A Whole Different Ball Game

ON Saturday I stepped off the football treadmill and onto the rugby one, to cover one of the top matches in Premiership One of the Scottish club championship.

In terms of stature this league is Scottish Rugby's equivalent of the SPL - only an SPL without the Old Firm, who are playing in an international club league.

In terms of quality this match was probably the equivalent of an Irn-Bru First Division match, rather than an SPL encounter. Over the years I've done my share of First Division football (more than my share in fact), so it was interesting to make comparisons.

The club game is supposed to be amateur, except we all know some of the bigger clubs are paying players, particularly the "Kilted Kiwis" imported from New Zealand and Australia (there isn't a catchy term for Ozzies playing in Scotland, however); we also know that expenses to some Scottish players are generous, but the Scottish club league is NOT paying over-the-odds for mediocrities, unlike its football equivalents.

The commitment was total, the fitness levels way above anything you'll see in the SFL or even the SPL, but, it's a lot cheaper to get in. The ground facilities weren't quite up to the home team's football rival, but this was more than compensated for by among other things, the catering.

You can stick your pies and Bovril where the sun don't shine - pre-match I had a brilliant hot roast pork roll, with crackling and apple sauce, washed down by a generous cappacinno. Very nice, great value for money, but nothing compared to the roast beef lunch, washed down by a very nice Claret, the meal enhanced by stimulating conversation with the former Scotland and Lions legend lunching at the next table - and no, I wasn't in corporate hospitality - merely in the host club's club house prior to kick off.

But the big change is noticed after the match. In rugby, no hanging around outside dressing rooms or at tunnel mouths, waiting for the rival managers to deign to speak to us, their perception of the hacks from Hell. Within five minutes of the final whistle, we of the press pack were on the pitch, hearing first-hand the thoughts of the respective coaches. These were delivered with unfailing courtesy and understanding.

Later, the report for the Sunday paper filed, it was into the board room for a very pleasant chat with the committee-men from both clubs AND the referee, who was only-too-willing to explain a couple of controversial decisions.

Now, to be fair, one or two football referees will respond with civility and open-ness to requests for an explanation of how they dealt with a flash-point, but this is strictly on a "no names, no pack drill" basis - and not all are so approachable or accommodating.

If you want to speak to a player, no problem, they are all in the club bar, mingling with the members and supporters, while the majority of the fans do not head for the nearest boozer the minute the final whistle sounds - no need to the club bar is there, it's open and it's generally cheaper than the pub.

Usually, at a football match, I file on the whistle any reports which are scheduled for "on-the-whistle" sending; then it's down to get the quotes from managers and players and I am usually in the car and heading home by 5.30pm at the latest.

On Saturday, I was still enjoying the craic in the clubhouse at 6.30pm. It's a much more civilised game.

Football may be a game for gentlemen, played by hooligans and rugby a game for hooligans played by gentlemen - that description was borne out on Saturday.

Little Things Mean A Lot

THE last post herein was devoted to a run-down of how the SFA works (or doesn't). I bet not many of you knew how important the Forfarshire, Stirlingshire, West of Scotland or Southern Counties FAs were in running the national game.

These bodies may not do sweet FA, but some of the competitions they run have as much relevance to modern football as Ye all-England Jousting Tournament have to the efficiency and potency of our armed forces. I deliberately wrote all-England there, the all-Scotland Jousting Tournament is still running, it is now called the Emirates Scottish Junior Cup.

I note also that I am not the solitary cynic abounding in Scottish football, young Michael Grant in the Herald has joined me in pointing-out what a pointless exercise Henry McLeish's review will become - with nobody taking a blind bit of notice of his findings

YOU have to hand it to those lovely people at Ibrox - they don't do irony. There is Walter Smith, a manager who would rather crawl over broken glass than put-on a young player complaining that Scottish Football is letting down young players, while Martin Bain, a man who is deeply complicit in bringing some only slightly better than useless while remarkable over-priced "talent" to Ibrox, crying out for a government hand-out for the game in Scotland.

OK Government investment in Scottish sport is a joke. Millions are poured into SportScotland or whatever it's called this week - this has created an industry of sports developers, who don't develop sport, facilitators, who don't facilitate and providers who fail to provide. The last thing we want to do is make sport yet another arm of state provision in Scotland. Mind you, the second-last thing we want to do is allow a lot of the people from within sport today to continue to run it.

Just a thought you understand - it's the press's job to point these things out, you see we don't have to resolve the problems.

I note this morning that fans-owned Stirling Albion are doing away with complimentary tickets - and about time too.

(I know, this is rich coming from a journalist who gets free entry to every game through his press pass).

But, comps are a pure racket and while stopping them at a stroke may make Albion some money, it will cost them in terms of friends within the game; we don't use the term "freemasonry of football" loosely, a lot is still done via nods, winks and friendships.

Another part of the comps racket which needs overhauling is in the murky world of press box passes. Particularly where the Old Firm is concerned, you will find in any press pack, supposedly working at the game, perhaps a team (i.e. an XI) of "journalists" who are there purely as spectators.

The expansion of the internet has not helped. You now have the ever-expanding army of website operators turning up and getting press priveleges. Last season one First Division club was followed by a crew of eight embedded "journalists", writing for fanzines and websites associated with that club. Not one was a qualified or recognised journalist. These people truly were: "fans with lap tops" and football is encouraging them.

One very-well-respected freelance football writer, whose work finds favour right across the board of journalism, from "red-top" tabloid to patrician broadsheet was telling me recently, he was covering a midweek Alba Cup match for one of the red-tops; there were six "journalists" in the press box, he was the solitary, full-time, qualified, card-carrying journalist. It is very wrong.

AND finally, Anthony Stokes is off to Celtic for, depending on which paper you read, between £800,000 and £1,200,000.

Good business by Celtic - they've got him cheaply, Hibs are immediately down a few goals, while with the service he should get at Celtic, he'll score a few.

Already Rod Petrie is getting pelters for selling his top-scorer so cheaply. Might it be a case of Hibs thinking they are well-rid of a disruptive dressing room influence. Team dynamic often plays a part in such moves.

I remember, some years ago, asking Craig Brown what had possessed him to buy a particular, very ordinary player, a man of more clubs that Jack Nicklaus.

"Aye well, when you've got him - you've got one happy dressing room", was the Motherwell Mauler's response.

Similarly I remember a St Mirren dressing room which went very flat when a particular "donkey defender" left, but cheered up very quickly thereafter when another player, who felt (wrongly) he was a star because he had once been on the bench for the Rangers first team was off-loaded.

Jobs For The Boys

I am feeling a bit better after my last rant, so the pills must be working. However, that's not something which can be said about Scottish Football.

The (English) FA is even longer-established than that mob at Hampden, but at least, they acknowledge there are two games of football played in these islands. In England they have "the professional game" and "the community game".

Now there may well be as huge a gulf between Chelsea and Manchester United and whichever team is bottom of their Fourth Division as there is between the Old Firm and the bottom of the SFL's Third Division, but, at least all 92 "league" clubs in England are full-time.

If the SFA was to be split into a professional and a community game (which would be no bad thing), less than half of our "league" clubs would qualify for the entry to the "professional" game.

A "professional" club should be full-time, have if not an all-seater, certainly a clean, safe, covered stadium, proper youth development programmes and players who had a professional attitude to their job.

Even this basic and of necessity broad brush criteria for a professional club would rule out all but a minority of our so-called "league" clubs - but it will not happen. And it will not happen because of the way the SFA is set-up.

I spent a mind-boggling time today trying to make sense of the Byzantine internal politics of this body, it is chilling.

The day-to-day running of the SFA is currently, pending Stuart Regan being given out lbw at Yorkshire CCC, in the hands of George Peat and the Board of Directors, a board which sadly does not meet Tommy Docherty's criteria for the ideal board - three-strong, one dead and two dying.

The SFA "parliament" is the Council, which meets quarterly. This body is 35-strong - if you include those two living fossils, Jack McGinn and John McBeth, the last two presidents, neither of whom has any current affiliation with a club.

Only Aberdeen, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, Motherwell and St Mirren of the 12 SPL clubs are not represented on the SFA Council, while eight of the 30 SFL clubs have a man therein. But, only Rangers' Andrew Dickson, (or should that be Andrew Who?), Dundee United's Stephen Thompson and Kilmarnock's Michael Johnston are actually elected as SPL representatives.

Campbell Ogilvie is first vice president, but owes his position to his Heart of Midlothian affiliation; Celtic's Eric Riley represents the Glasgow FA (members: Celtic, Clyde, Glasgow University??, Partick Thistle, Queen's Park and Rangers); Hibs' Rod Petrie supposedly represents the 26 East of Scotland FA clubs, of whom just three, Hearts, Hibs and Berwick Rangers are "league" clubs; Steven Brown of St Johnstone represents the seven Forfarshire FA clubs and Hamilton Accies' Scott Struthers sits on behalf of the seven West of Scotland FA clubs (Albion Rovers, Ayr United, Hamilton, Kilmarnock, Motherwell, St Mirren and junior side Girvan).

It's much the same as regards the SFL clubs. Airdrie United's Jim Ballantyne, Ewen Cameron of Alloa Athletic and Lachlan Cameron of Ayr United are the three SFL reps, but East Fife's Derrick Brown, sits on behalf of the five Fife FA clubs (Cowdenbeath, Dunfermline, East Fife, Raith Rovers and Burntisland Shipyard??); SFA board member Richard Shaw of Annan Athletic sits on behalf of the 15 Southern Counties FA clubs, just three of which - his own, Queen of the South and Stranraer are "league" clubs; Falkirk's Martin Ritchie represents the six Stirlingshire FA clubs (Alloa, Dumbarton, East Stirlingshire, Falkirk, Stenhousemuir and Stirling Albion).

You have the East of Scotland League, represented by former referee Dr Andrew Waddell of Preston Athletic, Findlay Noble of Fraserburgh sitting on behalf of the Highland League clubs, while David Dowling of Clachnacuddin represents the North of Scotland FA's 13 clubs and Keith's Sandy Stables sits on behalf of the 12 Aberdeen & District FA Clubs (Aberdeen, nine Highland League clubs and two North Junior clubs) and Colin Holden the Threave Rovers chairman represents the dozen or so South of Scotland League clubs.

The Council is completed by the representatives of the affiliated associations: the Juniors, Amateurs, Scottish Welfare FA, Scottish Schools FA, Scottish Youth FA and the Scottish Women's FA, plus four "Regional Representatives", whose function they themselves would be hard-pushed to explain.

At a time when the full United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland government is considering boundary changes to level-out the playing field of constituency sizes, so each MP is representing more or less the same number of constituents, how can the SFA justify a system whereby Eric Riley represents six clubs, Rod Petrie 26 and so on; each senior club has in effect two votes - one through the SPL or SFL representatives, another via their affiliated local FA, while the SJFA and the SAFA, the two organisations which represent respectively over 150 and 1500 community clubs have just two representatives on the SFA Council?

The whole system is slewed towards keeping power in the hand of a very few and democracy at bay. It's about getting as many snouts as possible into the feeding trough and for as long as two clubs' supporters bank-roll every other Scottish "league" club, the system will not change.

By the way, the make-up of the SFA Council disproves the old theory that these two clubs effectively run Scottish football. Ignoring Jack McGinn, Celtic's Riley and Rangers' Andrew Dickson are the only Old Firm men inside the Hampden corridors of power, and with every respect to the two men concerned - within their clubs they are hardly big hitters. They are just as body of the kirk in the SFA, Dickson sitting on the professional football and general purposes committees, Riley on the appeals committee.

I finish with a story told me by a now-retired freelance football writer, who was chuffed to bits to be elected as the Scottish Football Writers Association's representative onto the SFA's international match sub-committee, his remit, to ensure that the needs of the working press were met when it came to covering Scottish internationals.

He emerged from his first sub-committee meeting to announce: "They spent more time arguing about what type of wine to serve at the post-match banquet than about arrangements for the actual game".

I think that tale sums-up Scottish football and guys with that me-first attitude will never make the necessary changes.

It's going to be a long, hard, winter.

Here's Tae Us - Wha's Like Us

WHA'S like us indeed. We Scots may be 'The Master Race' (says Alex Ferguson), 'The world's best small nation' (Jack McConnell), 'Ra Peepul' (followers of a certain Glasgow football club), 'The greatest nation God ever put breath intae' (anonymous).

Equally, we might be 'Whinging Jocks' (any one of hundreds of Daily Mail columnists/readers), 'Subsidy junkies' (any one of thousands of London media types), '90 minute patriots' (Jim Sillars) or worse.

But right now, we are a people in turmoil - and I don't just mean because of our travails on the football pitch.

These are hard times for everyone, so why should our football be any different?

But, since 22 grown men chasing a bag of win around a field is apparently such an important part of Scottish life, because our teams get horsed in Europe, we are supposed to all be in mourning, wringing our hands and wailing: "Woe, woe and thrice woe is me."

It's all part of being Scottish. The wind ae has to be in our faces. We are never happy unless we are miserable. Why this should be I don't know, it's all part and parcel of our psyche.

Maybe this, Chick Young, the Krankies, Scottish politicians (national and local), the A9 and A82 roads in summer, Gaelic mouth music, football phone-ins, Radio Clyde, West Sound, the Daily Record, the Sunday Post, George Peat and Justin and Colin are the price we have to pay (rather than having the English for neighbours) for all the goodnesses God dispensed to this charmed corner of a wee island off the coast of Europe.

Once we've sorted-out Lithuania and Leichtenstein, the strut will be back in our step, our chests will again be puffed out, we will be on the way back, well as far as Rangers' first Champions League disaster, Spain deciding to stop tika-takiing about and actually scoring goals against us and then the whole sorry cycle will begin again.

'Twas ever thus. The Wembley Wizards were a knee-jerk reaction to being beaten by Wales and Ireland. We gubbed World Champions England in 1967; next time out we lost at home to the USSR, then George Best beat us on his own in Belfast and from a position of strength, we failed to qualify for the 1968 European Championship finals.

But what is annoying about our present position is - I can see we're shite. Ninety-nine out of 100 callers to the various phone-ins can see; the same proportion of posters on on-line forums can see - Henry bloody McLeish can see, we've got huge problems in football.

The only people who apparently cannot see this are the guys who can actually do something about it - the buffoons in the SFA blazers at Hampden.

And that makes my blood boil. This self-elected, self-perpetuating bunch of no-brains, no-hope, no-idea no-vision wasters are so busy looking after themselves, they make Nero, fiddling while Rome burned, appear competent.

Can somebody please sort them out.

Rant over.

An Forward Tho We Canna See We Guess and Fear

That's me, making the time-honoured reaction of a Scottish journalist in times of crisis, fire-in a quote from Burns. But, when you look at Scottish football in Europe, maybe the Allan McShagger of the late 18th century had a point.

We might be, looked at from that sophisticated hot-spot of the West End of London be a small, far-awy country, of which we know little, but from elsewhere in European football, we are all that and more. After another depressing night of European defeat, we are now, more than ever, down among the bottom feeders of the beautiful game on this continent.

When I first picked up a telephone and asked to be put through to copy - decades before the lap top became a basic tool of the journalism game - we looked patronisingly down on Scandinavian football; if Rangers were taken to a third game by Sparta Rotterdam, it was because of a poor display by Rangers, not because the Dutch were just as good.

Ditto, when Scotland lost to the Dutch, or the Swedes, the Portugese, the Turks, the Norwegians, the Southern Irish, the Swiss or the Belgians - bad day at the office, selectorial incompetence, tiredness after a long season were the reasons - not because, basically we were gash.

It's not as if this week's upsets were a shock, we've been having bad nights and bad weeks in Europe for at least a decade and nothing is ever done about it.

Our game lang syne went to the dogs - will somebody please make this fact known to the SFA and get something done about it.

I listened to the second half of the Celtic game and the final minutes of the Motherwell match on the radio on Thursday night. It was like hearing a loop tape, the same old excuses, well-rehearsed wailing, but there again, any programme such as Sportsound, which attempts to portray Chick Young as a serious journalist, is doing its listeners a dis-service.

Question: Why does BBC Scotland insist on sending Murdo MacLeod to cover Celtic matches - is it mandatory that they have an apologist reading from the club's authorised version at every game?

I think I'll stick to Scottish rugby - they might not be any good, but they're trying and have no false vision about our place in that game's firmament.

Sic A Parcel O Rogues

ROBERT Burns's opinion on the Scottish signatories to the Act of Union of 1707 has come to define our view of our national leaders. Between that and: "Him - a kent his faither", I'm sometimes surprised anyone take on a position of power and authority in Scotland. Then, you chat to your local Labour councillor and you realise, Scotland is a lunatic asylum which the inmates took over long ago.

For many of us and you can count me in on this, the biggest loonie bin is the Executive Corridor at Hampden. Here, just yards apart, the high-heid-yins of the various septs of Clan Caledonia sit behind their drawbridges, each doing his or her level best to ensure that his wee but an ben is THE most important fiefdom in the national game.

Here in Ayrshire we have a proud tradition of electing the village idiot onto the local junior team's committee, just onto the committee of course - we're not that daft (except in Cumnock) as to give the VI even a touch of power.

But, up at Hampden - they make him president.

Across in Edinburgh, at the SRU, they do things differently. Now let me say, the SRU have their mad moments, but, to climb the slippery pole to the good jobs at Murrayfield - you HAVE to have a knowledge of rugby, a feeling for the game and some intelligence. These are not attributes we can pin on everyone at Hampden.

Just this week Andy Irvine was appointed Chairman of the Magner's League, he is also Chairman of the British and Irish Lions. The current SRU president is Ian "Beastie" McLauchlan (forget the Mighty Mouse, to those of us who suffered pain at his hands, he will always be Beastie) - another of the legends of Scottish rugby as captain and British Lion.

When Irvine and McLauchlan speak, the world listens. When George Peat speaks, does anyone notice.

Of course, rugby, in spite of professionalism and the money washing around it, is still basically a game for the players - football hasn't been able to say that for generations.

We might have laughed at the likes of Burnley's Bob Lord or wee Willie Harkness of Queen of the South. Sure, these guys made mistakes, but, they cared about their local teams and the game of football.

Increasingly these days, the guys running the game (and by this I mean the people with real power, the owners and directors, not the managers, who are mere pawns) see footbal only as an investment opportunity or a club as a billionaire's play thing.

And that's why the game is in a mess.

He Aint Heavy - Just Toned

THREE of my grand-children are in their teens; all three are into sport in a big way. The one who runs and the one who plays rugby are both through their club being introduced to weight training and gym work - just light weights at the moment, but they are working out.

The rugby player, given he is already over six feet tall and is just 13, has a real chance of going somewhere in his sport, so it makes sense for him to start developing. The runner is a sprinter, so needs to build-up explosive force.

The footballer - naw, nae gym work and fact just a little above the bare minimum of technical work goes into his training.

Neither I nor their parents are pushy, determined they will be top-flight participants, so long as they enjoy their sport and have fun, we'll be happy.

But, and there should not be a but, why is it football has never bought into strength and conditioning work? Yes, more than rugby and athletics there is a technical element to football, but, the fitter you are, the stronger your body is, the better your conditioning, the better-equipped you are to fulfill the technical part of the game.

Peter Crouch is six foot seven, England has a couple of six foot six/seven rugby players in their national team - a photograph of Crouch, stripped to the waist, alongside his rugby compatriot of the same height would be interesting, since the rugby player would be better-muscled and have more stamina; he'd be more explosive and better able to ride the hard knocks.

Football just doesn't DO gym work. A decade or so ago I covered an SPL club which at that time had what few Scottish clubs had - unfettered access to a well-equipped gym. There then manager also had a back-ground in sports physiology. He decided his players would work out regularly, would become better-conditioned, more like athletes.

He devised gym sessions, he insisted the players participated. The foreign players worked-out religiously, as did, to be fair, three or four of the younger Scottish players, but, since the players' sessions over-lapped with public sessions which saw several young ladies working-out in the gym, the majority of the players simply went in their and posed and chatted-up the women.

Only one of the Scots who worked assidiously is still playing in the SPL.

I ribbed one of the players, a Scotland Under-21 cap: "Is that all you're lifting", as I watched him doing some bench presses.

"I'd like to see you do better", was his response. He was doing sets of eight presses with 100kg - I (at least 25 years older), removed my jacket and did three sets of ten with the same weight. He was gob-smacked.

I hadn't the heart to tell him my rugby team had been working with weights before he was born.

Yes, we have technical deficiencies in Scottish football, but we also have strength and conditioning issues, which we need to address. After all, is 72-year-old Willie Wood, with all his skills and experience, can submit himself to conditioning work in preparation for the Commonwealth Games - what excuse is there for our top footballers to be allowed to report for training at 10am and be finished for the day by noon?

What Bobby Robson called: "Time on the grass" (ball work) is important, but so too in today's game, is time in the gym.