Let's face it - we stink
Hosting Euro 2008 is a last-ditch attempt to save
the patient - STUART CROWTHER
PERHAPS IT IS A SIDE EFFECT OF
THE DEPRESSION felt by many Hibernian fans just now, but having lived
a life of optimism stretching back over 40 years of supporting both my
club and Scottish football in general, I find it now very difficult if not
impossible to justify such optimism with what I'm seeing happening all
around me.
Don't get me wrong - the football
is still the love of my life, and that is something I clearly share with
thousands of "Fitba' Junkies" around this little nation of ours.
Memories mean a lot to us, and when these memories include great games
against the likes of Third Lanark, Partick Thistle, Falkirk, East Fife -
the list is endless, and all with one thing in common. In their time clubs
followed by thousands, clubs who in the fine traditions of the Scottish
game laid on an entertainment form that was part and parcel of the
recreational weekend we all so much looked forward to. There probably
remains untold thousands who would still turn out to support these clubs,
Third Lanark excepted of course, if only they were given reason to do so.
That looks as likely as Old Firm clubs and fans alike admitting that they
give a damn for the country of their birth.
The talk seems to be endless and
the dreams that bring these words more ridiculous by the minute. Rangers
and Celtic will join the English leagues; they will join an 'Atlantic
Alliance'; they will join some breakaway UK-wide league. They are all
dreams, they are all dreams with one thing in common - a desire by some to
bail out before all life-support systems in the Scottish game are finally
switched off. Last player out turn out the lights, sod any fans who might
still be hanging around because who the hell cares what they think anyway?
"Last player out turn out
the lights, sod any fans who might still be hanging around because who the
hell cares what they think anyway?"
It would be very easy to say
"Ach, it's just the money after all, money rules the game now and
that is what is wrong." Shame on anyone who truly believes that.
Money has always been the driving force in one way or another, at least as
far as those who run the game are concerned from the top echelons of the
SFA down to the club owners/directors throughout the history of the game.
Fans of course are not driven by any desire to make a profit from the
game, but then these same fans have never truly been awakened to the
realities that you don't get nothing for nothing, not ever. We all seemed
a lot happier when rich men used the clubs as their playthings. For some
it was fast cars, others faster women - and for yet more, buying the club
they always supported. As many quickly discovered cars crashed, women bit
and football clubs simply wrecked your financial soul!
Blue skies for the Old Firm spell dark clouds for Scottish Football
Can we turn it all around then,
make some sense of the changes that have been threatening to shunt
football into the sidelines, bunging many more thousands of football
refugees into Saturday afternoon scrums at out of town superstores? Fact
is it might already be too late. To save Scottish Football will take
massive doses of reality, and nobody seems willing to accept that fact,
clinging with some faint hope perhaps that men of millions such as Sir Tom
Farmer will simply adopt a sudden love of the national game and blindly
throw millions at it; or perhaps one day soon footballers themselves will
realise that their god-given talents do not in themselves guarantee a
lifetime of riches from the game, that they might at some point have to
put something back into the sport if it is to survive for future
generations.
I won't be popular for saying it,
but I rather suspect that for Scotland the time for acceptance that this
once-great football power is no longer anything of the sort is just about
with us. We may have to accept that the power held in Scotland by Rangers
and Celtic is not a new power, they have always been the heart of the game
in Scotland. And while removing them may give some short-term enjoyment in
a spiteful sort of way, it would still have the same effect as cutting
your own heart from your body.
We have one last chance perhaps,
one major toss of the caber if you like! The Scotland bid to host Euro
2008 may smack as a last-ditch bid to save the patient, but it is one
long-shot that might just work. In suggesting that Scotland should go for
this nearly two years ago, I was accused of being a complete nutter.
Possibly something in that, such cruel accusations (and worse) come the
way of any dreamer with a keyboard more often than not, the development of
a very thick skin is a pre-requisite of the job. But the daft dream is
still gathering steam, as more people in this country come to realise that
some major surgery is required, indeed revolutionary new techniques are
possibly the ONLY way to save Scottish Football. Euro 2008 would bring new
thinking, a reason if you like to restructure the game from top to bottom.
Failure to grasp this
opportunity will be failure to tap into the last remnants of optimistic
thought that remain.
|
