Andy’s Sting In The Tale (04/04/25) “League Deconstruction and Asking the Audience”

 

Another week has flown in and I’m already 64 days post my German stem cells infusion.
‘Blue-masked Covid style purdah’ is my new normal but the clock to a more normal ‘normality’ is ticking and already my daily cocktail of coloured pills, mostly toxic and scarily expensive, is being wound down.
The NHS is such a precious institution and so poorly run.

Anyway the light nights are back and they always herald the business end of the season, starting with a big, big game at Govan on Thursday.
If the new Rangers coaching team delivers then who knows what happens next.
I wish Barry and his team well and hope the Spaniards get a full Ibrox welcome with none of the dark side that strict liability seems to curb.

It was nearly 10 years ago that Paul Goodwin and Simon Barrow concluded that Scottish Football Fans should have an independent voice.
Ex-First Minister Henry McLeish agreed so much he joined the SFSA board and since then we have become a positive and growing element in reflecting your views as the fan community.
It’s simple really.
We ask you what you the fans think and fight your corner.
You’ll read below what we all think collectively of league reconstruction.Paul and Simon are unsung Scottish Football Heroes and one day football will thank them for helping reset the balance.

Andy’s Sting in the Tale

1. League Deconstruction Back On the Agenda
2. World Cup Heading North of the Wall
3. News and Views from Belgrade and “Bring Russia Back”
4. Barneying on the Banks o’ the Dee
5. It’s Looking Like the Wee Rangers v Kilby

1. Time to Ask the Audience?

We all heard this week that there is an SPFL construct called ‘The Competitions Working Group’ who are actively looking at the size of our top SPFL league.
I can’t tell you who is on the group because I’m not, and it doesn’t say on the SPFL web site who is.
The SPFL should tell us because these guys are important and stuff like this should be in the public domain and the group should also solicit and welcome input.
I’ve been told that the key driver was to reduce the number of games for our top two clubs who want a 10 team league.
I also know, whatever happens, that 4 Celtic vs Rangers competitive league fixtures per annum have to be baked into any revised structure.
Why?
TV money.All 4 Glasgow derbies deliver an audience and payments other fixtures simply can’t and don’t.
Fair enough, it’s a commercial world but I hope broad fans views are solicited and listened to.If I was on the ‘Competitions Working Group’ my instinct would be to start with that one hard commercial ‘4 game’ requirement then add in any other nearly essential parameters. The skill is then baking them all into compatible working solutions.
It’s not rocket science.

In real-world terms the options will be an SPFL* top league of somewhere between 10, and 20 clubs

Maybe it’s the time to ask if we could have a 20 team league* if we were part of a bigger initiative that maybe included Ireland and the Scandi countries too?

Yes that might raise Uefa issues that seem insurmountable today but Uefa is a member’s organisation and is there to do what is best for its members.
Maybe we need to get better at lobbying?

I’d then take the workable options from the Competitions Working Group and Chris Tarrant style, ‘Ask the Audience’.
Why?
Because fans together see the bigger picture whereas chairmen live in a self-interest bubble.

I’d then present the broad views and preferences of the broad church of Scottish Football and its fans to the club chairmen.
This might help negate the quite understandable ‘What does this mean for me financially”? protections that have previously dominated any strategic voting in our wee back yard.

And we should be thinking big.
If we’re going to change the top league it should be in conjunction with a full top-down and bottom-up review of the whole pyramid including the feeder leagues.
Regionality should be part of the solution.

Good luck guys.

It’s easy to cynically say “nothing will change” but maybe there is genuine leadership round the table this time who look beyond their own back yard.

We the SFSA and our 80,000 members will do anything we can to help because it really is in all of our interests.

As a start, to the Competitions Working Group, here are some recent fan answers/views to 7 Scottish Football league related questions.

Are you happy with the current structure of 12, 10, 10 and 10?
Yes 17%
No 76%
Unsure 7%

Do you approve of 4 times a season fixtures?
Yes 17%
No 78%
Unsure 5%

Are you in favour of larger Leagues?

Yes 84%
Mo 10%
Unsure 6%

Would you prefer a ‘Franchise’ system in our top league, i.e. no relegation?
Yes 48%
No 37%
Unsure 14%

11 years on is the pyramid a good thing?
Yes 75%
No 11%
Unsure 14%

Should there be automatic relegation from SPFL2?
Yes 68%
No 14%
Unsure 17%

Are end of season play-offs good?
Yes 75%
No 20%
Unsure 14%

Fans want change.
Neil wants 4 Glasgow Derbies.
Clubs want less games.
Andy wants some big thinking, for once.

2. Roll on UK 2035?

Infantino himself said that the Spain, Portugal and Morrocco competitor/alternative had not met the first Fifa application hurdle and that the 4 nations UK bid was the only offer on the table for the 2035 Women’s World Cup.
That may or not be and I don’t have any trust in King Donald’s football bestie.
And as for now, it’s an acknowledged by Fifa ‘bid of intent’ rather than a done deal but after Gianni’s statement it was ‘press release o’clock’ from the 4 nations.Our own Ian Maxwell is said to have said.
“We look forward to working together to finalise our proposal and lay the foundations for a tournament that will excite football fans around the world and inspire girls and women across Scotland.”By 2035 the women’s game will be much bigger having had 10 more years of turbo-charged growth and I hope that by then our current lack of focus at the bottom end, i.e. grass roots has changed.I also know in real terms 10 years isn’t enough to see the kind of fundamental changes we really need.

But that is no excuse to avoid embracing and facilitating change.
We have to think more seriously about kids from the top down and I mean the SPFL, The SFA and everyone we can collectively influence.
And at no cost to football I have written a new slogan that encapsulates what needs to be done.Grass Roots is Everyone’s Business.

For too long it’s been overlooked and grossly underfunded.
If all we achieved was to regenerate schools football today we’d find more elite players, men and women coming through and more football fans too.
If kids football was free on public parks and we had an active ‘free recruitment’ of approved coaches we’d have a veritable conveyor belt of talent.

And that’s just a start.

3. “It’s Time to Bring Russia Back”

Fifa’s Grandest Fromage, Infantino spoke immediately before Uefa’s Sandy Ceferin in the keynote speeches.
You’d maybe have thought they never speak to each other and that Uefa and Fifa are ploughing separate furloughs and competing, unofficially.

You’d be right.

It was, I’m reliably informed, the talk of the saunas in Belgrade, where the Uefa Congress was held.
Gianni got his message across, “Russia should be allowed to return because that would mean everything is solved”.He didn’t mention Palestine’s ongoing pleas to his Fifa or why none of them are solved or even being actioned.
Not important enough because it won’t bring revenues and free houses.

Infantino was immediately followed on the podium by Sandy Ceferin, Uefa’s local boss who talked broadly about how scary our world is because of the predominant “us vs them” factions and lots of other stuff.

He didn’t mention Gianni’s pet ‘Club World Cup’ flailing project, or any return of Gianni’s Soviet pals aka Sandy’s (currently suspended) member, Russia.
He also didn’t talk about the Uefa vs Fifa, scenario openly.
He did announce the recent Euros generated a 2.4 Billion Euros turnover and delivered a 1.2 Billion Euros profit.

I don’t know how much of that wends its way to the SFA in any shape or form
But I do know it’s expensive to play grass roots football in Scotland and many poorer kids get left out.
And Scotland, to its shame, has too many poorer kids.

I also can’t tell you who was there from our SFA, if they spoke at the meeting or even what their views on the congress were.
That’s at least consistent with what has happened in the past.
But I do bring some good news from Belgrade.
The wonderful Lise Klaveness from Norway was elected to a board seat unopposed.
She won’t change this awful organisation but will damned well try because she’s a good ‘un.

4. Fisticuffs at Spain Park Last January

You almost couldn’t make it up.
Peterhead Boys Club under 13s were playing Kincorth Emirates Football Club at Bank’s ‘o Dee’s, Spain Park when an on-pitch fight happened and parents, got involved.
Some to break it up, some to maybe join in.

The Kincorth coach, Shaun Barney, a man with previous,  got involved and banjo-ed a Peterhead player’s parent out cold.
His brief said at the time he had a drink and cocaine habit and didn’t realise the damage one punch could cause.
Sherriff Craig Findlater bought the story and was obviously in a benign mood when he said,  “You should have been setting a positive example to the children you were coaching, not getting involved with adults from the other team”.
He could and should have said, “Well son this was a right old Barney and you’re off to Craiginches” pronto.
The result was 190 hours of unpaid supervised community work.

Whatever we do with kids football we need to achieve 3 things.

i) Coaches that set a good example and have been trained.
ii) Respect for referees from players and spectators.
iii) Respect for kids from coaches and watching parents.

5. Brora Holding Their Nerves

Last Saturday Brora moved a step closer to a play-off double-legger with Kilby.

Nerves aplenty last week against a good Aberdeen side but two winnable games left and it’s only theirs to lose.

In the meantime at the wrong end, the ‘dog eat dog’ end of the SPFL with 5 games to go it now looks like a straight fight between Forfar and Bonnyrigg.
Forfar have been picking up more points recently than Bonnyrigg whose 6 point penalty for having an uneven pitch might even become the ‘proverbial straw’.
Unfair in my view but like many occurrences in football we were never given the full facts and there may have been prior warnings.
Levelling up pitches is not just about adding some topsoil to the slope and I’ve been told is horrendously expensive.
I’ve played there and it was not something dreadful, other than a wee natural slope.

The bottom end of our pyramid needs as much thought as the top 12 by the ‘Competitions Working Group’ we talked about above in section 1.

It’s a brutal place to try to run an important community business and the fact that not one of the fall-outs has fought their way back speaks volumes.

Sting is:

A fan’s view of some of the stuff that doesn’t get covered enough and opinions are mine.

 

Macca : Ram (Both pictured)

After crossing the Abbey Road zebra last week, and still in the Beatles rabbit hole,  I revisited another album that I hadn’t played for yonks.
I bought the vinyl in the Record Rendezvous one Saturday morning on Church Street, not a trendy music store by any means, but perfect because I liked one of the girls behind the counter.
The Rendezvous was also conveniently just two doors away from Inverness’s long lost Wimpy Bar where I worked in the kitchen and I remember enjoying a complimentary coffee there after my purchase and trying to do the NME crossword before I was due to start my shift. I bought Ram because I had loved his recent single, ‘Another Day’, and I was a Paul fan at a time when he was a figure of some hate from his ex-bandmates, the press and was almost seen as ‘uncool’. (Paul had been the one who went to the High Court to dissolve the Beatles after all).

The album was fun then and is even more fun today, an early excursion into mild psychedelia, tunefulness and whimsicality that Macca just got.
The first Beatles ‘Indie Album’.
It didn’t have ‘Another Day’ but my favourite track back then and still joyous now ‘Monkberry Moon Delight’ is great and Paul at his best.
I still have no idea what Monkberry Moon Delight was or is.

Looking back, Ram generated some lousy reviews.
Jon Landau, a journo on Rolling Stone said it was “incredibly inconsequential and monumentally irrelevant”.
NME said, “The worst thing Paul McCartney has ever done and an excursion into almost unrelieved tedium”.
John Lennon was grumpy because he thought a few songs were about him and called it “Muzak to my ears”.

Looking back with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight the critics wanted to be offended and offensive.
Whimsicality and tuneful musicality are the timeless glue holding this amazing collection of tunes together and stronger today than ever before.

Ram is now seen as Paul’s best album and I’d agree with that.