OFFSET YOUR WORLD CUP TRAVEL WITH GREENERTRAVEL
Date: 10th May 2025
100 goals for a single club. Yoo Hoo. Ain’t it great? Fantastic. Well done Brian Graham.
Does that sound bitter?
Should do, because his 99th and 100th goals over against my team in a game that was the second half of a playoff. The two goals he scored were sufficient to send Partick Thistle through to the semi-final of the Premiership Playoffs and leave my club, Ayr United with questions. Did we do enough to fulfil the potential that we showed in August at the start of the campaign. Clearly not.
Many on broadcasts talked of how Scott Brown had probably got our club to a place which was beyond the planning stage. We were too far ahead of where we were meant to be, and to an extent, they’re absolutely right.
It doesn’t help much, it doesn’t stop the pain of feeling that somehow there was a possibility that we could have been more than just contenders, but hey-ho, the possibility of us playing Kilmarnock in a play-off to see who would go into the Premiership for 2025-26 is not going to happen. A wee derby is not on the horizon any time soon.
But there’s something more at play here.
The end of the season should not just be about whether or not any club had the potential to achieve a play-off win.
It’s also about reflecting on how the season unfolded and what changes we need to see. And no matter how much you feel that play-offs are a bit like a lottery, supporters love the fact that the opportunity for an entire season to spin on 180 minutes of action is absolutely spellbinding.
We love it!
And hate it!
And that’s why we love it even more.
But a bit like play-off agony, where four teams go into it and only one comes out, thus ensuring that 75% of the experience is a negative one, we are left again with the perennial question of league reconstruction.
Recently a few organisations representing supporters and others have posited their opinions with regards to league reconstruction.
Here’s mine.
We need it.
There you go, that’s it. We need it. Clear?
Oh, why do we need it? Because we’ve had this system for so long, it’s stale.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the playoffs have introduced an amazing opportunity for people to extend their season with excitement. Towards the tail end of this year, there were a number of clubs in League 2, League 1 and the Championship who were playing for something real. There were less games that were meaningless.
But then again, are there games that are meaningless?
If you take the Premiership in particular, where there are games that there is less of an opportunity to introduce jeopardy, then the opportunity exists to introduce young players.
There’s a chance that you can blood in those who are going to be less expensive than having to go into the transfer market where you are buying in expensive exports, with the real jeopardy being that they may not actually provide you with the very thing you bought them for, i.e. success.
At least with homegrown players, what you have is less of a financial risk, which in the current climate should be the most attractive thing of all. And yet people are consistently pointing out that we need to have finance in this game and that comes with the type of pressure and stress, that playoffs and the ilk, i.e. smaller competitive leagues, provide.
So, what kind of change would I like to see?
A larger top league.
I think that will enhance the opportunity for young players to be bled in, and given the state of our current national team, I think that it’s important that the success that Steve Clarke has brought should be built on. That means, for me, teams like your Kilmarnocks and your Dundees and your Hibs having the opportunity to allow their academies to filter straight into the first team, rather than feeling that they are going to struggle to get to the end of the season without having to depend on foreign imports.
I like the splits.
I didn’t at first. I thought they were a bit of a pain in the bahooky. But they provide excitement. But I think that we should start looking at other areas of Europe where there are different types of splits and adding into our own debate where else in our pyramid they may fit – we already have them in that pyramid, so it would hardly be innovative.
Controversially stop getting upset that Rangers and Celtic are the only two teams that win the league.
We are not the only country in Europe where that happens. We would love to have a Falkirk. or a Leicester or anybody else coming through the middle one season in so many to provide some jeopardy for the top two. But the reality is that they are so far ahead financially that nobody is ever going to catch them up. We should build our focus on other parts of Scottish football.
Play offs should change.
I’ve written this often. For me, fourth should play second bottom, then, the winner of that should play the third, then, the winner of that should play the second. So that, if you manage to get to second place, that should be an advantage rather than a hindrance.
Playoffs should be one leg, not two.
I think they should be big finals at a neutral venue that will match the likelihood of the sales of tickets.
We should look at supporting clubs better in European competitions.
That might mean that the League Cup becomes amalgamated with the current lower league cup format to provide clubs with an opportunity to win a national tournament, but not a treble. That might not go down particularly well with some, but the fact is that if we do want to see our coefficient increase, then any team that manages to get into the Europa League or the Conference League or Heaven forbid the Club World Cup will need change domestically to make that any kind of success.
Dealing with fixture congestion for clubs who are at the stages of domestic competition is just simply how they have to deal with it.
Suck it up, buttercup. If you’re going to be successful, you need to play more games. That is different to the European fixtures because the rewards are different.
A larger top tier should mean a larger mid-tier and a larger bottom tier.
I do think that it is time to look at the Highland and Lowland leagues and start to treat some at the top end with a degree of respect and bring them into the SPFL. East Kilbride face Bonnyrigg Rose (mainly because of a 6-point penalty due to a sloping ground) rather than Forfar Athletic but Brora Rangers, Cumbernauld Colts, Buckie Thistle, and the like would really benefit the SPFL. The top of League Two would enhance League One and so on. And for me, that means those legacy clubs like your Albion Rovers, Brechin Cities and the like have to cut ties with the SPFL.
The League Cup format that allowed them to come in because they had a previous relationship with the SPFL was a bit like having a wedding with all your exes as bridesmaids. It’s not right. I think that once they’ve fallen out of that pyramidic structure, that they should go and compete with the others round about them. To that end, I would also remove the clubs who have colt teams, that being Celtic and Hearts.
Any Scottish youth team should follow the Scottish Football Association format.
Any youth team that is playing outside of that formula, should be cut adrift. Because it’s similar to why I think that the Tory idea of allowing parents to choose which schools to go to was a mistake, as you remove some of the cream at the top. I have yet to see the real benefit to Scottish football from those outside of the SFA structure than those within it. I don’t think it has worked, and it’s time to cut that idea adrift. I think if Scotland needs to get better at what it does, it needs to have people who are going to commit to what it does.
And that’s my tuppence worth.
I don’t expect anybody to read it.
I don’t expect anybody to listen to it.
I don’t expect anybody to change because of it.
But what I do think is important is that the debate is one that is filled with supporters’ opinions and views. And for that reason, the SFSA for me has made an absolute breakthrough in the media.
I’ve read them being quoted in The Record and in the BBC ahead of other organisations representing supporters. We’re 80,000 plus strong. Our infrastructure is increasing day by day with people coming on board who are going to represent the likes of the disabled supporters and the female game, amongst others.
That strengthens us because it brings into the fold better voices. People who have unique experiences and an understanding that are way beyond mine and therefore often way beyond the people who run the game.
The problem is getting them to listen.
That’s the challenge, perhaps, that we have for the next 10 years. What are we going to do about it? We shall continue to demand that the supporters’ voice from the top end of the pyramid and the premiership, and right down into the communities and the heartlands of Scottish football be heard, and that for me is why the SFSA is vital.
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