IT is likely that there will be no more professional football played this season so we need to wind that up somehow and then work out how the next season is structured. Perhaps it’s time for some innovation in respect of the tired four-tier leagues numbering 12 then 3x10 teams apiece.
It may be fair enough to reward the current league leaders with the 2019/20 titles, but relegation is totally unfair. So, for one season only (or maybe not, if we like it) let’s go forward to the past and restore big leagues, which will give us some surprises through unfamiliarity plus end-of-season excitement with top teams facing up to the desperate relegation contenders.
READ MORE: Coronavirus: Scotland's football clubs warned they could go bust
Not having leagues split with a handful of games left would in my opinion be truly marvellous.
Three leagues sounds about right to me. If they comprised 18 teams each, we would need to introduce 12 top junior teams into the professional ranks. Top amateur sides would then enter the junior ranks. But maybe we won’t have time for 34 league games, so a 16-team league set-up would result in a 30-game league season and six sides stepping up from the junior ranks.
I seem to remember that Rangers fans enjoyed most of their journey up through the lower leagues and it was very refreshing to have only occasional Celtic v Rangers over-hyped games littering the season. And doesn’t Arbroath v Aberdeen sounds an intriguing local derby to open the campaign next season?
The Scottish football product is obviously flawed and the money men have taken over from the fans and the players – the genuine footballing people. If we improve the product in terms of excitement and interest, our standards might improve too. Creativity please – back to the future.
David Crines
Hamilton
FROM adversity comes opportunity. With the suspension of the football league, we have the chance of looking forward to the sort of competition we’d like to see. Let us put the past behind us and start again with a league that every club has a chance of winning and being relegated from; where club officials can concentrate on the quality of play and bringing forward youngsters to the best of their ability; free of religious bigotry and the history of internecine antagonism. To do so would require a salary cap and a profit share. But clubs can become focal points for all their communities rather than just part of them.
Ian Richmond
Springfield
IN response to Mr Cameron’s column (New PR chief out of kilter for club supposedly for all, March 18), it has to be said that methinks he defends the Rangers just that bit too much.
I’ m a Celtic fan, brought up by parents who never had a bone of sectarianism in their body. I’ve carried that on in my life while experiencing terrible anti-Catholic/Celtic/Irish discrimination.
READ MORE: Neil Cameron: Jim Traynor's replacement is a Rangers PR disaster
As a young boy, many years ago, I was gifted as a footballer. I played at quite a high level in school football. I always found it difficult to reconcile football with religion as a young boy. During that time it was always mentioned that even Pele couldn’t get into the Rangers team because of his religion.
There is NO difference in the thuggish element within the Celtic/the Rangers group, there is no difference between the good ordinary football-loving fans either, but – and it’s a big but (no joke intended) – the anti-Catholic policy at Ibrox for most of their history sucked in many ordinary working-class people to believe that sectarianism was acceptable and Celtic/Catholic/Irish people were aliens or foreign to this country.
I’m sure Neil must accept that the Irish diaspora were not accepted in this country as they were in the USA or Canada or Australia, and the Rangers played on and exploited that kind of belief.
While Neil is correct in many aspects of his article, he must be open to the idea tgat what this club advocated and practised, and may still covertly practice, has caused and encouraged bitterness.
D Gill
Kinross
IF you keep getting the paper out, I’ll keep walking down to Blantyre Asda to buy it. Oh for the days when Corona was just an English brand of fizzy lemonade.
Hope all the panic buyers choke on it (including the toilet rolls). There wouldn’t BE any shortages if it wasn’t for those whose brains seem to be fu...fu...functionless!
Barry Stewart
Blantyre
WELL, we’re now told to keep contact with each other to a minimum, quite rightly in the present pandemic. We can all do our own little things to reduce the chance of acquiring this virus.
I’ve come up with a brilliant ploy regarding The National, I’ll buy six of them on a Monday and then don’t need to go to the newsagent again until Sundays!! (Hey, come on, let’s keep the humour going in these serious times).
Ian Heggie
Glenrothes
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