Good Luck Gary - You're Gonna Need it

HOPEFULLY, today's announcement of Gary Locke's "permanent" appointment as Kilmarnock manager will be the start of better times for him. After all, Gary has had more than his fair share of adversity in recent years.

Injury blighted the final years of his playing career; in his early time as a player-coach at Kilmarnock, a promising start foundered when Jim Jefferies and Billy Brown, his mentors, left the club.

He inherited the Hearts management at a bad time; survived a torrid start, but, finished his second spell at Tynecastle on a high, as he got his doomed team playing some very good football.

Gary's reward was the boot. Yes, he was unlucky at Hearts, but, plucked from the dole queue by former team mate Allan Johnson, he succeeded "Magic" as Killie manager, and now, after a good start, he has had his appointment as Killie boss confirmed.

I wish him well. The timing is good; 50-years on from that legendary day when Killie beat Hearts 2-0, the only result which mattered, at Tynecastle, to lift the Scottish League Championship for the only time - might another Killie boss, albeit with a distinct Hearts' pedigree, go on to become as successful for the club, as Willie Waddell was half a century ago.

I have, most-certainly, a vested interest in seeing a successful Kilmarnock team competing at the very top in Scotland and doing well in Europe, just as the club did in the Waddell days.

The club, perhaps more than most of the second level clubs in Scotland, has suffered over the years from low-grade management, in the board room and, sadly, also in the technical area.

A period of consolidation would be no bad thing.

I would also hope Locke could find a way of tapping-into the local talent pool.

I SEE there is some paper talk about the Scottish football season moving. Count me in. Unfortunately, such are the vagaries of the Scottish climate, we cannot, in all honesty, go for a winter shut-down.

I can just see it, Scottish football closes down for the winter, and during the shut-down we have half-decent winter weather. We resume playing and get snowed under for weeks, or half the pitches are washed away.

This might, of course, also happen during the summer. After all, where else in the world can you get all four seasons in an afternoon, but, in better weather, on better pitches, we might re-discover the traditional Scottish football skills.

Also, if we were playing at a different time from the all-pervading English game, we just might be able to negotiate a better TV deal. Mind you, for that to happen, we would need to appoint better administrators and negotiators than we currently have.

SO, the Rangers Tribute Act has been de-listed from the AIM stock exchange. I can only repeat what I have been writing for months - the travails around Ibrox will ensure a few lawyers, from Glasgow and beyond, will not have to worry about their offsprings' school fees for a good few years.