league title is tainted, that taint comes not from the lack of a challenge from Ibrox, but from the lack of a meaningful challenge from the rest of the SPL. Celtic won the title fair and square. Should the unthinkable happen and Neil Lennon's squad fail to garner another single point between now and the trophy presentation, none of the other 11 clubs will still be able to catch them. And this, remember, is, when compared with the Lisbon Lions, a middling Celtic team.

That's the taint about the SPL in season 2012-13, the fact that, from being the two-horse race which the SPL had been since its inception, it has slithered down to being a one-horse race - with no sign of a challenge on the horizon.

So, we must wait until September, 2015, the earliest date on which Old Firm warfare can return to Scottish league football, before we see a significant challenge to the men in green and white hoops. Is that the message to the fans?

If so, we are all doomed.

Let's not forget, with all the digging which highly-paid lawyers and accountants are currently undertaking around the corpse of oldco Rangers and the continuing uncertainty over the financing and ownership of newco Rangers, there is a possibility, albeit a remote one, that "Rangers" will never return to the top flight.

This will mean Celtic success until such times as they decant for the European League which is surely coming, or the death of Scottish football - whichever happens first.

No, the taint is in the lack of challenge to the last giant standing; the failure of the other clubs' directors to insist that their highly-paid players and managers get out there onto the training pitch to hone their skills and develop the tactics which will bring down Celtic.

The last time Scottish football was effectively a one-horse race was during (Sir) Bob Kelly's early years as Celtic chairman, when he would over-rule manager Jimmy McGrory and pick the Celtic team.

Between 1938 and the arrival of Jock Stein in 1965, Celtic won just two league titles. Sure, they had the odd cup success, but, for that quarter of a century, they barely-troubled Bill Struth's and Scot Symon's Rangers teams.

However, the Hibs of the Famous Five, the Hearts of the Terrible Trio, Willie Waddell's great Kilmarnock sides and Bob Shankly's wonderful Dundee team of 1961-63 ensured that Rangers had to fight all the way to their titles.

Back then, Scottish football mattered. It was successful - we produced great players whom the top English clubs wanted to buy. Celtic maybe weren't winning leagues regularly, but they were still able to sell-on the likes of Tommy Docherty, Bobby Collins, Willie Fernie and Bertie Auld to England. Hibs could sell Bobby Johnstone to Manchester City and still reach the semi-final of the European Cup the following season. Hearts could produce sellable assets such as Dave Mackay, Alex Young and Ian Crawford, see them depart to England and still compete. Dundee sold Danny Malloy to Cardiff City, then brought through Ian Ure, whom they sold to Arsenal. They produced Alan Gilzean. Scottish football was vibrant.

Today, it's rubbish. That's not Celtic's fault. It's to an extent oldco Rangers' fault - Souness convinced the rest of Scottish football our home-bred players were rubbish and not a patch on imports, the rest blindly followed him - a quarter of a century on, we're deep in doo-dah - and the management model which Souness and Murray followed is discredited and broke.

It's time we got back to basics; Scottish players, playing the Scottish-style passing game and, just maybe, we might get back to having a competitive league and a competitive Scotland team.

But, moaning about tainted titles and doing nothing might be the Scottish way, it is, however, not the way forward.