witchy
Banned for good!
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2005
- Messages
- 18,282
- Reaction score
- 334
SCOTTISH football's like a stew made with rotten meat that's been simmering away on the hob for years.
A foul mix of greed, self-interest, sectarianism, cheating, lying, back-stabbing, over-pricing and under-achievement that stinks the country to high heaven.
You could sense that it would all boil over sometime.
The stench has been growing more overpowering for years now.
All it needed was one more putrid ingredient, one more turn of the gas ring.
That finally came in the shape of the Dougie McDonald affair.
A crazy, needless fiasco that encapsulated just about everything that's wrong with a game we once loved to death.
But which is now, I'm afraid to say, dying.
It hurts to write those words, because football's been my life. Ever since I was a toddler, matchdays were alive with possibilities, dripping with optimism, a blank canvas waiting to become another masterpiece.
That didn't mean what you saw come three o'clock or half seven was a work of genius.
It's only football after all, not even the highest level of football at that.
It was something special to be involved with, though.
The terrace was a community where you met to laugh and joke with friends, to sing with the choir, to form bonds with your heroes.
Those days now seem like another lifetime.
Because today, each matchday only seems to bring more rows, more snarls, fewer ball artists and more con artists.
The stands have become somewhere you gang up to scream abuse at the other team, to pick on every weakness, to put players and managers and referees in the stocks and pelt them.
Those players aren't innocent, mind - they dive to get fellow pros into trouble.
Those managers put saving their own skins before giving value for the huge amounts of money it costs to get through the gates.
Those referees lie to cover up their own indecision.
And the thing is, they get away with it, all of them.
Because over this bubbling vat of toil and trouble looms a governing body whose leadership is based on all of these same faults - on double-dealing, on bending the truth, on fleecing the punters. So the question that must be asked as we stare into the abyss is a simple one.
Who among us all is willing to put themselves second for the sake of pulling the game back from the brink?
Who'll be the first blazer to break ranks and admit that we need one association, not three, to run things?
Who'll be the first manager to go balls out to win, no matter the consequences of losing?
Who'll be the first board of directors to speculate to accumulate by making watching football affordable for all? Who'll be the first player to speak out about one of his own team-mates diving, not just an opponent?
Who'll be the first set of fans to self-police by shopping the bigots and the racists and the foul-mouthed who shame them?
No one on the outside can make any of this happen. Not UEFA, not FIFA, not Holyrood or Westminster, not even The A-Team.
It has to come from within. Scottish football will only - CAN only - change for the better if we force that change.
There's no point waiting for the next guy to make the tough decisions, either. If we truly love this flawed obsession, each and every one of us must fight for it.
You see the SFA shrug about how they commissioned that report by Henry McLeish as if that's their bit done.
But if he said the committee system had to go, the freebies had to stop and all officials had to go up for public re-election once a year, do you think it'd happen in our lifetime?
No chance. They have to WANT it to happen, they have to see the big picture and realise that the sport they purport to represent is more important than any ego.
Yes - they have to be the turkeys who vote for Christmas.
Because I'll tell you this. History would remember a George Peat or a Brown McMaster far more favourably if he tore his own stripes off in the name of progress rather than clung to them stubbornly in the name of self-preservation.
That's the phrase that matters, though. Self-preservation. That's what's strangling the life out of our game.
Way back in September 1997, I damned the formation of the breakaway EssPeeEll as the end of Scottish football as we knew it and still won't take back a word of it.
This was the moment when all bets were off, when it became every man for himself. Kick your pals out of the lifeboat and go la-la-la-la to drown out the screams as they go under for the third time.
Since then, money has become everything. TV money is the new lifeblood.
Player-power is out of control. Managers are as disposable as the tie-ups on a left-back's socks. You're not a lifelong supporter any more, you're a consumer.
In short, matchdays aren't fun any more. They're a trial of strength. No one smiles, no one's relaxed. It's not may the best man win, it's kill or be killed.
It's not the game I fell in love with the day in 1964 when Dad took me to Dens Park and we came home in shock having lost 9-2, the silence finally broken when he told me that at least things could only get better.
If the same result happened today, the manager would be sacked and the internet forums would be calling the guilty players all the %*#^& under the sun. The innocence has gone, taking the fun with it. That thrill you once woke up with on Saturday mornings has been dulled to the point that it's hard to remember how it felt.
Can we get that feeling back?
Course we can.
But before that happens, the first thing we need to do is pour that whole, rotten stew down the stank, clean out the pan and start all over again.
And the question is, who out there is willing to get their fingers burned doing it?
Look into the abyss | The Sun |Home Scotland|Scottish Sport
A foul mix of greed, self-interest, sectarianism, cheating, lying, back-stabbing, over-pricing and under-achievement that stinks the country to high heaven.
You could sense that it would all boil over sometime.
The stench has been growing more overpowering for years now.
All it needed was one more putrid ingredient, one more turn of the gas ring.
That finally came in the shape of the Dougie McDonald affair.
A crazy, needless fiasco that encapsulated just about everything that's wrong with a game we once loved to death.
But which is now, I'm afraid to say, dying.
It hurts to write those words, because football's been my life. Ever since I was a toddler, matchdays were alive with possibilities, dripping with optimism, a blank canvas waiting to become another masterpiece.
That didn't mean what you saw come three o'clock or half seven was a work of genius.
It's only football after all, not even the highest level of football at that.
It was something special to be involved with, though.
The terrace was a community where you met to laugh and joke with friends, to sing with the choir, to form bonds with your heroes.
Those days now seem like another lifetime.
Because today, each matchday only seems to bring more rows, more snarls, fewer ball artists and more con artists.
The stands have become somewhere you gang up to scream abuse at the other team, to pick on every weakness, to put players and managers and referees in the stocks and pelt them.
Those players aren't innocent, mind - they dive to get fellow pros into trouble.
Those managers put saving their own skins before giving value for the huge amounts of money it costs to get through the gates.
Those referees lie to cover up their own indecision.
And the thing is, they get away with it, all of them.
Because over this bubbling vat of toil and trouble looms a governing body whose leadership is based on all of these same faults - on double-dealing, on bending the truth, on fleecing the punters. So the question that must be asked as we stare into the abyss is a simple one.
Who among us all is willing to put themselves second for the sake of pulling the game back from the brink?
Who'll be the first blazer to break ranks and admit that we need one association, not three, to run things?
Who'll be the first manager to go balls out to win, no matter the consequences of losing?
Who'll be the first board of directors to speculate to accumulate by making watching football affordable for all? Who'll be the first player to speak out about one of his own team-mates diving, not just an opponent?
Who'll be the first set of fans to self-police by shopping the bigots and the racists and the foul-mouthed who shame them?
No one on the outside can make any of this happen. Not UEFA, not FIFA, not Holyrood or Westminster, not even The A-Team.
It has to come from within. Scottish football will only - CAN only - change for the better if we force that change.
There's no point waiting for the next guy to make the tough decisions, either. If we truly love this flawed obsession, each and every one of us must fight for it.
You see the SFA shrug about how they commissioned that report by Henry McLeish as if that's their bit done.
But if he said the committee system had to go, the freebies had to stop and all officials had to go up for public re-election once a year, do you think it'd happen in our lifetime?
No chance. They have to WANT it to happen, they have to see the big picture and realise that the sport they purport to represent is more important than any ego.
Yes - they have to be the turkeys who vote for Christmas.
Because I'll tell you this. History would remember a George Peat or a Brown McMaster far more favourably if he tore his own stripes off in the name of progress rather than clung to them stubbornly in the name of self-preservation.
That's the phrase that matters, though. Self-preservation. That's what's strangling the life out of our game.
Way back in September 1997, I damned the formation of the breakaway EssPeeEll as the end of Scottish football as we knew it and still won't take back a word of it.
This was the moment when all bets were off, when it became every man for himself. Kick your pals out of the lifeboat and go la-la-la-la to drown out the screams as they go under for the third time.
Since then, money has become everything. TV money is the new lifeblood.
Player-power is out of control. Managers are as disposable as the tie-ups on a left-back's socks. You're not a lifelong supporter any more, you're a consumer.
In short, matchdays aren't fun any more. They're a trial of strength. No one smiles, no one's relaxed. It's not may the best man win, it's kill or be killed.
It's not the game I fell in love with the day in 1964 when Dad took me to Dens Park and we came home in shock having lost 9-2, the silence finally broken when he told me that at least things could only get better.
If the same result happened today, the manager would be sacked and the internet forums would be calling the guilty players all the %*#^& under the sun. The innocence has gone, taking the fun with it. That thrill you once woke up with on Saturday mornings has been dulled to the point that it's hard to remember how it felt.
Can we get that feeling back?
Course we can.
But before that happens, the first thing we need to do is pour that whole, rotten stew down the stank, clean out the pan and start all over again.
And the question is, who out there is willing to get their fingers burned doing it?
Look into the abyss | The Sun |Home Scotland|Scottish Sport
