We've Gone Downhill Further And Faster Than Yon Jamaican Bobsleigh Team

AS I HAVE written before, the first football match I can recall being even remotely interested in was the 1953 FA Cup Final – 'The Stanley Matthews Cup Final', which was broadcast live on the still new and exciting medium of BBC Scotland television.

My first visit to Hampden was for the 1956 Scottish Junior Cup Final, in which my heroes of Lugar Boswell Thistle lost 4-1 to Petershill – who haven't won the thing since, such has been the power of the curse I laid on them!!.

Scotland v England in 1958 – 4-0 to England and Bobby Charlton's debut goal was my first Home International; while both my first Scottish Cup Final and my first Old Firm game – two different matches I should stress, came in 1962.

So, I've been going to football for a long time. I feel, however, if I could borrow a time machine and nip back to tell my younger self, watching any of the above-mentioned games: “By the way, when you are a 70-year-old pensioner, Scotland will be the worst international team in the British Isles;” the younger me would have laughed.

What! Scotland, the nation of Hughie Gallacher, Alex James and Alan Morton; of the Famous Five, Geordie Young and Bobby Evans; of Crerand, McNeill and Baxter, of Law and Dalglish – inferior to our Celtic cousins, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Wales, and considered an irrelevance by the English, who now saw Germany, Italy, Argentina and Brazil as their main rivals rather than Scotland. Awa and bile yer heid – yer takin' the Jackie Baillie.

But, sadly, with the announcement today of the groupings for the Europa Nations Leagues, to be introduced a year from now, that is where we are.

Long gone are the days when the SFA would use the annual meetings with the Irish and Welsh to gift a Scotland cap to worthy club men; when we could send our first team to London to play England, confident of victory, and a totally different side to Wrexham to play Wales two days later.

Not even the fact, after England and Scotland decided, 30-plus years ago, that it was no longer worth their while playing Northern Ireland and Wales annually and pulled the plug on the Home Internationals, the Irish went and won the final running of the thing could dent our feeling of superiority.

And, when less than a decade later, England decided, no, there was nothing to be gained from entertaining the “Sweaties”, we took umbrage, rather than saying: “If our best friends no longer want to know us, maybe we need to and should try to change.”

No, the SFA daunered-on, oblivious to the decline, and, as in the 21^st century, one failed qualifying attempt became five, then on Sunday became ten failures in a row, they still figuratively fiddled, while Hampden figuratively burned.

What will it take, how low must we fall, what calamities must befall us, before the bubble of complacency and mediocrity around Hampden Park is burst, and we waken-up to reality – Scotland, the nation which invented intentional football and gave the game form – is now a note in the margins of the game's history.

The Titanic only hit one iceberg, the SS SFA has hit several, plus some bloody big rocks – how will the suits on Hampden's sixth floor re-arrange the deck-chairs this time I wonder:

• Will Captain Strachan be invited to walk the plank, or encouraged to try a new tack?
• Perhaps the embattled suits hope it will, as in the past, all blow over and they can carry-on as before.

The noise and the fury will continue for a few days, then the stenographers of the Scottish Football Writers Association will get bored, and, hopefully, Brendan or Pedro give them something else to concentrate on, and the national side can be put back in its box until the Europa Nations League draw in January.

At the moment, the manager is in the eye of the storm. The SFA Board has a meeting tomorrow, at which his position will be discussed, since his contract apparently expires next month.

My cynical side sees the following scenario: WGS is thanked for his efforts but his contract, and those of his support staff are not renewed. This will save the SFA a whack of cash, since we don't have any meaningful matches scheduled between now and the start of the Europa Nations League in September next year.

The time between November and the start of next season is spent searching for another patsy – sorry, a new National Team Manager – then, we carry-on as before. This would suit the stenographers, who could have weeks and months of fun coming up with potential successors to WGS, speculating wildly and ignoring the fact, as the SFA is currently organised and run – no half-decent manager would want the job, and, whoever gets it is unlikely to have any more success than those who went before.

The fact is, the SFA is a flawed organisation; it is run by the clubs, who see the club game as being more-important than the international game. Within these clubs, some see themselves as more-important than others, while two clubs in particular see themselves as being bigger than all the rest, and bigger than the national side. Until we sort this out, and make the Scotland team the most-important one, we will get nowhere.

But, how we consign these years of entitlement to the dustbin of history – well, there's the rub. But, sort the SFA out we must, before our decline and fall becomes terminal and irreversible.