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Why Friday Football Ignores Scottish Footballs Bigger Problems

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It’s no secret that Scottish football has seen better days.  In the 80s and 90s, Scottish clubs were competitive in Europe and the rest of the league could compete with Rangers and Celtic.  In the last twenty years however, the Old Firm have dominated the league, with one or the other winning the league each year.

Attendances have also suffered, and along with the quality of football on display, ticket prices, TV coverage and the resulting kickoff times have resulted in empty stands.  But in an effort to get more people to go to games, the SPL and SFL have announced the scheduling of several games with Friday night kickoffs.

On September 30th, Aberdeen will host Dunfermline at Pittodrie, while Partick Thistle was welcome Morton to Firhill in the First Division.

SPL chief executive Neil Doncaster said “The SPL is committed to supporting our clubs’ efforts to increase attendances and improve the match day experience for fans.  Working with the Police and our colleagues at the SFL and Scottish FA, these fixtures have been chosen as a pilot and with the supporters very much in mind. We would encourage fans to get in touch and let us hear their views and feedback on Friday night football in the Clydesdale Bank Premier League.”

And his SFL equivalent, David Longmuir, added”Our football communities are our lifeblood and we must try to give fans as much choice as possible in when they can watch their team.”

Neither game will be televised, but it remains to be seen whether or not attendances will be boosted.  Dunfermline fans have already criticised the announcement, as they now face a 300 mile round trip on a Friday night, instead of a Saturday morning and evening.  As always, the fans are the last ones to know when it comes to fixtures being moved or re-arranged.  They are the ones paying significant chunks of their weekly wage to buy season tickets and petrol money to travel across the country to cheer their team on every weekend.  But the fans are always out of the loop.

Last season, after the seemingly annual fixtures pile up, the SPL announced a series of games with a 6pm kickoff in midweek.  The police and clubs knew it was happening, but none of the fans did until the games were announced.  And when the fixtures were announced for the 2011-12 season, Rangers and Celtic fans found that the second Old Firm match of the season had been scheduled for a Wednesday night in late December.

Because of TV deals, Scottish fans are well used to kickoff times being moved around.  Midday kickoffs have become a regular thing on Saturdays and Sundays, and in the past live games were shown at 6:05pm on Sunday evenings.

But the reality is that kickoff times are not the biggest problem.  Fans stay away because of the quality of football, but more importantly, ticket pricing.  Rangers and Celtic fans will pay over £40 to watch Old Firm matches, and the rest of the teams in the league routinely bump up their ticket prices for away fans when the Old Firm come to visit and Scottish clubs outside the SPL will still charge fans well over £10 to watch games.

But all these problems stem from arguably the biggest problem Scottish football has.  Too many clubs.  There are 42 teams in Scotland’s four divisions, most of whom have no chance of ever playing in the SPL.  Attendances in the bottom two divisions are often in the hundreds rather than thousands, with too many clubs in the same region taking fans away from each other.

So to sum up, moving kickoffs around is not going to solve Scottish football’s problems.  The SFA, SPL and SFL need to look at the bigger picture if they want to improve the game in Scotland, and they could do worse than starting with actually asking fans for their opinions before they make decisions.

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  • rg67 says:

    “But all these problems stem from arguably the biggest problem Scottish football has. Too many clubs”.

    Spot on, no more needs to be said.

  • Joe G says:

    Remove the corruption, bigotry and bias within the SFA and SPL walls, also among the refs and you have a base to start with. Then you have to look at what is wrong in the small monded coutry where a person is taken to court for assualt, admits to doing it, is seen on real time video and TV coverage of it doing it, the attack witnessed by thousands of people at the game, yet walks from the corruption of a Scottish justice system with a “not proven” verdict. The problem goes deepr than the game in Scotland and until those with the power get their heads removed from that dark place, it isn’t going to change, and all because they do not want it to. I used to be a proud Scot, but instead of getting better, the corruption has worsened over the years. Scotland has much deeper issues than deteriorating football, trust me!!

    • David Dougan says:

      The guy that walked free after assaulting Neil Lennon did so because of it was called a sectarian result. The guy said he didn’t use a sectarian slur, and Lennon said he didn’t hear one. If it had just been an assault charge, he would have been found guilty.

  • SaveourGame says:

    Good article. The debate around the our game seems to have dried up. We moved the season forward a few weeks, trying Friday night football but apart from that nothing has really changed so far. As fans we should have an official avenue to submit ideas or feedback on proposals to our game.
    We also need to ask what we want to seen in our game. A better national team? A more competitive top flight? More Scottish Players? Less clubs in debt? Bigger gates? More teams in European competitions? Regional academies for kids? Ultimately though all the clubs are going to look at an ideas and ask whats in it for me. The top 2 also hold most of the aces so unless they are on board with any changes we can probably forget it and continue to watch the slide

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