Scots patient is in need of surgery

MORE than 30 years ago in these columns John Rafferty wrote that Scottish football was a declining industry. He said there was dull and uninspiring direction from the top, sales resistance from the public and mounting costs which could not be met from income.

In an article which might have been plucked from yesterday’s headlines but appeared in the summer of 1971, Rafferty went on to argue that Scottish football’s sickness was like alcoholism. It could not be remedied until first the disease was admitted.

Well, here we are in the brave new world of the 21st century and how much has changed? The complacency which concerned The Scotsman’s late football correspondent is as widespread today as it was in the Seventies. Much else may have changed in our lives but the root of Scottish football’s problem is the same as it ever was. Namely, how to improve the lot of a group of clubs whose idea of their own importance is justified neither by results on the field nor performance at the box office.

While no-one expected the formation of the Scottish Premier League to be a panacea for all the domestic game’s ills, the continuing failure of the elite to confront core issues since re-organisation has raised serious doubts about the sport’s ability to sort out its problems. Setting up the SPL in 1998 was meant to be the start of something. Today, it looks more like a dead end.

When the SPL broke away from the Scottish Football League, it was fashionable to believe the creation of an elite would be inherently better for the game’s health and prosperity than an egalitarian organisation which had been around for a 100 years or more.

Sometimes building a new home turns out be a waste of space. Nancy Banks-Smith, the TV critic, once observed that if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending your left leg, it’s modern architecture. Right now there are a lot of people in the SPL with their foot on the lavatory door.

Like Rafferty, the late Chris Anderson of Aberdeen, one of the more visionary legislators, understood how the health of Scottish football was closely linked to the well being of the city clubs in Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen.

While the Old Firm could look after themselves and the minnows in the lower leagues would always find their own level, there had to be strong teams at Tynecastle, Easter Road, Dens Park, Tannadice and Pittodrie for the game to thrive.

If the SPL was formed with any specific function in mind, it was surely to provide an environment in which Hibs, Dundee, Hearts, Aberdeen, Dundee United and the rest would grow stronger and push Rangers and Celtic closer than in the Nineties. Yet all the evidence of the past week suggests the opposite has taken place. While the swots and the dunces are in good heart, the rest of football’s class of 2002 is in serious trouble.

Although the Old Firm now carry levels of debt which make a banana republic look as prudent as the Bank of England, the enduring ability of Rangers and Celtic to excite, enthral and irritate in almost equal measure was never better illustrated than in Tuesday evening’s absorbing CIS Insurance Cup semi-final.

Broadcast live on terrestrial TV, this was a two-hour epic which gripped the armchair viewer from first to last. Here was passionate, unrelenting action which placed the Old Firm on the same level as Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and the rest of the English game’s aristocracy when it came to delivering compulsive entertainment.

At the other end of the scale, the week’s best storylines were the fairy tale successes of Ayr United and Partick Thistle. Ayr defeated Hibs at Hampden and for the first time in the club’s 92-year history will take part in a major final. On the same evening at Dens Park, Partick reached the quarter-finals of the Tennent’s Scottish Cup by defeating Dundee in a fourth round replay.

This reporter was at Dundee where Thistle roared through to the last eight. Watching the First Division leaders is like travelling back in time. Amazingly, you can pronounce the names of all the players, who are that endangered species in Scottish football, Scots.

Numbered from 1 to 11 - another eccentricity - this ebullient team, superbly organised by veteran manager John Lambie, were more than a match for the cosmopolitan collection of players recruited by Ivano Bonetti in every outpost of the game from China to Argentina.

There was no question the SPL side had the edge in individual skill, but when it came to enthusiasm, Thistle were streets ahead. It’s one of the unexplained paradoxes of the SPL that the more some players earn, the less value for money they give.

At Hampden, by all accounts, Hibs were just as listless against Ayr. Franck Sauzee, their manager, was so appalled by the lack of pride in performance he described his side as "a ghost team". The problem for the SPL is there are haunted houses all around the country. Dundee, remember, were not the only fourth round victims: Hearts were beaten at home by Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Dunfermline went out at Ayr.

They say God is in the details but anyone who perused the small print of the results page on Monday would surely have found their faith in the SPL undermined.

Outwith the two matches involving the Old Firm, St Johnstone v Aberdeen attracted a crowd of 4,305, Motherwell v Livingston was watched by 4,458, Dunfermline v Hearts by 5,527 and Dundee United v Kilmarnock by 5,774. Meantime, Partick v Airdrie in the First Divison drew 6,253 to Firhill.

What conclusions can be drawn from these alarming figures? Dominic Keane, the shrewd chairman of Livingston, is concerned prices in the SPL are too high and customers who pay at the gate are deterred by the kind of packed programme which followed the Christmas and New Year holiday.

It’s a fair point though not, in my view, the only reason why interest in the SPL has tailed off. What’s really wrong with the top 12 is that the quality of football outwith the Old Firm is not high enough.

No-one wants to be a Jeremiah, but the notion existing satellite customers of Sky in Scotland would pull the plug on coverage of the Premiership to watch the SPL’s TV station beggars belief.

A player of my acquaintance confided recently he couldn’t remember a season when the standard in Scotland was lower. As last weekend’s figures confirmed, unappealing matches attract small crowds.

The way ahead lies in lowering prices, playing a more attractive brand of attacking football and re-establishing the connection between club and community by rearing more young Scots.

Stephane Adam, a Frenchman who has spent five years with Hearts, thinks there are too many foreigners here for the good of Scottish football and advocates taking a leaf out of France’s book by building youth academies and investing in tomorrow. Rafferty also concluded the old ways won’t do. But he cautioned the new ones need not be revolutionary.

Taken from the Scotsman