“Our game is a laughing stock, what chance do we have when [insert weekly example].” These are the constant retorts I hear in reference to Scottish football, to the point that it seems to be a verbal tic amongst journalists, pundits and presenters alike. This near weekly tradition has now focused itself on BBC Alba for covering a football match – Hibs v Dundee United – that would have otherwise received little or no attention and having the effrontery of producing it in the language designated for the channel, Gaelic.
Well, I for one would like to stick up for this lovely quirk of Scottish football. The problem is the intellectual laziness of those who decry our game as moribund, not BBC Alba.
If we are to focus our ire at the BBC, then the critics certainly do not have the right target; Sportsound should be in any self-respecting Scottish football fans’ crosshairs. Presented by a man whose journalistic curiosity seems to start at Auchenhowie and end at Edmiston Drive, the show is nothing but a forum for the tired, half-arsed platitudes that passes as ‘punditry’ with a merry-go-round of staid journalists and ‘football men’ – a term for the clique of ex-pros, save John Collins, who protect one another and savage outsiders.
It is here where you will hear the ‘our game is dying’ line trotted out the most. An illuminating example is found in the post-mortem from the last Scotland game. On being asked how to save our apparently ailing game, Keith Jackson suggests the revolution be spearheaded by getting Fergie involved – with no defined role, task or purpose. Not one to be shown up, Chic Young suggested that Jim Duffy could take the job as national manager of Scotland. I apologise in case that last remark had been summoned up from some hallucinogenic episode I was experiencing at that time. This is not to even mention the debates over Ian Cathro and his laptop.
Meanwhile, the show has given credence to Barry Ferguson’s whining about Paul Le Guen, an outsider who apparently ‘just didn’t get it.’ It must be reminded that arguably no player in recent history has done more to bring our national team into disrepute and whose own managerial qualities seems to be limited to allowing Bob Malcolm to stay off the dole.
Nor would this tirade against the naysayers be complete without mentioning the infamous Clyde 1 Superscoreboard. Its resident pantomime villain, Hugh Keevins, is to my mind the arch embodiment of the perverted Old Firm logic which still prevails in Scotland. The hypocrisy of the man was displayed by his ‘campaign for decency’: he exhorted Old Firm fans to show decency towards one another and play down this rivalry in the face of all the apparent ‘ugliness’ of recent games between the two sides, despite the fact that there were less arrests in Glasgow than in Manchester following their own derby; all the while, the moral crusader Keevins constantly exclaims that Scottish football is nothing without these games – stoking up the tensions he warns against.
The fact is we have never lived at a time in which actual violence and sectarianism at Celtic-Rangers games, or any other others for what it is worth, has been so little, yet the coverage and disproportionate reactions any small incidents so outrageously overblown. I think we need to move beyond Keevins-style logic, and I think many of us have.
Herein lies the problem: there is a hardy bunch that excoriates Scottish football at any turn, without actually offering any plausible solution and even actively discouraging them.
Why? Simply, because it is they who are the problem and perhaps they know it. How else could Malky MacKay be appointed to run our game’s development? How else can it be that the likes of Alex Rae continue to get managerial jobs? If it were not for the persistence of the Old Firm logic, is there any good reason why the likes of Keevins et al would be on our airwaves or television?
These are some of the real deep-rooted cultural problems of Scottish football – and most of them derive from the doomsayers mentioned above.
For that reason, I want to defend BBC Alba. It is a whole-hearted but financially limited broadcaster that covers games otherwise barely mentioned. In fact, I find some of their half-time interviews with the respective teams’ captains far more interesting than Neil McCann’s claptrap on Sky Sports. It is not the problem, but could be part of the solution – expanding coverage beyond the Old Firm – if some would actually give it a chance.
Much like any romantic relationship, I love Scottish football because of its foibles and quirks and not in spite of them. BBC Alba’s coverage is just one of those quirks. With the honourable exception of BT Sport and the majority of its pundits, most of the punditry class seem not to love our game but rather eke a living out of it through their cultish brand of fatalism.
My suggestion is not one that will cure any of Scottish football’s ills, but it may be a step in the right direction. Rather than becoming annoyed and venting our anger at their opinions, point out the irrelevance of them; it hurts them far more to simply say their opinions simply don’t resonate any longer. In so doing, we may well cut off their air supply and airtime. Until then, let’s defence one the many charming eccentricities of our game from the naysayers!
Written by Jordan Galbraith