I MORE-OR-LESS stopped blogging on football during 2020 – it seemed so pointless given the bigger and more-immediate problem of the Covid-19 pandemic. Also, while the game virtually shut-down during the worst of the epidemic, I always sensed given the history of Scottish Football, the high heid yins along Hampden's sixth-floor corridor would, like my old mate Chris Iwelumo against Norway, somehow contrive to miss the open goal Covid handed them.
My hope for 2021 therefore, is that, eventually, better late than never, common sense will prevail and – while it will take some time to implement the changes – we finally see the changes which will make Scottish football fit for purpose in the 21st century.
Because, we simply cannot go on as we are and have been for years – disappointing the best fans in the world through repeated failure to qualify for the big shows: the European Championships and World Cup Finals.
There was great celebration when we secured our place at next summer's Euros – only our third successful campaign out of 14 – a thumping 21% success rate in qualifying.
Of course, if you overlook the fact we have not qualified for the Big Show – The World Cup finals, since 1998 – our qualifying rate there – 9 successful campaigns out of 18 – a thumping 50% - is wonderful.
Overall in fact, we have qualified from 12 of 32 campaigns – a not-so-golden
37.5% success rate.
In the 20th century, we made 13 attempts to qualify for the World Cup Finals – succeeding 9 times – for a 69% success rate. This was glorious stuff, when compared to our 2 successes from 9 campaigns – a 22% success rate.
However, those heady days of last century are in the distant pass. In the new millennium, we have had 0 success in 5 World Cup qualifying campaigns, and 1 success in 5 European Championship qualifying campaigns – a 20% success rate, which transfers to an overall 10% success rate.
It might well be, given our relatively-small population and the fact we are merely a possession of Greater England, that in football, Scotland is punching above its weight. But, I would say, in my lifetime, we have slipped considerably from where we were.
However, the sad reality is, when it comes to Scottish football – the international team doesn't matter, it's all about local rivalries and bragging rights, and I don't see that state of affairs ending any time soon. I am not confident about what 2021 will bring.
Random Musings
I SUPPOSE, since it has taken the English government over half a century to give Ron Flowers and Jimmy Greaves their MBEs being part of England's 1966 World Cup-winning team (funny that, I didn't know they'd ever won it – they never mention that success); I suppose David Marshall, (pictured below) could well be deid before he gets recognised for that penalty save, and what it means to Scotland.
At least, the Tartan Army will never forget it – a genuine highlight of a shitty year.
SCOTTISH RUGBY is at the moment in the midst of something of a signing storm – because the nation's two full-time professional teams – Edinburgh Rugby and Glasgow Warriors have got into the habit of hiring non-Scots, and in many cases, South Africans, to fill vacancies in their squad, while young Scots are reduced to if not by-stander status, to holding tackle bags in training.
Of course, Edinburgh and Glasgow are wholly-owned by the SRU, so hiring non-Scots cuts right across their duty of care as the governing body, supposed to encourage and grow the oval ball game.
Our leading football teams do not have that obligation on them, but, it still nags at me, that they seem keener on signing cheap non-Scots, rather than encouraging our own home-grown talent.
I'd like to see the SFA taking a leaf out of England's Rugby Football Union (RFU) and insist each match-day squad was 70% Scotland-qualified. This would, in effect, be a return to the Three Foreigners Rule.
I would vote for that – but, I can think of at least two clubs who would be dead against it.
SPEAKING of whom. Since I refuse to contribute to Uncle Rupert getting ever-richer and accruing riches to squander on the Texas Trollope, I had to listen to the BBC Shortbread broadcast of yesterday's big game.
The highlights – the 50th anniversary tribute to the 66 who died in the Ibrox Disaster of 1970, for once the guys at Pacific Quay got something right; and, Mickey Stewart's analysis. Actually, Mickey, Wee Doddsie and Packy Bonner are, individually and collectively are a good team of talking heads, whose experience and expertise adds to the coverage package.
Listening to the first half, which was pretty-much a game of shootie-in for the Celtic team, I got to half time convinced – Rangers will win this. Long experience of covering football has taught me, when you have all the pressure and cannot convert opportunities into goals, it is going to come back and bite your bum at some point.
The red card definitely swung matters Rangers' way and after that, it was only a matter of time before Celtic's ever-fragile rear guard gave them the chance to score the winner.
Celtic now need a few favours, if they are to achieve their ten-in-a-row goal. Even if they win their three games-in-hand, they will still trail Rangers by ten points, with only two meetings with their bitterest rivals to come. Say they win them too, they will still be four points adrift – so they need some favours from the other clubs if they are to win the league.
Thus far in the season, Rangers have accrued 2.8 points per game, while Celtic have been chalking-up 2.3 points per game. That's half a point per game of a difference. For Celtic to prevail in the title race, this position over the first half of the season would need to be turned on its head over the remainder of the campaign.
Rangers pretty much collapsed between the winter shut-down at the end of December last season and the curtailed end of the season – I cannot see this season's Rangers outfit falling apart as they did last season. But, with Scottish fitba, you never know – and that has to be the hope driving-on the Celtic Family.
SOME OF my fellow Kilmarnock fans are none-too-happy with the Assistant Referee who indicated goalkeeper Danny Rogers had carried the ball into his own net to give St Mirren a late equaliser yesterday.
It was one of those incidents which goal-line technology or VAR would have sorted-out, but, the powers-that-be in Scottish fitba, from their redoubts on Edmiston Drive and London Road will freely donate a kidney sooner than allow technology which might eliminate “honest refereeing mistakes” from the Scottish game – so, we supporters of the diddy teams will have to suck-up incidents such as yesterday's and get on with things.
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