IT may seem somewhat absurd to suggest the lower leagues in this country aren’t working as well as they could be and to call for them to be ripped up and revamped the day after one of the most thrilling Championship title races in many years, possibly ever, reached its conclusion on the final day.
But, hey, this is Scottish fitba and that’s just how we roll. This past week has, even by our standards, been beyond bizarre. Goodness knows what delights await in the dead rubber derby between newly-crowned Premiership champions Celtic and Rangers and Ibrox tomorrow afternoon. Watch this space.
Clyde announcing they were set to remain at New Douglas Park for the foreseeable future just before Hamilton revealed they are poised to end their 24 year stay at the same stadium and move to Broadwood, the ground vacated by their co-tenants three seasons ago, in Cumbernauld next term was jaw-dropping.
The South Lanarkshire club almost immediately losing their appeal against the 15 point deduction they had been hit with for breaching a number of SPFL rules – an outcome which consigned them to relegation back to League 1- capped a harrowing day for their longsuffering followers.
Thursday was quite the 24 hours for the second tier as a whole. Greenock Morton were also banned from either signing new players or extending the contracts of their existing squad members by world football’s governing body FIFA due to what a statement issued by the Cappielow club described as “an administrative error”.
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The ‘Ton assured their gob-smacked supporters this silly understanding would all be cleared up by the middle of the month and insisted they would be able to replace the 12 members of their 20-strong first team squad who are poised to depart this summer. Fingers and toes crossed. It still seemed fairly seismic stuff.
Throw in the fact that League 1 rivals Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Dumbarton are both still endeavouring to exit administration many months after being plunged into crisis and docked 15 points by the SPFL and a less than healthy picture of the lower leagues emerges.
It was maybe no great surprise earlier this week when the governing body revealed, after acknowledging there was no prospect of achieving the consensus needed to alter the Premiership, that their competitions working group found there was “broad agreement” around potential changes for the Championship, League 1 and League 2.
The suggestion in these pages last month that the top flight could potentially revert to a 10 team division sparked astonishment and outrage. Those who yearn to see Scotland’s leading clubs produce and play more homegrown footballers have long argued that a larger league is required. They were appalled by the plan to go back to the future.
But what would the point of changing a format which provides, thanks to its four European places, top six split, play-off spot and automatic relegation place, more meaningful games than the vast majority of leagues on the continent?
There are four of the 38 top flight matches of the 2024/25 campaign left to go and only two teams, top dogs Celtic and second-placed Rangers, have nothing left to play for.
Supporters in major football nations like Belgium, England, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain have been forced to endure a raft of nothing fixtures for months now. Why join them? It would be to the detriment financially of our most beloved sporting institutions.
Neil Doncaster, the SPFL chief executive, copped some flak this week when he stated in an interview which appeared in the excellent Nutmeg quarterly football periodical that “what fans say they want is not the same as what fans will pay for a ticket to go to”. It was perhaps a slightly unfortunate choice of words.
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Still, it was difficult to argue with his logic for retaining a smaller league. “What we know drives bigger attendances is tense, competitive, meaningful, exciting, dramatic matches where there’s something to play for,” he said.
“We’ve had very big leagues in this country. If you talk to folk who do have memory of those times, they will tell you that towards the end of the season, there was absolutely nothing to play for, just lots of mid-table, mediocre matches.”
The problem is, however, that having a 12 team Premiership is not exactly churning out a production line of exceptional players who are capable of stepping up and representing their country.
The Transition Phase paper which the SFA published last year suggested that was not a factor in the failure of our outstanding prospects to make a successful step up into the professional game.
The majority of managers, including Brendan Rodgers at Celtic, disagree. Those who occupy the dugout, whose livelihoods depend on draws and victories, will all tell you there is a fear factor behind blooding kids.
So why not mix things up below the top flight? Do three leagues of 10 really need to be retained? Could they, say, move to two divisions of 14 and have a top six and bottom eight split like they do in Greece?
Would that encourage coaches to hand youngsters game time? Would that ease the financial pressure on directors and encourage them to live within their means. Could they consider regional North and South leagues? Might B teams be thrown back into the equation? Truly, the world is their oxter.
Doncaster stressed that “there’s no such thing as a perfect format” in his chat with Nutmeg. But would a new set-up be a little better than the current one? It is surely worth attempting something different. The Cooperation System will be an interesting exercise which will give emerging talents more competitive minutes. Revamped lower leagues might complement that ambitious experiment.
