See Think Tanks? They are pure and utter think tank!

Article Appeared in Killie Hippo Issue 85 (available from 17th January 2009)

Every so often the same crap appears, summits come up, think tanks or whatever they may be are arranged, and the great minds of our game discuss (obviously no actual end product occurs) what should happen to football in Scotland. It usually happens around the time of a SPL championship petering out too early or in this seasons case our two biggest (and seemingly the only ones who are actually important) exit from Europe before Christmas so in early December it happened. Its well documented that our own JJ was omitted from this meeting of the minds, unacceptable in my mind that any SPL boss was left out never mind someone of his experience, not to mention the fact he has been in a job the longest. But I wont dwell on that, we all know it was wrong, rather I will dwell on some of the things that came up and were reported in the papers.

first the not so stupid, merging the SPL, SFA and the SFL, that has to be done, they are all just names, they mean nothing, at the end of the day everything comes back to the SFA so why not just revert to it, put everything back together and lets do it quickly.

League reconstruction into a pyramid system also has to be embraced, our present system is squeezing the life out everything, there is no peril for the bottom league, finish bottom? Who cares. Everything is so stagnant, there are clearly clubs who want in, the Gretna debacle last year showed this so why not give the chance, if as was mentioned above, the governing bodies amalgamated this could be done with ease, get the juniors and highland leaguers involved too, in fact get the amateur game into it too, the pyramid should stretch all that way so that anyone who starts a club in the bottom league potentially can make it to the top, surely that would be good for the game. For me that wouldn’t be where it stopped, the Spl needs to be bigger, 16 teams maybe, making a thirty game season, every fan is sick of playing the same teams more than once a season, even the new teams coming up are sick of it. Give the league cup a champions league makeover to increase the games quota for fans if needed maybe. Also why not add some teams to kick it all off? Three leagues of 16 maybe. I don’t know.

Ken whit? If they just get rid of the ridiculous split then that would be a start.

Right, now for what to my mind is the ridiculous. Summer football. What a load of crap, what would it solve? It rains all year for a start, football should start at the end of summer and finish as it begins. It works. Why risk changing it, for my money aligning ourselves with Ireland for example tells its own story, cos regardless of what Conor Sammon says, irish fitba is pish. I like going to the football in the winter, I like putting on my big jacket and scarf and plodding over to rugby park. I like to see long sleeved strips, I wait eagerly to see my next orange ball getting used, basically its good. I also like it when we get a busy festive period of football, its part of Christmas. What I don’t want to happen is to miss part of the season because I have a fortnights holiday in july. And I cant see how it will help international football in any way. God they all clamour for a winter shutdown now but what god forbid we had summer football and we made a championship finals? Do we have a summer shutdown in the heat of our season? I think its all preposterous and would mean our stock in football which currently is worth as much as a pound note down to something more like some high street shopping vouchers. The only way to keep any standing in football to me is to keep our season in the same time frame as the rest of the main football world, kinda like how it is actually. Plus would we ever get a break, it would be wall to wall football, our season would be ending as the English one starts, no in between, personally I think our league would suffer as a consequence, all those who already have English allegiances (a reall irritation of mine actually) would see those allegiances solidify and possibly at the detriment of our game, in fact I could honestly see those who want summer football making a pilgrimage to a premiership match during their Christmas holidays thus making a mockery of the situation. Plus why would you want to waste a good summers day going to the football? True story here, I had a teacher at the school (Mr Thomson) who only went to Rugby Park on crappy days, he had better things to do when it was nice, you know, I can sort of see his logic now.

If anything, youth football should take place in the summer, kids should train and play with the sun on their backs and on dry solid surfaces, they will learn so much more this way rather than snotering and slevering and their mums not letting them go to training because they might get the cold or they already have the cold, but then hay fever is a problem in the summer, god I have backed myself into an argumetal corner here somehow, need to find a away out because I have made an arse of my pint, think, think, think, wait, I have it. Andy Murray. This is a man who is no longer Scottish, how can he be, he is successful, how can any Scotsman think to identify with Murray what with him being they way he is. How did it happen? Well the talent was there but also he wasn’t doing it in the Dunblane equivalent of the back of the Henderson Church tennis courts, no he was doing his thing is Spain working with good coaches in the high heat and good conditions. We have good football coaches in this country, so lets just improve the conditions. Lets see to it that the next batch of Scottish stars transcend being Scottish in the best Andy Murray tradition.

Sort of went off on a tangent with that one, oh well back to business, they also discussed referee performance, sorry think tank lads, are you all not a bit late for all that, should you not maybe have looked at the men in black (or more usually luminous yellow or blue, or red, or….) and their on field doings before giving them a wage hike earlier this year? Surely that would make sense. For me what doesn’t make sense is them asking for more money to do the same crap (or possibly now worse) job as they did last year and the year before for more money, was that not the opportune moment to say, yes we will increase your already pretty good second income wages but to earn it why not put it on a sliding scale of performance or something? You know? Make them perform to a high standard to get the bucks. But they didn’t and we are suffering the consequences. Killie sit top of the bad boy league in the news of the world and I cant see how, do we have a dirty player? I don’t think we do. We have plenty of petulant players certainly but its not all down to them, surely not. The referees are crap pure and simple.

Actually I don’t really believe that, I actually think that our games needs a good look at itself and when it does include the players, I think referees actually have it made harder for them by cheating players, take the penalty v Falkirk at rugby park earlier this season (I have wrung that particular incident for all its worth I feel, I use it as an example all the time when talking about players cheating, but I feel its justified, so there) the way he went down for the penalty didn’t make it easy for the referee, if the player had some morals and did the right thing then the ref would merely have to concentrate on refereeing the game rather than first having to decided if some player is trying to con him first. So players of Scottish, English, European and world football, stop bloody cheating because its making it hard for the refs and so affecting us as fans, it’s a vicious circle. (of sorts)

Or is it just me that thinks all that?

Sorry if that was all a bit general this issue but its pertinent to the here and now. Worry not readers, I will be back to writing of Killie issues such as strips and ways of improving attendances and other Ruud staples soon, just thought I would get some stuff off ma chest.

Cheers for reading.

Ruud Kerouac
Killie Beat Writer