Time for League Cup Change

THE Scottish League Cup, the Cinderella competition in senior gootball, takes centre stage this week. Now aged 65, this particular Cinders is hardly going to have Prince Charming chasing after her - she is no Camilla, even the fact that this season's gallant "wee" lower division team taking on the big boys of the SPL in the quarter-finals happens to be Rangers, is worth nothing more than comedy value.

 

I have long felt, this competition, if it is to have a future, has to be re-cast, totally. I would like to see a return to its original format as a seasonal opener, with mini-league groups, leading to knock-out last eight stages.

 

But, I would not stop there. I would like to see something like the Olympic football format whereby this competition is basically an Under-23 one, brought in. Make the rules that each club has to field eight SCOTS-QUALIFIED, UNDER-23 players in every game. That way, those few remaining clubs seemingly unwilling to give young Scots a chance, might be forced into action.



I NOTE that the less-talented of the two Ferguson brothers is on the move again, as Barry makes the short trip up the Fylde coast from Blackpool to Fleetwood. At 34, perhaps Barry was struggling to keep-up with such stellar talents as Kirk Broadfoot on the Blackpool training pitches.

Actually, this might be a good move for a player, who for all the furore and headlines which have followed him throughout his career, was, I feel, much-misunderstood.

Guys who know the real Barry Ferguson tell me he cares deeply about the game and is a lot smarter, at least on the field, than he appears off it.

I always enjoyed listening to Derek during his years in management and felt he had/has more to give in this capacity, even though he is one of the more-entertaining talking heads on Sportssound.

At Fleetwood, maybe Barry can find his feet as an elder statesman and begin the sometimes difficult transition from player to coach. I fancy he could be a good one too.

It cannot happen due to the signing ban, but, he'd have been a good buy for Ally McCoist.



 

 



Strip Changes - Why?

I received an indignant e-mail, from an old school friend, these many years in the colonies. Having recently retired from a professorship at one of the leading universities in the USA, he has time on his hands to trawl the internet and he discovered that Kilmarnock had beaten Celtic at Celtic Park on Saturday.

 

He did, however, feel that I ought to have texted him with the news - I didn't even know he was a Killie fan, since he's from Auchinleck I had him down as a typical Talbot Bee, oblivious to everything in football not connected with the Beechwood Taliban.

 

He also asked me: when did Killie change their colours from blue and white stripes to red and white ones? This is the cue for a rant.

 

I appreciate that, costs being what they are, it is incumbent on football clubs' boards of directors to attempt to extract as much cash as possible from the pockets of the gullible - aka supporters, by frequent changes of strips. Changes of shirt sponsors also come into play here, I accept.

 

I can also accept the need for clarity of identification between the teams and understand that, back in the days when Scottish football was worth watching, and TV pictures, on the rare occasions they were available to those not at the games, being in black and white - when Celtic, whose colours back then were green and white hoops, met Kilmarnock, who played in blue and white hoops, one team had to change.

 

Fast forward say 57-years, the length of time over which Killie fans had waited to hail a Celtic Park win, and we find that,while Celtic still weat green and white hoops, Killie have, these many years, worn blue and white vertical stripes. This beggars the question: why is it necessary for Killie to change when visiting Celtic Park?

 

The answer to that question beats me.

 

 

 

I SEE Mark Clattenburg is almost rivaling Jimmy Savile and Gary Glitter in media character assassination, following Sunday's Chelsea v Manchester United match. It has been hinted at that - rather like certain Scottish officials we couldn't possibly name, with an affection for one of Glasgow's time-honoured Big Two clubs and a disaffection for the other - Mr Clattenburg looks favourably on SAF's side, to the detriment of all others.

 

Maybes aye, maybes naw, as they say. However, he didn't cut off the supply of inuendo to the conspiracy theorists with his performance on Sunday.

 

Some Scots fans have long been calling for cross-border exchanges, to bring English officials up here for some of our big games; of course, the current absence of "Old Firm" games from our schedule perhaps means such calls will be made less often. However, Mr Clattenburg's below par performance on Sunday should remind us to be careful what we wish for.

 

As someone with experience of covering top-level football, rugby, hockey, cricket, basketball and ice hockey - to name but a few of the 50-plus sports I have covered, I long since learned, English referees, across the board, tend not to be as good as our oft-criticised home-grown variety.

 

 

I SEE, strong hints have (yet again) been dropped, that the long-awaited verdict on "The Big Tax Case" is due to be delivered "any day now".

 

If I was an evergreen tree, growing in Scandinavia, I'd be worried.

Back the Lassies - They Cannot Be Worse Than The Men

SOUND common sense this week from Scotland's women's goalkeeper Gemma Fay, who thinks the SFA ought to give central professional contracts to the women's elite squad, to enable them to train and prepare properly for the big tournaments.

 

It has maybe passed almost unnoticed amongst the Tartan Army and the Hampden blazers but, whilst not yet actually qualifying for the Women's World Cup or European Championships, the Scotland Women's team has at least managed to regularly get to the qualifying play-offs, or a lot closer to the countries qualifying than the Men's team has this past decade or more.

 

Also, lassies such as Kim Little and Jennifer Beattie are featuring week-in, week-out for Arsenal Ladies, the top team in England, who are certainly doing better than Arsne Wenger's Arsenal Men at present - whilst, in the twilight of a marvellous career, Julie Fleeting, now more a mother than a player, still knows the way to the net.

 

Central contracts, allowing the girls to fulfill their potential is a great idea. Mind you, not least because their season operates more in the better weather, our lassies have been showing-up our men for a wee while now.

 

That said: Ms Fay didn't look too clever, being beaten at her near post for the Spanish winner which did for the Scottish girls this week. But, she's by no means the first Scottish goalkeeper to be embarrassed in internationals; and she will not be the last.

 

I might advocate pooling the top Scottish talent into two clubs and getting them used to playing together, but that idea has still to be proved to work across at Scottish rugby - maybe success is simply not for the Scots.

 

It is, however, a wee bit late for the implementation of another more long-term suggestion for the good of Scottish football which I came up with. A few years ago, when both were scoring for fun for the Arsenal sides of opposite sexes, I suggested to Jim Fleeting that he encourage Julie to get very friendly with Thierry Henry - at least we had the chance of a fabulous Scottish striker in time for the World Cups of 2022 and 2026 at least.

 

 

 

I FELT for Celtic this week, being beaten right at the death in Barcelona - however, how often have we seen them seeing-off a brave challenge from a lesser team in domestic football? On Tuesday night, unfortunately, the boot was on the other foot. However, they now have a terrific chance to make the last 16, which would be marvellous for Neil Lennon, his squad, and Scottish football.

 

 

 

I WON a watch on Wednesday. Killing time before a meeting in Ayr, I popped into one of the local charity shops and, browsing their book shelves, I spotted a rare football book: Puskas on Puskas - a transcript of a series of interviews the great man and several others associated with the Golden Squad of Hungarians who, under Puskas's captaincy, revolutionised football in the early 1950s.

 

This book cost me a mere £1.50 and was a steal at this price. It is a marvellous read, a great story about one of the all-time legends of the game.

 

 

 



Come Oan Celtic - Gerrintaerum

WE may be, given the level of tribalism in Scottish football, small in number, but tonight all of us, regardless of which particular tribe we belong to, with the good of Scottish football at heart, will be Celtic fans - as they take-on Barcelona in their own Catalan fortress.

 

Received wisdom has it that Barca only have to turn-up to win this one. Such thoughts have no place in the Scottish psyche - I was brought-up in the days when "Gerrintaerum" was the battle cry of the Tartan Army; and while such a basic tactic has no apparent place in modern football and getting tore right intae the likes of Senor Puyol might be a tad dangerous, even for Scott Brown, damage limitation and 4-6-0 tactics does not sit well with the personna of Neil Lennon or Celtic.

 

In their final warm-up games prior to tonight's show-down, both Celtic and Barca went nap in domestic games. Seville, unlike St Mirren, didn't go for damage limitation, they had a go back at Barca and got through their defence thrice. Celtic might still lose, but, I am sure the average Celtic fan would rather see his side lose 5-3 having a go than 2-0 or 3-0 attempting merely to stem the tide of Messi magic.

 

Go on Celtic, have a go - they don't like it up 'em ye ken.

 

 

 

THE esteemed Tom English of Scotland on Sunday came up with a cracker while doing one of his increasingly-frequent BBC Scotland gigs at the weekend. A wee aside here - I have never understood how the erudite, intelligent, Irishman with the English surname got onto BBC Scotland as a football pundit; he speaks well, he knows his subject and he never played for either Celtic or Rangers, strange.

 

However,back on-thread. Tom told of floating out of a two-hour, one-to-one interview with "Smokin'" Joe Frazier, the one-time Heavyweight Champion of the World, back when there was only THE Heavyweight Champion of the World,  to receive a text informing him (English) that his request for a similar one-to-one interview with Kirk Broadfoot had been refused.

 

A former colleague, who is THE Scottish sports writer for one of the biggest of the London Sundays, told me once of being amazed at the co-operation and warm welcome he received when, in previewing a Rangers' Champions League game, he was allowed a one-to-one interview with the coach of their forthcoming German opponents. Needless to say he was not accorded the same access to Walter Smith.

 

English explained that while his beef was with Rangers, Celtic were similarly unwilling to grant access to their management and players - preferring to only grant one-to-ones to their tame in-house publications, to defend the "brand".

 

Of course, it is a two-way street. The big two Scottish clubs wish to defend their "brand", but, they are surely correct to deny the red-top tabloid rottweillers access to footballers who proudly wear their IQs on their back each Saturday (although given squad numbers, some probably don't have an IQ equivalent to their squad numbers).

 

Mind you, the more time I spend researching historical football pieces, the more I become convinced that things were better in the old days, when football writers were allowed to opine and pontificate - not re-write inane painting by numbers type docile interviews between "stars" and the tame, in-house Pravda-style magazines and websites.

 

The likes of 'Rex' or 'Waverly' writing: "I feel that Gordon Smith is better-equipped than Willie Waddell to torment the left flank of the English defence in the forthcoming Hampden international" had, I believe, a bit more gravitas than reading: "Craig Levein - pick my mate Wan Fittit tae baffle the Belgians" says Breengers' midfield maestro Al Cluggim (as told to www.Breengers.co.uk).

 

 

 

JUNIOR football is a different planet. This wee point was driven home to me at the weekend, when one of the "name" writers for one of our top Sunday papers identified one of the main SFA Board members as 'Tom Johnston - president of the SJFA'.

 

Tam, a fine Neilston man, who has given decades of service to the juniors, is not president of the SJFA - that post is held by another wonderful servant of Scottish football, Cumnock's George Morton - but he is Secretary of the SJFA, and a damned fine one too.

 

But, I digress. Saturday saw the second round of the Emirates Scottish Junior Cup. This is the true first round - the actual first round is the one in which they reduce the 170 entrants down to the 128 who will eventually provide the two finalists next May. As ever, there were one or two "shocks", some big defeats for wee sides, a whole string of postponed games due to water-logged pitches and a few replays.

 

Yes, and Auchinleck Talbot scored six goals. I've got a millionaire mate, a Talbot Bastard since birth who now lives in some style in the Sudetenland. He e-mailed last week, bereft because Talbot had lost on penalties to Irvine Meadow in the Ayrshire Sectional League Cup Final.

 

He'll e-mail this week, a lot happier. I meanwhile am distraught, my wee team went out at the weekend - and we didn't even have the consolation of a good, strong protest. It will be a long season from now on. 

You Can Learn A Lot In Libraries

I SPENT a good part of Thursday in one of my favourite spots - over at the microfiche machines in the Glasgow Room at the Mitchell Library, where I was continuing my research for a forthcoming book.

 

I got talking to the guy at the next machine, a Celtic supporter, also researching a book. Perhaps I ought to call him a possibly heretic Celtic supporter, because, if he ever gets his book project published, he will demolish some of the sacred tenets of the Parkhead gospels - as they are currently interpreted by the Green Brigade and such likes.

 

I too have my heretical book project - I would love to write the definitive biography of one of the legends of Rangers and Scottish football. However, certain acquaintances amongst the Lap Top Loyal, with I presume a wee bit more in-depth knowledge of the subject than I, are already warning me off.

 

Apparently, what is accepted as "the truth" about my potential subject, will be entirely unacceptable to "Ra Peepul" and were I to publish, could adversely affect my quality of life. So, the book's a goer then, once I get the one I am currently working on out of the way!!

 

The lesson of the two guys, sitting side-by-side in the Mitchell is, therefore: the lunatics really have taken over the asylum.

 

 

 

SPEAKING of lunatics. The latest edition of David Leggat's Leggoland 2 blog is an interesting side bar on Craig Levein's current difficulties. I have enjoyed many a laugh with wee Leggo in various press boxes. The wee man is good company, even is his Rangers obsession makes him an unsafe chronicler of games involving his beloved Ibrox men.

 

However, in his blog, I fear he is pandering to the most-extreme fringe of the large Rangers lunatic fringe - the Blue Baldrick Brigade if you like. That said, his latest offering does point out that Craig Levein is not yet Scotland's worst manager in terms of results in a qualifying group - that honour belongs to none other than Jock Stein, during the terrible and totally inept unsuccessful qualifying campaign for the 1984 European Championships.

 

That campaign began with a 2-0 win over East Germany at Hampden; we then lost 0-2 to Switzerland in the Wankdorf, 2-3 to Belgium in the Heysel, drew 2-2 with the Swiss, then 1-1 with the Belgians at Hampden and ended with a 1-2 loss to the East Germans in Halle. Under modern scoring values that would give us five points from a possible 18 and one win from six games.

 

That was under manager Jock Stein, who used 24 players in the campaign. Nobody played in all six games. Jim Leighton, Willie Miller, Gordon Strachan and John Wark played in five, Steve Archibald started in four and came off the bench in a fifth game; Frank Gray, Alan Hansen, Graeme Souness and Kenny Dalgleish played in four games; Alex McLeish started three and came off the bench in a fourth; John Robertson and Richard Gough started in three games.

 

That was Jock Stein's first-choice side: Leighton, Gough, two from McLeish, Miller or Hansen, Frank Gray, Strachan, Souness, Wark and Robertson, Dalgleish and Archibald. The bench wasn't too bad either: David Narey (three starts), Alan Brazil, Jim Bett, Charlie Nicholas, Arthur Albiston and Paul McStay (two starts); Paul Sturrock, Roy Aitken and Frank McGarvey (one start, one sub's appearance);  Peter Weir, Billy Thomson and Eamonn Bannon (one start each).

 

If Stein and that bunch of players couldn't get us to the finals, against decidedly middle-of-the-pack opposition in East Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, what chance has Craig Levein with the players at his disposal got? I reckon maybe Allan McGregor, Darren Fletcher and Steven Fletcher could force their way into the 1984 squad - none of the rest of Levein's squad could. And there is no way McGregor or either Fletcher would start.

 

 

 

WEE Roger Mitchell has penned a piece for the Herald, which I read this morning on the online edition. In it, he puts down more good sense than I have read from the seried ranks of the Scottish Football Writers Association's finest this week - his basic premis being that it's the whole culture of Scottish football which is wrong.

 

Well, that's two of us saying that - we are on the march at last. Trouble is, it will perhaps take us maybe three generations before the message gets through and change happens.

Things Can Only Get Better - Maybes Aye, Maybes Naw

BEATEN in Brussels, bottom of the group, bang goes Brazil - can it get any worse for Scotland? I wish I could say no, however, we must recognise, we may not - however much we might hope for improvement - yet have reached rock bottom in the fall of football in the country which first gave it shape.

 

Watching last night's game, I realised, long before half time, that our luck couldn't possibly last and at some point during the 90 minutes, we would concede a goal. Once we lost one, we were always more likely to lose two, or more, than to get back on terms - the difference in quality between the two sets of players was simply too great.

 

We didn't have a single player, with the exception of Darren Fletcher, who would have got near the Belgian starting XI. Quite simply, we've stopped producing players who can trap the ball, make anything more difficult than a basic pass or who look remotely comfortable with the ball at their feet.

 

Certainly, the players gave their all; they scrambled, they battled, but, their basic lack of skill when compared with their opponents, was all too-obvious. We got off lightly.

 

So, as expected, the press and the Tartan Army have reverted to their default position - Sack the Manager. Believe me, it would not help - whether the man at the top is Craig Levein, Gordon Strachan or anyone else, they will only be able to piss with the pricks they've got and right now, our pricks (players), simply are not up to the job.

 

The first requirement of international players is that they keep the ball once they get it; the Belgians could and did do this - our guys couldn't. The frenetic 100 mph world of the SPL, or battling for survival at the foot of the English Premiership or the top of the Championship, the places where the bulk of our squad operate, are not places where players learn to be comfortable on the ball.

 

Our whole football landscape needs to be altered - is the will there, within the Hampden corridors of power, for the changes to make this happen being put in place? I don't think so.

 

Belgium had a couple of bad qualifying campaigns, so sat down and worked on it, to produce their current Golden Generation. Our own Golden Generations were much earlier than that - but the will to sort things out has never existed within Hampden and until it does, we are going nowhere.

 

It'snot Craig Levein who needs to go: it is Campbell Ogilvie, Stewart Regan and the other "blazers". We need a bonfire of the vanities before we can think again of World Cup or European Championship qualification.

 

 

 

NEVER mind, IF UEFA and FIFA do what they ought to, we will not have to worry about Serbia coming between us and Brazil 2014. Following the disgraceful scenes in their Under-21 match with England last night, Serbia should be immediately banned from all international football - until their fans learn how to behave.

 

Again, as with the SFA, however, I am not holding my breath. The movers and shakers in Switzerland pay lip service to anti-racvism, without actually doing too-much about it. Far easier to hand out token fines and bans to Celtic and Rangers fans who step out of line than to do something about in-bred European racism.

 

We Scots are, after all, a small, marginal and far-away nation, of which the Eurocrats in the cantons know little. Better to beat them up than to sort out the real bigots. There are times when I sympathise with the little Englanders who wish to take back control of the games they invented during Victoria's long reign.

 

 

 

SO, Craig Whyte has broken cover to speak to BBC Scotland - just before BDO takes over as Rangers' liquidators from administrtators Duff & Phelps. As I have long suspected might happen - things are about to get really interesting. The truth is out there, but, how long must we wait before we learn what that truth is?

New Boss - No : New Methods - Yes

WHAT I wonder is the Scotland equivalent of "succulent lamb" football journalism - you remember that - the way the mainstream media, and in particular the Lap Top Loyal, ignored the impending implosion of Rangers during the latter Murray years?

 

I ask, because my dear friends in what I have long referred to as the A Team of the Scottish Football Writers Association are once again up to their favourite trick, fiddling whilst Hampden smoulders.

 

Even before we take on Belgium in tomorrow night's "Must Win" World Cup qualifier, rather than meaningful analysis and conjecture, the men with the sharp suits, the Blackberries, the top of the range lap tops and the big expense accounts are getting themselves worked-up about just one thing - who will take over from Craig Levein when, probably this week, the axe falls on him.

 

Gordon Strachan, Joe Jordan, "Walter", "Big Eck"? Who is going to get the football gig which equates to Osama Bin Laden's successor approaching you with the plastic explosive waistcoat and the team who will film your farewell DVD. At least, the poor Jihadists believe they are going to a better place fighting an honourable battle - the poor Scotland managers are merely sticking their dicks in the dyke whilst being simultaneously shafted by the men in the Hampden corridors of power.

 

Let's face it, Scotland hasn't been the best team in the world since at the latest 1 April, 1928 - and even the XI which put them there the previous day wasn't exactly greeted with a standing ovation when it was announced. Browsing through the files in the Mitchell Library last week, I chanced upon the Sunday Mail's pre-match view of the team forever immortalised as the Wembley Wizards.

 

"This side is merely adequate - the forward line simply will not do", was the considered view of the Mail's man. That'll be the forward line which smashed five goals into the English net.

 

You'd have thought the lesson would have sunk in, but no. Ten years later, rounding-up his report on another Scottish win at Wembley, that of 1938, the great "Rex" (RE Kingsley) of the Sunday Mail - who was a sort of amalgam of Jim Traynor and Chick Young, over his some 30 years with the Mail - opined on one of the debutants in that winning Scotland team: "Right half Willie Shankly is simply not international class". That'll be the same Shankly who - now known as Bill - went on to rule Liverpool.

 

The message is dear reader - believe nothing you read in the Scottish papers.

 

For all that, Levein will, probably sooner rather than later, join the lengthening list of failed Scottish managers. I am not surprised, when the overall system has the flaws which are so obvious in Scottish football today, it doesn't matter a jot who the boss is - he will fail. The blame keeps falling on the fall guy, rather than on the real power brokers, the guys on the top floors at Hampden, who are more-concerned with feathering their own nests than with putting things right.

 

We are, already, almost-certainly not going to Brazil in 2014. At least, the last time we didn't go there, in 1950, we had already qualified before we opted out. Back then, we qualified as the tenth or eleventh-best team in Europe. Today, we are ranked in the mid-twenties in Europe. That fall hasn't just happened overnight - it has been a long, gradual and sustained slippage.

 

I think we have, perhaps bottomed-out; now, what are we going to do about getting back into the Top Ten? That will not take the short-term fix of replacing Levein, it requires serious joined-up thinking, right across the football board.

 

But, I'm not holding my breath for this happening.

The Hardest Six Inches To Train

AT THE old Scottish senior secondary school I attended, when you entered the First Year, the class you went into depended by and large on how you had done in your Qualifying Exam in Primary Seven.

 

A good result got you into 1A - immediately, aged 11 or 12, you were ear-marked as a future doctor, lawyer or teacher and you took Latin, then a necessity for university entrance. Not so-good result, 1B, like 1A a six-year course, perhaps pointing you in the direction of accountancy or banking or a civil service post. If you were put in 1C or 1D, you might, at best, aspire to a skilled trade: electrician, joiner, brick-layer, motor mechanic etc. Placed in 1E or 1F meant, in our part of Ayrshire, you were going down the pit at 15.

 

A further aspect of this class placing came on the sports field; the rugby team was almost exclusively made-up of A and B pupils - the football team was picked from the D, E and F streams by and large.

 

A couple of years ahead of us, we had a football team which bucked the trend, being almost entirely made up of A pupils, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime aberration, or so it seemed until the patter was repeated by the year below us.

 

That was a long intro, apparently about nothing - other than perhaps to sustain the fallacy that rugby players are somehow cleverer than footballers. Not true, some of the thickest sportsmen I have encountered were rugby players (and not always front five forwards) who went to public schools.

 

I mention this today, because the stupidity of footballers is again in the news, following Ashley Cole's "tweet" in the wake of his big mate John Terry's recent hammering from the FA.

 

Messrs Terry and Cole and, apparently, as much soul mates as team mates. To those of us on the outside, looking in, and relying on the despatches of "Fleet Street;s" Finest" - the Chelsea pair are a duo of charmless boors, whose only talent is their ability to kick a football. They therefore meet all the dubious talents expected of the modern-day Premiership footballer - over-paid, over-rated, over-priced, totally lacking in the social graces, self-awareness or common sense and living within their own little bubble of fast cars and air-headed fast WAGS.

 

But's that's exactly how the flash money men who run football want them and like them. Sure, they have the chance to earn a great deal of money over a short-term career; if they are lucky, they earn enough to set them up for life.

 

I suppose, if you are forced to spend 40 to 50 years down a pit (which thankfully is a fate which falls to few in this country today), being able, in your mid-thirties, to settle down to another 25 years of golf, glad-handing, and "media work", on the back of less than 20 years kicking a ball around, seems like a good deal - but, is it fulfilling?

 

After more than a century in existence, doesn't the "professional footballer" deserve a better career structure, or, at least, to have better role models than messrs Terry and Cole?

 

Would you like your son or grand-son to grow up to become John Terry or Ashley Cole? Me neither.

 

It is perhaps time, in my opinion, well past time, for football to spend as much time and money properly conditioning the hardest to work-on area of a footballer - the six inches between his ears - as it does his physique.

 

Association is the simplest of the many forms of football - but, it doesn't have to be played and administred by simpletons - as appears to happen today.

 

 

 

THE ABOVE rant leads me to my second point of the week. When, if ever, is Charles Green going to realise, the biggest challenge to his grand plan - if he has one - to make a quick killing and get out of Rangers ASAP is the lack of development of the same six inches mentioned above.

 

The current Rangers squad may well be the weakest and least-talented in the long history of "Rangers" (assuming we take the Sevco incarnation as Rangers continuing), but, it ought still be leading the SFL Third Division.

 

The fact the club is not MUST cause him to ask questions of his players and, more-importantly, of his management team. Or is he hoping, maybe, somehow, the imminent arrival of BDO will somehow save his somewhat dubious investment?

 

Shutting them down, might not, in the current climate of results, be a bad thing.

 

 

 

JUST a wee thought. In rugby at the top level - internationals and elite level professional club games, there are gentlemen known as "Citing commissioners", whose remit is to review video recordings of games to check-out potential incidences of foul play which the referees may have, in the maelstrum of crashing bodies on the floor, missed.

 

The presence of citing commissioners means, rugby at the top level is now a far, far cleaner game than ever before. The cheap shot has all but been eliminated, whilst the sly kick to the head has gone completely.

 

When will Football bite the bullet and introduce the citing commissioner at the highest level? Mind you, any such animal would first of all have to eliminate the diving cheats and the simulators. Once they were got rid of, football might flourish again.

 

 

 

ANENT this, no complaints from me on Steven Naismith's two-match ban for his elbowing of the Serb at Hampden in the last international. However, if you look at the incident, it is clear Naismith was reacting to a blatant off-the-ball take-out by the Serb. Maybe if the perpetrator of the original foul had cot a one-match ban, the message would get through about fair play.

 

Hitting Naismith with a ban - good. Not hitting the Serb - bad. So much for FIFA's Fair Play initiative. 

From Russia - With Renewed Hope

BEING old enough to appreciate, we've had a lot of false dawns over the long history of Scottish football, I hesitate to say this, but: wasn't that a marvellous result for Celtic, winning in Moscow last night.

 

Of course, it was no Lisbon triumph, however, given Celtic's and indeed Scottish clubs in general's recent history on away trips to Europe, that win was a belter, and all the better for being so-overdue.  As Churchill said of Montgomery's victory at El Alemein: this might perhaps be the end of the beginning - and hopefully Celtic can forge ahead and qualify for the knock-out stages.

 

We still all expect Barcelona to top the group, but, I see no reason why Celtic cannot edge out Benfica for the second qualifying spot. A great result for Neil Lennon and his Bhoys.

 

 

 

AND while we are at it, getting Steven Fletcher back onside was a great result for Craig Levein and Scotland. As I have pointed out before, however, Scotland has a horrible record against the Belgians in qualifying groups, while we have, the 1950s apart, never been comfortable visitors to Cardiff - so we must guard against expecting too-much from the return of Fletcher S, and also the equally welcome return to the squad of skipper Fletcher D.

 

But, things are looking up and, who knows, perhaps some day we will look upon 2 October, 2012 as one of the red letter days in Scottish football history.

 

 

 

MIND you, it wasn't an entirely good day for your humble scribe. A week later than planned, I made my return to the playing side of the game, with my debut in the Slow Football, at Prestwick.

 

Apart from the small matter of strained ligaments in my left ankle, courtesy of a heroic turn to sweep away a thrust down the right, which saw my premature retirement in the second half, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

 

It is called Slow Football, because - since all the players have to be at least 55 years of age - the game is played at walkiong pace; you simply are not allowed to run. OK, you may walk briskly, but, to run is to concede a foul.

 

The game is therefore all about accurate passing and good movement off the ball. It is also a good laugh and I will be back next week. We played three, 20-minute sessions, the first was a 5-5 draw, the second a 3-3 draw, but we won the third on 3-2.

 

I didn't score, but contributed 5 of our 12 shots which rattled the opposition's woodwork, missed two sitters worse than big Chris Iwelumo's memorable effort, but, playing mainly as a sweeper, I had a clutch of last-gasp interceptions, and four goal line clearances.

 

I will be back and recommend Slow Football to all Over-55s who have perhaps let themselves go.

 

However, the ankle strain has not gone down too well with "Management", who fears I might not be fit for our weekly ballroom dancing class.