BILLY BREMNER MEMORIAL JOIN OUR CAMPAIGN
Date: 7th June 2024
(Photo:@Homesoffootball)
Just a week to go till we kick off the Euros and even after mixed results in the run up.
And while there is growing interest all over Scotland there is no ‘Ally’ type hype.
That is down to two truths.
The first truth
There is just so much else going on and we don’t have as many football reporters as back in the day.
Our media has too much to report on without the Euros.
We have our particularly nasty General Election set against the worrying Trump candidacy from over the pond with its almost comical but in reality quite disturbing circus and possible outcome.
Add that to 80th anniversary of real heroics, the current carnage in Gaza and Ukraine and the biggest music tour ever to hit Scotland as Taylor and her 200,000 plus Swifties hit town and make Edinburgh over-busy, horrible to drive round and our hotels uber expensive.
Her tour will gross £2Billion and if you didn’t know ‘Lily and Grace’ from Aberdeen were first in the queue according to the excited presenter on GMS this morning.
The second truth
It’s Steve Clarke.
He is doing what he is paid to do, what he’s done all his career, what he did with half of bugger all resources at Killie. He’s just ‘managing’.
Yesterday we had an open training day at Hampden ratcheted up by 5000 or so kids present watching the team train on the pitch. (Well done SFA, and good luck Ian Maxwell – detached retinas are no fun and I hope you get it sorted and make it over to Germany somehow).
And I laughed when I heard how Steve later took the press aside and shared some inner thinking about both the present and the future.
He knows we are not going there to come home with the trophy.
So do we all.
That’s not what it’s all about.
Steve gave us an insight into one of the two distinct types of fan-thinking that exist all over our game saying when maybe referring to the 2-0 Gibraltar result he said.
“What’s all the negativity?
What’s to be negative about?
It’s not a time for ‘Negative Normans’.
The squad’s in a good place.
We’re all determined to do as well as we can for the country and our message for everyone is
– Why not just enjoy it”?
I like those words, “Doing as well as we can- enjoy it”.
Steve’s insight is good enough for me and got me thinking.
First my thoughts were logical about our real chances of success.
We might make it out of our group for the first time, but we might not.
The football facts say we, as 39th in Fifa rankings, are the outsiders in our group with Germany at 16, Switzerland 19 and Hungary 26, and all those teams are playing well and in good shape.
Fair enough that’s football but we all know it’s not played on a Uefa spreadsheet.
Steve has crafted a group of mostly top-level players and built a club mentality right through the Scotland set-up.
And history tells us that Scotland have always performed best when we’re underdogs.
Secondly my thoughts were about how it is good just to be there.
And it is good.
I’ll be nervous watching but we’re there.
And as someone who cares about leaving football in a better place what we really now need to do to is to think seriously about what will keep us there into the future.
That’s a real challenge and will need some fundamental thinking and real resource.
I also got thinking about how our fans collective approach as a nation to our national team has evolved from the dark days when we were perhaps a little less balanced.
It is a stark fact that our Tartan Army approach to football has evolved in many a nice way and is quite different to what it was a long time ago.
In fact it’s very different and quite philosophical – a total contradiction to what we see all the time at the top end of our domestic competitions.
And much preferable.
‘Zen and the Art of Football Support’
That obscure wee heading is my ‘Tartan Army 2024’ homage to a wonderful book from the ‘70s written by Robert M Pirsig called ‘Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values’.
It’s not an easy book to read but in very basic terms the author somehow defines and weaves different types of human thinking that dominate our animal behaviours and inherently describe beautifully just what makes our Tartan Army so unique.
Basically the book draws on Greek philosophy and says there are two types of ‘wiring’ in people.
One type of human climbs mountains to ‘tick the box’ – and tell everyone they have climbed the mountain.
It’s all about the ‘achievement’ rather than how it was done from beginning to end.
Get to the top, job done, tick the box and tell everybody.
Another, the Tartan Army, sets out to climb the same mountain not to simply count it as done, but because they want and enjoy all aspects of the experience.
Whether they get to the top or not is not the reason they are there.
Winning is nice but, it’s really about the journey, and about ‘Being there’, during, and afterwards.
It’s about all aspects, and every step is enjoyable.
That’s enough for me.
I really like the inherent Tartan Army philosophical approach and feel at home as part of it.
But I also want more.
I know we’ll never win but I want us to qualify regularly.
I’m asking what that will take?
What we need to change in our game?
Stuff we should have been asking all along.
Looking Ahead and Thinking About Staying There
We can get lucky every 20 years or so or think smarter.
It’s complex , nothing will be guaranteed, but we need to reset things in our game.
My first move would be to put more emphasis and resource into kids, and kids pathways.
Graeme McDowall’s wonderful book ‘The System’ is a good starting point.
He analyses what we currently have and shows its severe limitations and failures.
My second move would be to look at our league structures to unify football and deliver more youngsters.
I’d ensure we also have rules that ensure more Scottish players play at all levels.
And I’d open up the debate and planning processes to people who know more about it than me.
Scottish football is everyone’s business– but only if we start thinking smarter.
But
A reality check.
We are good survivors but not world beaters when it comes to future planning.
Andy’s Sting in the Tale
1. Inverness On the Edge
2. Man City vs The Premier League
1. It’s Everybody’s Fault But Ours
My boyhood team Caley/ICT are in deep trouble.
Right now maybe isn’t the time to ask the tough questions about why because the club seems to be sliding to what they hope is a pre-pack short administration.
This hasn’t happened overnight.
For now I hope that either someone comes in and takes the club over or that they have a hassle free pre-pack stop and start.
Yes there will be issues and tears but there are good people there and the community will rally round, if allowed and encouraged to.
I don’t know the inside track on what is happening because only snippets are emerging.
But the situation is ‘confused, confusing’ and only seems to be heading one way.
I’m intrigued by the ‘confused and confusing’ too because running a football club is not hugely complex and for me is about engaging with the community and maximising interactions.
It’s about ‘right sizing’ rather than moonbeams.
The club itself haven’t been very good at the community liaison although their ‘Football memories’ project and the ICT Trust do a power for good.
Listening to the ICT fans on the radio this week and reading the wonderful Inverness Courier has been insightful.
There have been rumbles for a while but it went ballistic when fans were told the club was moving their senior players and coaching/training to Kelty to attract better players and after being pressed said it was to save £400k pa. It didn’t smell right.
As an aside Kelty hadn’t actually agreed that with Fife Council who own their facilities and Kelty haven’t been told their deal is off by ICT.
The ICT Chairman Ross Morrison resigned on Tuesday and the CEO Scott Gardiner on Thursday although he is said to be staying on to help out.
The majority of fans up there didn’t and don’t value or much like their CEO.
Now the latest I’ve read was ICT board member and football man through and through, Graeme Bennet coming out in The Courier blaming two projects ‘going south’ saying, “Highland Council voted against granting planning permission for our battery storage worth £3.4M and our Statkraft park and ride agreement was worth £1.4M. These sucked the lifeblood out of the club. We would not be having this debate if the deals had gone through. We will probably go into administration and then win the appeal”.
If administration happens I don’t know what will happen to the parcel of land on the hill on the old Castle Heather golf course for the under-appeal battery farm.
Why were the club given it to be the principal name on a planning application?
Nor do I know what happens to the 100 year lease with Highland Council for the ground that is now part of a shiny new ‘increased value’ Freeport site with incredible communication links by land, sea and air.
I hope I’m wrong but do have a sneaky feeling we’re only getting half or less of the story on just what’s happened.
As I said, quite why the club came by the land for the battery farm on a hill 3 miles away from their ground for the Battery deal they have appealed is a start. (I hope they win)
And what the ‘park and ride’ scheme is all about on land designated for football doesn’t quite feel right and the numbers are huge and seem unrealistic.
However what is more serious is basic bookkeeping because numbers don’t lie
Despite all the un-budgeted extra revenue (700k?) from last year’s Scottish Cup run and Final the club can’t afford to cover its ongoing running costs and there are subsequent issues about fiduciary duty facing all directors.
There has been no annual report and accounts for 2 years.
Troubled and fast moving days.
From a distance I think keeping the ground is crucial if administration happens.
If they do ICT will survive the administration and could come back stronger.
Mike Edwards the well-respected Invernesian journalist was on Radio Scotland last Saturday and in a minority of less than the fingers on my right hand in saying he was in favour of the Kelty move. He justified it saying it was to keep ICT ‘where they belong’.
He was wrong on this one too.
ICT don’t belong anywhere else than where the economics of their support take them.
Maybe it was the pressure to hyper-inflate ‘where they belong’ that caused the start of the slide.
I hope ICT go back to their community and survive the horrible process that administration is.
2. Intro to a Nasty Big Fight
I read this week that rather than wait for the Premier League to charge them with 115 breaches of the league’s financial rules that could lead to titles being removed that Man City are on the attack.
Rory Smith writing about it in the New York Times, ‘On Soccer’ With Rory Smith says the possible consequences could be profound.
In 165 court pages of legalese City want to abolish the rules on ‘Associated Party Transactions’.
i.e. The name given by the Premier League to using ‘self-sponsorship’ to get round any financial rules that just try to make competition fair.
Some of the legalese reads,
“City contends that related companies should be able to pay what they like, not the market rate and if these rules are not lifted then City will stop funding its women’s teams and its community work.
Rory Smith says if Man City win there will be no rules and nation states will be able to pump as much money into Newcastle, City and Inverness Caley Thistle”.
(Just joking about ICT)
Rory carries on and says
“There is no obvious route back to plain sailing now because the league contains one team, its best team, that wants to abolish not only the rules but also the mechanism for making the rules. City’s legal documents describe the way the Premier League is run as a ‘tyranny of the majority’.”
I hope City lose but it shows how messy money makes our game.
That’s it from me this week.
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Feedback welcome and wee stories too.
Andy’s Album of the Week
The chaos all round Edinburgh and the biggest gig ever in Scotland reminded me of The Who Put the Boot in at Parkhead back on the 6th of May 1976.
We drove down in my wee Hillman imp and my new Bush stereo bought at Comet, played two bluesy albums by a Welsh band called Sassafras.
They were a great live band and great for road trips.
It was a sunny and warm day and ‘Expecting Company’ and ‘Wheelin’ n Dealin’ blared out all the way down.
I loved their version of Neil Young’s Ohio and Busted County Blues and Electric Chair.
It’s no longer available on cassette but is on YouTube.
There was no music on the way home.
Some like B stole the cassette player and all my cassettes.
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