As a nation Scotland has lofty ambitions to become a footballing force in Europe again. Indeed on the surface we would appear to be well on the way to achieving this long lost position. As evidence the so called experts would cite, a resurgent national team, increased success at club level in European competition and the emergence of a new generation of home grown and broadly home based talent.
However, if we were to scratch the surface are we in fact the perfect example of the building which was based on poor foundations ? Are just deluding ourselves in the hope that if we ignore what is going wrong in our game it will simply go away or get better on it's own ?
The last few weeks have given us the stark evidence that all is most certainly not well in the garden of Scottish professional football. In our top division we have a team that is flat broke, a ground that is unusable if it even threatens to rain, a club who seem to have more players who belong to a foreign club than their own. We all could no doubt add our own examples.
It is when these failings hit our own club directly, particularly when there is no more Champions League, that our awareness and indignation rises. Late postponements, fixture congestion, poor administration from the governing bodies all stop becoming minor irritants and begin to take on problems of significant proportion. If it has that effect on us, can we begin to imagine how it must look to the elite in Europe we aspire to be part of ?
The sad thing in all of this is that the current predicament could have easily been resolved if the governing bodies had taken stronger action to prevent them, indeed even if they had stuck to their own so called "rules". As always though in Scottish football expediency rules.
Now we have the inevitable hand wringing and gnashing of teeth across the land, scapegoats being sought and even our own manager this very morning talking about the state of the "product" in Scotland. I agree with Gordon the perception of our game outwith this land of ours has taken a battering which could easily have been avoided. It is not as though anyone thought Gretna would last more than a season in the SPL, that Fir Park doubles as a swimming pool or indeed that Kaunas players love life in Edinburgh as opposed to Vilnius, is it ?
So what is to be done to restore some much need pride and make our game more attractive to sponsors, TV companies but most importantly to you and I the ordinary pay as we go fan ?
Simple really, take the issues head on and address them directly, make rules that are adhered too consistently, even if they are unpopular, and simplify the decision making structures of the game in Scotland. In effect plan for the future to support the achievement of what should be our common objective, the promotion of our game at home and abroad. Do we believe that is likely in our current setup with the people we have in the positions of power ? I, sadly have my doubts.