SCOTTISH Football Fans for Independence are involved with the emerging fan-led counterculture described in Gerry Hassan’s article in the Sunday National (Still the people's game?) Through voicing our opposition to the tyranny of self-interest facilitated by the SPFL we are also developing a fans’ charter, and have the intention of canvassing football fans on their views and aspirations for a post-Covid football world, with league reconstruction and a new governance model implemented that will take the professional game forward.
An independent Scotland must have a professional football structure that is based on maximising our potential in an equitable way, putting the health of grassroots football and wellbeing of the nation at the centre of our approach. No longer management and governance by self-interest and personal glorification but a national sport working with our communities and for the glory of the game.
Gerry Hassan’s Sunday special was a great read, and our indy fans group will play their part in the struggle for fans to take control of the process of change and ensure that as key stakeholders we will no longer be treated with contempt. We cannot sit back and allow our clubs to be abused by a membership organisation that oversees alliances of self-interest without consideration of the views and needs of the fans and has no understanding of the role of football clubs in their communities.
READ MORE: Is football still the people's game? Gerry Hassan on how fans can reform the sport
Stenhousemuir are cited in the article and others like the Partick Thistle Charitable Trust have taken on the functions of the third sector throughout this pandemic, delivering food parcels and providing social contact to counter isolation, loneliness, and the deterioration of mental health. These types of clubs perform this role on an ongoing basis and so they have become an integral part of their communities’ support networks. These two clubs however are currently prevented from playing any football, largely due to the faults and misdemeanours of their peers in the top league and the frail and inadequate panic management of the SPFL and SFA.
In recent history emergency Scottish Government Covid grants were distributed to the Scottish senior clubs. The elite clubs like Alloa Athletic get three seasons’ worth of free money, ie £0.5 million, to run their part-time club who have no social or community programme, yet Partick Thistle, a lower league entity, get a grant of £150,000 to run their full-time operation and subsidiary community and charitable provisions.
As acknowledged in Gerry Hassan’s article, those clubs outwith the elite divisions have been thrown under a bus and in Partick Thistle’s case they had not quite managed to get to their feet after their squashing under the steam road roller that the same administration threw them under back in April 2020. It might also be worth considering what contingency plans the SPFL/SFA have in place in case this season cannot be completed, or is that tempting another double decker bus to be travelling head on at them at high speed?
We need to build a fans counterculture. This hanging onto the coat tails of the Old Firm with the undignified scramble for the crumbs thrown from their dinner table is unacceptable and sustains this rotten system. Playing each club four times is tedious, repetitive, and boring, the undermining of the viability of full-time professional clubs is a form of collective self-harm and the continued exclusion of any meaningful fan involvement will alienate thousands of customers. There is a complimentary membership available to Gerry Hassan if he would like to get in touch with Scottish Football Fans for Independence (We demand league reconstruction).
Chick Hosie
Scottish Football Fans for Independence
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