ONE of my oldest friends in sports journalism opened a right can of worms yesterday on another football website - when he suggested it might be no bad thing for Scottish rugby, were Hearts to fold in the face of their current crisis.
He was, of course, playing Devil's advocate and will be horrified should the worst-case scenario unfold down Gorgie way, but, Scottish football cannot go on as it has these past few decades. We have had various clubs in administration, we have had Rangers in liquidation, then re-born in a new guise which strikes me as being pretty-much the old guise, but with new spivs in control. We still have too-many clubs, employing too-many inadequate players, chasing an ever-shrinking share of a stale cake.
We still have our national game administered by a self-perpetuating elite, who make the Muirfield membership look enlightened. We are going to hell in a hand-cart, so, my frield reasoned, if the failure of the third-biggest club in the land happens - and God forbid that it does, might it not make people stop and think: "Hey, isn't there another way out of this mess?"
RANGERS and Celtic do tend to treat the Mainstream Scottish Media (MSM) with disdain. You try asking for a one-to-one interview with any of the current "stars" of either club, for a Scottish media outlet, and you get very short shrift. The inner thoughts (no tittering there) of the first-team stars are only for exposure in the two clubs' respective (and respectful) in-house publications.
[By the way - can anyone tell me: Celtic View and Rangers News - which is Pravda and which is Isvestia? And, I know, that's a very old joke]
But, if they have a mass of strips or tickets to shift, they will wheel-out one of their big guns to speak to the massed media - who, instead of saying: "No thanks, sell your own tickets or strips through your own media outlets", turn-up as ordered to lob easy questions at them.
Yesterday it was Rangers' turn, with wee David Templeton rolled-out to face the press. Now his more-talented Dad, wee Henry, of blessed Somerset Park memory, was a hard guy to interview; wonderful player, but a right harum-scarum character. I wish young David no ill-will, but, hey, ah kent his faither.
David did make one interesting point, however; he revealed that he was well-aware, when moving from Hearts to Rangers, that he was kissing good-bye to full Scotland caps for the forseeable future. Indeed, he might never play for the Scotland A team, but, he wanted to play for Rangers.
This is a pull which Rangers - and Celtic - have always had for some Scottish kids. Hopefully, the two clubs always will have it, for, they, more than most clubs, need fans on the park.
The likes of big Greigy, Bomber Brown and nowadays Lee McCulloch at Rangers and Roy Aitken or Peter Grant at Celtic, were never great players, indeed, had they played elsewhere, they'd never have received the acclaim they did, but, they played for the jersey to an extent you do not seem to find elsewhere.
I think David Templeton demonstrated yesterday, that pull is still there. The two clubs have to nourish it. Rangers have a real chance to do it, if they cannot get young, Scottish, Rangers-daft youngsters through the ranks and into the first team during their current exile from the top-flight they never will. Sadly, I can see the newco management making the same mistakes made in the Murray madness - paying over the odds for non-Scottish dross.
As for Celtic; ok, the Wanyama sale seems to show their: buy young cheap foreigners then sell them on, management model working. But, they, perhaps more than Rangers, have a captive home support who will walk through fire for the club.
All those teachers and janitors in the Roman Catholic schools, whose ambition in life is to produce just one boy good enough to wear the Hoops, all those boys who have the desire to do this - if they are to find they can get so-far - the Under-17s, Under-19s, the odd outing off the bench, but, ultimately they are only good enough to be alternatives to bought-in non-Scots, who are not of the "Celtic Family", well, Celtic risk pissing-off that vital hidden army, having a "family at war" and possible disaster down the road.
SOME years ago, in support of my claim for a pay rise, I produced figures which I laid before my then editor, proving that I, as a one-man-band sports desk, produced five times the work in one week of a news reporter. I further demonstrated that, when I took my annual holidays - it took the combined efforts of seven of my colleagues to cover for me, and that within a reduced sports pagination.
I didn't get as big a rise as I thought I deserved - but, I kept-on doing the work, fool that I was, until realisation hit and I got a worth-while package to take early retirement. That paper's two-man sports department is now producing roughly three-quarters of what I produced on my own.
But hey, that's progress in the written media. Budgets are departmental numbers are being reduced, and it shows. Not that long ago, the Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times might each have a staff man at a Partick Thistle game - today, one guy will do it for all three titles, same thing across in the east for Falkirk, Dunfermline or Raith Rovers games for the three Scotsman titles.
Increasingly midweek sports coverage, the Thursday and Friday pre-match press briefings by clubs other than the Big Two, are covered by PA and the decreasing numbers of independent freelances, where once the national titles would staff them.
Then there is the fillers - those "Sports Digest" pages towards the back of the sports pages. Some days you can learn an awful lot about what is happening in sports other than football, outside Scotland, but, not a lot about what is going on in these sports inside Scotland - because, it is easier for the sports subs to pick-up agency copy as it floods in, that to engage with the enthusiasts who run these "minor sports" inside Scotland and don't sadly too-often, have the media savvy to get their sport coverage.
It's easier for the guy who runs maybe a handball team, or a basketball club, to moan that the local paper, or the Glasgow or Edinburgh-based daily or evening paper: "are only interested in football", than for he or she to establish a contact within that paper's organisation and feed them stuff.
Working in a local paper, I was once told by the guy who ran a very big boys club, with teams from Under-10 right up to Under-21 that: "You're a propoganda sheet for Club X", Club X being their big local rivals. I replied that, since Club X took the trouble to make sure that the coach of every team supplied them with at least a score and scorers from their weekend game, then passed that information on to me - I would print it.
My moaning friend sorted his club out, that was two clubs getting weekly publicity. Then a third club had a moan, same result - within a season my one page per week of local boys club match reports had become three pages per week. If wee Jimmy or Hughie from Club X scored a hat-trick, his Mum, his three Aunties and both his grannies bought the paper - up went the circulation, result, win-win all round.
So, the moral of this story for poor, hard-done-by, at-death's-door Scottish football is: instead of blaming all your problems on the media, sort yourselves out, be pro-active, tell us your good-news stories, and, maybe, just maybe - the fight-back can begin this season.
And, for the Scottish media - get your fingers out of your arses and start working, and you might still have a job in ten year's time.
Rant over.
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