The lion Sleeps tonight; The future of the Scottish Football League

IT'S bucket and spade time in Scottish football, but as the SPL's finest construct their sandcastles in Florida, Portugal and Spain, the incoming tide is also about to wash over the base on which the domestic game was founded.

Compared with debate over the shade of Lorenzo Amoruso's tan, the political campaign currently being waged by the seven Division One clubs who intend to break away from the Scottish Football League may seem to many a trifle peely-wally. It was ever thus in the trivial pursuit of the round ball game, but long after the maverick Italian has transferred himself and his enviable bank balance elsewhere, Scotland will have to come to terms with what it expects to get out of its football.

Almost 111 years ago, on March 20, 1890, the SFL was formed by men in bowler hats at a meeting in Glasgow's now defunct Holton's Hotel. Of the 10 clubs involved only one, Dumbarton, is still an SFL member.

Four more - Celtic, Hearts, Rangers and St Mirren - are in the 12- club Scottish Premier League, but the announcers who give us the classified football results at 5pm of a Saturday no longer call out the names of Abercorn, Cambuslang, Cowlairs, Third Lanark and Vale of Leven.

Even five years ago, the Scottish Football League was a major force in the land. Perched discreetly on a corner of Blythswood Square and West Regent Street, just off Glasgow's city centre, the league vied for power and influence with the much more high-profile Scottish Football Association.

While the house on the hill took the shrapnel, the men at 188 West Regent Street continued on their pencil-sharpening way, running what was effectively a monopolistic cartel from which none of the 38 members could ever be removed, no matter how mediocre.

Ambitious teams from the Highlands and the Borders discovered there was no prospect of joining the cosy little set-up, as illustrated by the disgraceful decision in 1974 to admit an Edinburgh works team, Ferranti Thistle, at the expense of the then successful Inverness Thistle.

All that abruptly changed when the SPL got under way in August, 1998. Thoroughly sick of the interminable layers of bureaucracy, the top 10 broke off to form an organisation more tailored to their needs.

At a stroke, the Scottish Football League was neutered. It continues, with a sizeable staff, to run Divisions One, Two and Three, and also the CIS League Cup and Bell's Challenge Cup, but now comes a significant threat to its very existence. Scottish football hates change. It takes a great deal to stir the people who run our game into action, so inured are they to hiding behind committees where no leadership qualities are ever required.

Even at this stage, with seven clubs - Airdrie, Clyde, Falkirk, Inverness Caley Thistle, Livingston, Raith Rovers, and Ross County - having declared their intention to leave the Scottish Football League come hell or high water, the reaction is either of patronising amusement, or, where self-interest is involved, snorts of derision.

One former administrator, who rather predictably did not want to be named, dismissed the proposed new set-up as the "Willie Bloggs League". He went on to suggest that the breakaway would never happen, citing the loss of sponsorship money from the League's main sponsors, Bell's and CIS, as well as forfeiture of the #46,000 which all 30 SFL clubs receive annually from the compensation deal struck with the SPL.

In total, the Division One clubs receive roughly #100,000 from SFL sources - a figure they can hardly afford to forego when, on average, they are losing around #250,000 a year.

Presumably, though, people like Dominic Keane at Livingston and Roy McGregor at Ross County, both running progressive football clubs which make a huge contribution to their respective communities, have crunched together the figures and come to the conclusion that there is a healthier financial future in an SPL2.

There is, it has to be admitted, an element of a hungry pack of dogs scrapping over an increasingly gnawed-at bone about this whole affair. Losses of #250,000 per annum are tiny compared with those being sustained in the SPL where, outside the crazy and autonomous world of the Old Firm, clubs such as Aber-deen, Hearts and Motherwell are posting deficits of around #3m.

It is because of these heavily-in-the-red balance sheets that defenders of the status quo smugly point out there is no way the Kilmarnocks and St Johnstones will want to see their cake divided into "another 10 thin slices" by embracing the Division One want- aways and forming SPL2.

While there is evident truth in this view, there is equally a second school of thought within the SPL which believes that from a cultural, if not financial, sense it would be prudent to take aboard a second tier and thus ensure, for the time being at least, that there are 20 full-time professional clubs operating in Scotland. The alternative is the current 12, because full-time football in Division One cannot be continued for much longer.

It's a close one to call, but a cautious early estimate is that the SPL will vote in favour of taking on a second tier, thus giving the breakaway seven the lifeline they crave. The current top flight would revert back to 10 clubs, leaving an SPL2 of nine teams, the final place to be fought for by the likes of Partick Thistle, Ayr United and Morton (if they survive).

If this scenario comes to pass, it is hard to see what role would remain for the Scottish Football League, even if they are soon to cut their costs by moving out of West Regent Street and into office accom- modation at Hampden. The very move makes some tie-up with the SFA more likely, even if those at the latter organisation bristle at the very thought that they should dirty their hands running football leagues.

Don't hold your breath, but at long last there is some prospect of a pyramid system in Scottish football. Last Monday it was announced that Alan McRae, the president of Highland League club Cove Rangers, is to chair a task force to look into the issue; his five co-members will be named this week.

Task forces in Scottish football have traditionally been a means of staving off change for as long as is feasible, but despite the size of his job, and the number of different amateur, junior and professional organisations he will have to consult, McRae has pledged to report back to the SFA by the end of the season.

There is a certain synergy about the current developments, because the way ahead, according to some, is to have a core of 20 full-time clubs with, underneath, a number of regional feeder leagues to ensure there would always be a route open for an ambitious junior or senior club to make its way upwards.

Given the controversy over Ferranti Thistle's selection for the SFL in 1974, it is an irony that they have metamorphosised into Living-ston, currently the 13th-best performing club in the country. Yet, it is precisely such developments that the Scottish Football League stifled in the days when grounds throughout the land were bulging to the seams with customers.

Now, of course, with its power base shattered, the SFL is inclined to take in teams from hitherto unspeakable places such as Dingwall, Inverness, Elgin and Peterhead. Surprise, surprise, it doesn't take more than a couple of seasons for these clubs to escape out of Divisions Three and Two, whose members had previously voted to keep them at bay. Now, in its impotency, there is every indication that the SFL will accept the principle of a pyramid system.

Perhaps, then, there will still be a function for the Scottish Football League, but it will be in administering the country's part- time community clubs.

It's all a far cry from the heady days of the 1890s when, three years after the original 10 clubs contested the First Division, there was a clamour from others to join and a Second Division was formed comprising of Dundee, Hibs, Morton, Motherwell, Northern, Partick Thistle, Port Glasgow Athletic, St Bernards and Thistle.

Two SFL clubs in the Greenock area? Now there is barely enough interest to sustain one, with Morton currently in administration.

Despite the vast pots of money at the top of the European game, the unpalatable fact is that football crowds across the Continent are diminishing. When the SFL was formed in 1890 workers used to pour out of the factory gates on Saturday lunchtime and head for their favourite football grounds for much-needed relief from the weekly grind. Nowadays going to a football match, even when you can find one still being played on a Saturday afternoon, is far from the forefront of most people's minds.

Survival is now top of the agenda for most of Scotland's clubs, and it is precisely to somehow try and sustain full-time football that the Livingstons, Clydes and Falkirks want to join the SPL.

They may be deluding themselves, or only delaying what some would regard as the inevitable, but their efforts should be supported rather than derided, because it is only when we wake up one Saturday morning and discover they no longer exist that we will be aware of what we're missing.

Copyright 2001
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