What must change?
It's not just the players that need to change but football in general as Richard Pitts explains....

A TYPICAL FORMAT FOR MY COLUMN USUALLY RUNS: TAKE A LOOK AT last week, comment on anything happening in the world of Hibernian with passing reference to the Under-21 game on Monday if it was at Easter Road and then look ahead to the game on Saturday, because if I’m writing this column, the travails of work usually mean I’m looking forward to the weekend.  Before I start anything though, let me record my best wishes to Grant Brebner: I have enjoyed watching you at Easter Road especially of late and I hope to see you back there soon.

I was going to truncate the look back at the weekend, but it led to me thinking about what has to change in the Scottish game because that game provided a good deal of food for thought. Saturday was depressing for a number of reasons: It’s another year in which Hibs won’t win the Scottish cup and it outlines for me why the Scottish game is badly in need of review if a good many clubs aren’t to go to the wall in the near future. Looking at the spaces in the stands, was depressing too: even five years ago, a gate of just over 11,000 at a Scottish Cup tie featuring Hibs and Rangers would have been considered ridiculous. Indeed a few decades ago, such a fixture would have commanded 40,000 at Easter Road, something I can’t quite imagine. Live television is partly to blame, but discussing the game in the pub afterwards, the sense of expectation of defeat had been there amongst a lot of the Hibs support, and that bothers me even more.

To be honest, that expectation is the logical fulfilment of the way things have gone. I don’t want to remind everyone about it, but the last team outside the Old Firm to win a trophy was that Maroon lot in 1998, six years ago. The way things are going at the moment, it could easily be another six unless Hibs pull off something special at Hampden, and then knowing Hibs we’d probably lose to Dundee or Livingston in the final, assuming the former is still trading by then and that is a very big if, again a sad reminder of how bad things have got. If a few more clubs aren’t going to go that way then we need to restructure the SPL into a sixteen team league where we play everyone twice, meaning that the games against the Old Firm don’t count so much and the boring familiarity that currently exists won’t surface so much – when we meet Rangers in the CIS Cup it will be the fourth time we have played them in just over half a season with possibly another two games to follow. Familiarity may breed contempt, it also breeds boredom amongst supporters. Sixteen teams would also mean three up three down, meaning that relegation would actually be a contest, whereas in the current campaign it’s not very likely with only St Johnstone currently meeting SPL criteria, and Falkirk in the race to meet it if they can finish their ground on time. The operation of the SPL like a closed shop is damaging interest in the game and threatens its viability. That has a lot of implications such as getting rid of the 10,000 capacity requirement with undersoil heating, a laughable requirement when clubs in the SPL don’t currently have it, and one I believe will be subject to legal challenge at some point.

Wiss in line for a recall this weekend?  (sns)

On Saturday, live television was not quite as influential as usual, since it was broadcast by a satellite, but it still has an effect. After all, it’s almost like arguing against financial reality for a lot of people: spend £17 watching a game in the freezing cold, which your team is likely to lose or watch it on TV in your own house without the sectarian abuse in your face, or even down the pub and spend the £17 on drinks for your mates. That is a reality that must be compensated for in the TV deal. Let’s do the maths: The crowd last Saturday was 6,000 below the capacity of a stadium: at an average £20 a ticket, that is a loss of £120,000 on what the home club, until quite recently, might have expected. Their fee from the TV company was £82,500, confirming the Hibs managing director Rod Petrie’s damning comment last year that, rather than representing supplementary income, television revenue these days does not even compensate what has been lost. The other thing that must happen is some sort of highlights package in a TV deal. We are in the stupid situation where on Sunday afternoon I can sit down and watch highlights of all the Division One games on TV, but there is no SPL equivalent and that is utter stupidity. Given all the channels the BBC have on digital it would surely not be unreasonable to expect a digital channel programme. I would regard that as about the only incentive to buy a Freeview box, because I don’t have one at present. I don’t know if that would be good for the club, but as a football fan I just regard the current situation as insufferable. Ideally there must also be a return to the tradition of games kicking off at 3pm on Saturday with only the truly crucial games featuring live on TV such as derbies etc.

I also believe that we need to get back to a situation where clubs share gate revenue, and I believe the Old Firm must recognise that this is actually in their interests because it will start to produce a more competitive league. As someone who grew up supporting Manchester United I am well aware that one of the reasons for the European Cup win in 1999 was the cut-throat competition in the domestic competition because it forced Untied to raise their game to another level. If the Old Firm want to become the European forces their supporters seem to believe they already are they need to foster a competitive League at home. Unfortunately I don’t think either their supporters or Directors possess either the intellect or the vision to make that a reality. I also don’t think the majority of the Ten have the backbone to fight their corner either, the exceptions being ourselves, Hearts and Aberdeen who have too often been left to fight the battles of the other seven when dealing with the Old Firm. I hope that this changes for the good of all of us, but I sense I may be hoping against hope itself.

At the Under-21 game on Monday, Jarkko Wiss looked impressive, spraying the ball about to good effect, and he could be in line for a recall against Livingston on Saturday. I was also very impressed with Ryan Pow, a tricky left-winger with a fabulous first touch and ball control who can also hit a mean cross, and I imagine it may not be too long before he is seeing first team action. It was a decent performance from an under-21 side shorn of a lot of its regulars who have made the step up to the SPL, despite the 1-0 defeat and that bodes well for the future. Indeed, only one player in last night’s game was called Kevin, a game against Partick Thistle a while ago having featured five Kevins (two on the Partick team) and three Stephens, but I sense I am verging on to in-joke territory here.

Hibs now have two games on the road before entertaining struggling Dundee at the end of the month at home, Livingston and Kilmarnock being the hosts before then. How Hibs will cope without Brebner remains to be seen, but there are grounds for optimism, Hibs having generally fared better away from home this season. Indeed only four teams have beaten us away, three of whom are in the top three. Much will depend on how Hibs cope against Livingston’s 3-5-2 formation and how the young strikers fare against a physical and experienced defence, a combination that has caused our young strikers problems in the past. Developing the ability to cope with that is something that also has to happen, but personally I think that is something that will find a more immediate solution than the intractable problems I have outlined above.