The draw for the third round of the 2010-11 Scottish Cup was made on October 28th, 2010. One of the ties drawn out of the hat was Third Division Stenhousemuir against non-league Threave Rovers. The tie was played on November 20th, and Threave took a two goal lead, but the game finished 2-2 after Stenhousemuir scored a 90th minute equaliser. In the replay, Stenhousemuir comfortably won 5-1.
It might seem like there is nothing unusual about those two matches. Non-league teams giving bigger clubs a fright, only to be routinely defeated in the replay happens in most cup competitions every year. But what made this tie unusual is that the replay was played on January 12th, after being postponed an astonishing 15 times. The reason? Well, oddly enough, Scotland tends to get quite cold in the winter. Frozen pitches and unplayable conditions become a regular occurrence from November to February, especially in the lower leagues, where teams cannot afford to have undersoil heating installed.
On Saturday, 8 SFL matches were postponed because of the weather. You can expect that number to rise, and include SPL matches if the recent cold weather continues over the next few weeks. Problems with the seasonal weather are just of the many Scottish football has. When the SPL was formed in 1998, there was a winter break in January. Teams had three weeks off before the season restarted in February, but it was abandoned when clubs complained about the loss of revenue in that three week period. Of course, matches being abandoned due to typical January weather will result in loss of revenue too, but it’s not like Scottish football is run by the smartest men in the room.
The idea of a winter break was revisited in 2009, but was ruled out due to a lack of available midweek dates to play games. The notion of too many games and not enough dates leads into some other problems for Scottish football, such as having two domestic cups (three if you include the SFL’s League Challenge Cup) and a 38 game SPL season, in which clubs will face each other three or four times, depending on who finishes where after the SPL split (another issue).
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A quick look at the German Bundesliga shows how things should be done. The Bundesliga is an 18 team league, meaning 34 fixtures, and has a four week winter break between mid-December and mid-January. There is also just a single cup competition, the DFB-Pokal featuring a total of 64 teams. Unlike the FA cups in England Scotland, Bundesliga teams join this competition from round 1, but only play a maximum of 6 games, as all ties are settled with extra-time or penalties. That is a maximum of 40 games for any Bundesliga team to play domestically. In Scotland, with the League and Scottish cups, SPL sides could have 10 additional fixtures if they reached the finals of both competitions, with more if any Scottish Cup ties go to replays.
If there aren’t enough dates to allow for a winter break in Scotland, and the weather always leads to the postponement of games (which have to be played in midweek unless the teams involved are out of the cup competitions), then why is spring and summer football not up for discussion? The current SPL season began in July and finishes in early April. If the season began in February, it could be finished by November, avoiding the worst of the weather. Attendances in Scotland tend to drop around the Christmas period, as it gets colder and budgets become tighter (guess what, ticket prices are a problem too). With the majority of the season played as spring becomes summer, people would be more inclined to go to the football at the weekend or in the evening.
Scrapping the league cup and restructuring the leagues to make a 16 or 18 team SPL would reduce the number of games and perhaps allow the Scottish season to run from March to October, all but eliminating the possibility of the weather forcing the postponement of games.
These are just ideas of course, and there are so many problems with Scottish football right now that it’s hard to know where to start and which are the most pressing. But one thing is certain, things DO have to change.
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