THE TRUE HEARTBEAT of Scottish Fitba is found not in the rampant whitabootery of the keyboard warriors who support what Andy Cameron called “The Dibs and The Dobs”; it's further down the food chain, below even the two baldie guys fighting over a comb which mark the Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, Edinburgh, Fife, Tayside and elsewhere senior Derbies among what Charles Young Esquire dubbed: “The Diddy Teams.”
No, that heartbeat, definitely somewhat muted these days is to be found in what remains of “Junior Fitba” - the 21st century recepticle for the tradition of Clan Wars, where neighbours meet and neighbours greet, with swear words, insults and more than occasionally sticks and stones and other weaponry.
Now dinosaurs like me, we still long for the old days of the last century, when Auchinleck Talbot and Cumnock would meet, among the cancellation of Police leave in that idyllic vale of East Ayrshire; where a meeting of the two near-neighbours would be considered “Quiet” if there had not been three or four red cards and double figures-worth of yellows, plus a wee “brek-in” (pitch invasion) in the second half.
If the campaigns at Beechwood and Townhead were the major battle grounds, things could get tasty elsewhere. I still laugh at the memory of one brek-in at Lugar Boswell Thistle's Rosebank Park, where I reckon the players used their numerical advantage to overwhelm the invading fans.
But, since they finally managed to extract the malign influence of wannabee Bond Villain Joe Black from the premises and re-located to a padded cell along Hampden's Sixth Floor Corridor of No Ideas, the Scottish Junior Football Association has lost its way.
The Juniors are now part of Tier Six of the SFA Pyramid. Talbot still talks trash unto Cumnock, and vice versa, but, now it's The West of Scotland League rather than the Ayrshire League, and they have to work alongside the Lanarkshire Mafia which used to mismanage the old Central League – it's not the same.
Sunday afternoon saw the Scottish Junior Cup Final taking place at Broadwood Stadium. There was a surprise this season, in that there was no Ayrshire club involved. Talbot are in a rebuilding phase and none of the rest could put together a run to the final. Instead, the game pitted Johnstone Burgh against Tranent – still a genuine West v East battle, which was, I am telt, a poor game, won by Burgh via the lottery of penalties, with serial villain/stout Orange blade (delete according to bias) Kyle Lafferty, netting the crucial clinching penalty.
I used to cover Burgh, when I worked in Paisley and I am delighted for their hard-core of ultra-enthusiastic committee-men and supporters, who never lost faith during long years of ups and downs for Burgh. Enjoy your spell back in the sunshine.
The whole Junior Cup Final weekend passed pretty-much un-noticed. OK, BBC Teuchter broadcast it, but did very little to sell it. I reckon the whole competition badly needs a revamp.
Here's my twopenceworth:
Why not make the Junior Cup the big competition for ALL the non-Senior clubs in Scotland, well, at least those clubs who have an enclosed ground? Bring in the Highland and Lowland League sides, along with the East of Scotland, West of Scotland and South of Scotland League clubs – get the final back to Hampden, and really make it an occasion. You never know, it might work, if the guys who run our game could only put the interests of the game before their own self-interest and lift their snouts out of the swill trough.
MEANWHILE, at the haut cuture end of The Beautiful Game, Paris St Germain rally turned on the style, in turning over Inter Milan, to win the big trophy, the European Cup for the first time.
You have to wonder what the football world has come to, when an Italian side concedes five goals in a major final. But, PSG were that good and thoroughly deserved to triumph.
FOOTBALL IS, believe it or not, a branch of the Entertainment Industry. How entertaining Scottish Football is, well, that's another debate entirely. What we did discover last week is how good our top-flight clubs are at pulling-in the punters, when each team in the top 12 revealed their average attendance over the campaign just ended.
The figures made for interesting reading, with the following results:
Celtic 58,795
Rangers 48,255
Heart of Midlothian 18,536
Aberdeen 17,735
Hibernian 17,172
Dundee United 11,066
Dundee 7,027
St Mirren 6,939
Kilmarnock 6,358
Motherwell 5,694
St Johnstone 5,680
Ross County 4,372
OK, few surprises there, but, if we look at these figures as “drawing power” - measured by the percentage of seats occupied each game, the results are a wee bit different:
Celtic 97% of capacity
Heart of Midlothian 94% of capacity
Rangers 93% of capacity
St Mirren 87% of capacity
Hibernian 84% of capacity
Aberdeen 80% of capacity
Dundee United 78% of capacity
Ross County 67% of capacity
Dundee 59% of capacity
St Johnstone 53% of capacity
Kilmarnock 42% of capacity
Motherwell 41% of capacity
Mindful, as ever of Churchill's line about: “Lies, damned lies and statistics” I would put forward the notion that given how their season ended, the Ross County regulars just might be the most-loyal fans in the country, after all, that long drag up the A9 isn't always relished by the punters from the central belt, so, to have their wee park two-thirds-full every home game speaks volumes for the faith of the locals.
Am I surprised that Kilmarnock are second-bottom? Not in the slightest. I can remember, back during that glorious half decade leading up to the title win in 1965, when Killie were Rangers' biggest rivals for the big prizes, an old friend of my Dad;s, a season ticket holder, indeed a shareholder in the club, was waiting to pick-up someone at the top end of Kilmarnock one Saturday, (this was before the A77 by-passed the town); he counted over 30 buses leaving Kilmarnock headed for Ibrox.
OK, they hadn't all originated in the town, but, it showed how big the Rangers' following was in God's County – Killie, and Motherwell, suffered more than most from the pull of the Bigot Brothers back then, and still do.
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