OUR GLASS IS HALF FULL

SO is the glass half full or half empty?

Does having two Second Division and three First Division teams in the cup quarter-finals mean our game is a shambles at the top - or healthy all the way down?

Does the fact no-one's scared to give either of the Old Firm a good towsing any more mean standards are falling for them -or rising for everyone else?

You know what the answers are going to be before you've even asked the questions.

The glass half empty types? If their world revolves around nothing but Celtic and Rangers they'll tell you our game is knackered.

They'll tell you that because a Celtic side, who even at their peak you'd only describe as average, are running away with the league all that means is they're the pick of a rotten bunch.

Competition? It's only there because they've have been sucked back into the pack rather than caught up.

The cup? A kiddie-on event now they're not in it.

Gretna v Accies Final? Says it all. They could even play it at City Park and not have to make it all-ticket.

Well bollocks to the lot of them.

The glass half full sorts though? Count me in. I can barely remember a season I enjoyed so much.

A campaign where every game I watch I see another young player who catches the eye and fills me with a bit more hope.

Stevie Naismith at Inverness last week. Charlie Mulgrew for Dundee United the week before.

Ten minutes of Davie Templeton here, a couple of starts for Steven Fletcher there.

Our game is finally beginning to fix itself, the shoots of recovery are starting to bloom. Yet all people do is moan because the SPL only has three teams left in the cup and none of them is one of the bigot brothers.

When can you ever remember a season when you went to ANY game not having a scooby what the result is going to be?

Even when it involves the Old Firm. In fact, especially when it involves them.

Crowds are up because of it.

Oh sure, the big two's standards might not be up to what they were when spending zillions on players, chasing a pipedream.

But the fact they've both had to stop before they burst themselves, and everyone else had to stop sooner before they went bankrupt, can only be good for the game.

And in a perverse way the SPL can take credit.

If it hadn't been for their insane greed and colossal incompetence, driving almost every one of their members to the brink of administration at one point or another, none of this would ever have happened.

Clubs wouldn't have been forced into blooding kids and suddenly finding out they're the future of the game.

But just when you thought we were getting to grips with things someone wants another revolution at the top.

And the thing that amazes and disappoints me is it's coming from David Sutherland, the man at the helm of one of the most exemplary balance sheets in Scottish football, Inverness Caley Thistle's.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a change in the structure of Scottish football. Been banging on about it for years.

But not the one he's proposing - the SPL II. A second tier of the Greed-is-Good League.

Henceforth to be known as the "I'm alright Jack, pull the ladder up" Conference.

That's the thing. Why is it whenever there's a revolution proposed no-one can see the big picture. When the SPL launched in 1997 they all sat under a huge banner declaring "A Brighter Future For Scottish Football."

I don't remember a subdeck saying "... but only if you can afford to join us."

In reality all they did was plunge us into a black hole from which we're only just starting to see daylight.

And now Sutherland is encouraging them to continue with their Frankensteining of our game?

When are people going to realise that if we want to rebuild we need to go all the way.

We need ONE body in charge, ONE structure, ONE plan that encompasses the game from the grassroots right up to the international side.

It's not too much to ask. That someone has the vision instead of the man-mind-thyself mentality of the people at the top now.

And if there's one person who should understand this it's Sutherland. He's in the construction business. He must know about foundations.

Tell you what - let's ask him.

Try building a house from the top down instead of bottom up and see how long it stays standing.

Then see how many people buy your product.

Taken from the Sunday Mail