Charles Bannerman

This is a slight aside HD, but I'd be interested to hear what you mean by that? Do you mean that the Dees should have got rid of Barry Smith and brought in Bomber Brown earlier? Or are there other factors, given what Dundee have shown they can do more recently? I know I was very critical of Dundee a few years ago during the second administration, but that whole set of values and norms has subsequently been upended with the more recent example of a club getting hugely into debt, using unjust insolvency laws to walk away from that before snapping up its own assets for a song whilst cherrypicking the bits of its previous existence it wants and conveniently ignoring the rest. All of this, of course, whilst still continuing to suck away a large slice of the money circulating in Scotland for football purposes. Oh, and I assume that your turn of phrase in the second quoted passage should be taken largely metaphorically?

Agent N... I would beg to disagree 100% and suggest the complete opposite. You imply Rangers and Celtic are the solution to the problem. I would put it to you in total contrast that Rangers and Celtic actually ARE the problem and that they have historically stifled competition from other clubs. Scottish football is struggling for viability because so much of the cash circulating in it is going into the coffers at Ibrox and Celtic Park. Within a population base of just 5 million, there's not enough left for much else to survive at any significant level. However Rangers and Celtic disappearing off to England, for instance, wouldn't solve the problem since the money would still follow them. I'm afraid Scottish football is stuck with this situation since you can't unmake Rangers and Celtic in the form in which they exist - unless you can renegotiate the Anglo Irish Treaty and undo the Reformation!! So you can fiddle about with league structure as much as you like. It really won't make any significant difference since there is no solution to the core problem of Old Firm hegemony. I also don't think the negative factors you point to are a result of Rangers being in the Third Division this season. My own view is that from the perspective of the other 11 SPL clubs apart from Celtic, this has actually been a rather better season than normal. OK, there has been no competition for the league title but that isn't any concern of these other 11 clubs and anyway nothing has really changed there - once again it has been won by an OF club. But on the other hand the other clubs have been going to Celtic Park or entertaining Celtic with a greater hope of taking something from them this season, there was an absolutely wonderful scrap for top six places, the battle is still not over in terms of who finishes second and there is an extra European place for one of these other 11 clubs.

Thank you very much Naelifts boy! Consider your 100 lines for offensive chanting cancelled! However I fear that "ditching the Old Firm" isn't a solution either. They exist in their current over inflated form and will continue to do so wherever they play such as in England. So they will continue to carry their very large support and destructively large cash grabbing capacity with them wherever they are. The Old Firm are simply a phemonenon of Scottish society and Irish politics which won't just go away. Scottish football is stuck with this potentially fatal component. So I fear there is NO solution to this problem of the Scottish game. I think what is happening is that in the current era, a number of factors such as the televised alternative and an even greater polarising effect due to the "gloryhunting" principle as people's expectations increase, are making much smaller units outwith the Old Firm progressively less viable. There simply isn't enough residual cake left for much else to survive. It's the classic Monopoly situation. The Old Firm have got their hotels on Mayfair and Park Lane so the other clubs, with at best a house or two on Trafalgar Square, or worse still the mere owners of Old Kent Road, don't have much of a chance. The scales are progressively tipping against them and "passing GO and collecting £200" (ie the £1.3M on offer) isn't going to make a huge amount of difference either.

What teams 13-24 will get is pennies in the context of trying to run a full time football club. It's window dressing! "Level playingfield"? Yerjokeenmun! In a situation where Celtic are annually turning over of the order of SIXTEEN TIMES as much, for instance, as ICT and even Rangers in the Third Division will be several times as much as well, you're trying to say that the reallocation of £1.3 million creates a level playingfield??? Also, somebody tried to suggest that all leagues have a couple of teams bigger than the others. I'd struggle to find one where two are so massively bigger and in the face of a small population base. Or can anyone else tell me where I can find a league based in a population of 5 million where there are two clubs drawing crowds of the order of approaching 50,000 while several other teams in the same league are averaging around 4000, and with corresponding disproportion from other commercial activities? I am genuinely open to being educated on this one.

12-12-18..... 12-10-10-10....14-14-14..... it's actually largely irrelevant. What has been under discussion today is nothing more than a rearrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic. It's the basic product that's fundamentally dysfunctional as a result of two clubs, artificially enhanced in size because they are the focal point of west central Scotland's religious and Irish political divide, sucking in such a large percentage of the game's resources. People are getting terribly excited about the £1.3 million that would be handed down to the First Division. Better than a slap in the chops, but wait a minute... £1.3 million is LESS THAN 3% of Celtic's annual turnover of £52 million! It's also roughly the prize money for finishing 7th in the SPL. So compared with the kind of cash the Old Firm deal in... and that is the problem... £1.3 million, divided among 10 clubs, is little more than farting into a hurricane. It's less than ICT's drop off in turnover the season they were relegated. Quite simply, in the current era of football economics, wage expectations, broadcast deals etc etc, I believe that there is NO model where a population of 5 million can sustain a viable number of full time clubs alongside two which are turning over what the Old Firm suck out of the system. There simply isn't enough cash left for the other clubs when so many football fans and their money disappear from Scotland's towns and cities to Ibrox and Celtic Park. So I'm afraid I just have to return to my original suggestion that there is NO viable solution to this problem.

Very controversial! Cove's only goal of the game came from a dubious penalty for hand ball which also led to Clach's Colin Williamson getting a red card. This may have killed Clach's title chances but with Wick losing and Nairn drawing, the balance towards the end of this season where the North clubs seemed to be making a big breakthrough seems to have swung back towards Aberdeenshire, where Cove and title favourites Formartine seem to have moved into pole position. Thoroughly enjoyable day at Grant Street as ever, though - and it was relatively warm for the first time for months!!

So what time is kick off at Kingsmills Park this afternoon?

Cheers Mantis. I always get Whitehill and Annan mixed up!

Not quite. SOME Clachers dislike ICT (sic) but there is also a lot of empathy. For instance you will very frequently find the Clach committee boys in the ICT (sic!) Social Club on a Saturday night and a number of their supporters. Since their own unfortunately had to be sold, the ICT (sic ) Club has almost become a new Clach Club.

Was it Whitehill who had the temerity to score first at the Caledonian Stadium in the Cup several years ago before losing 8-1? I always get mixed up with these non league teams down there - apart from Gala Fairydean because of Chairman Matt Hall's intransigence when CT was in its infancy and Spartans because everybody remembers Spartans!

Thoroughly to be recommended! What a performance just a couple of years after leaving administration!

Would there not be a wonderful irony if the absurdity which is the 11-1 were to be what eventually sank 12-12-18 if two of the "lesser lights" (no disrespect to st Mirren and - subject to tomorrow's board meeting - Ross County there) decided to vote against it. A refreshing case of a silly rule brought in for the protection of the big clubs being exploited by the smaller ones. "Gloriously hoist by their own petard" was the expression I used elsewhere.

I'm not in favour of 12-12-18 but basically I'm not sure there is ANY suitable format for a football market the size of Scotland's which includes two clubs which are sucking in a disproportionately large slice of it due to the unrealistically inflated "supports" they enjoy because they are the focal points for the opposing factions within west central Scotland's divided society. There simply isn't enough remaining cake to go round the other clubs to retain more than a token presence of full time football without the likes of what has happened to Dunfermline, Livingston, Motherwell and Dundee. Rangers are a somwhat different case but, although not (yet?) in administration, you could also add Hearts. And there but for the grace of God...... Because it was the early stages of embracing full time football which saw Caley Thistle on the verge of administration in 1999. The hugely distorting effect of the Old Firm is a major element in Scottish football's ongoing failure to find a viable and acceptable structural model.

I've just seen Nigel Lawson on the TV. He now looks more like his Spitting Image puppet than his Spitting Image puppet ever did!

For your information, just before 6pm the SPL issued a statement to the effect that since they were still in discussion with broadcast partners and police, the fixture list is unlikely to be issued today. Ironically the Highland League fixtures to the end of the season, including options to cover who may or may not reach the HL Cup Final, were issued at 5pm today.

Progress indeed. I have open in front of me Ian Broadfoot's ringbound volume of match reports for the first two years 1994-96. It is at the page "Saturday 20th August 1994 - Caledonian Thistle 0 Queens Park 4. Bell's Scottish League Third Division." which was CT's first league defeat. The crowd was1500 which by the turn of the year would drop to under 1000. The CT team that day was McRitchie, Brennan, McAllister, Hercher (MacMillan), Scott, Andrew, D. MacDonald, MacKenzie, Noble, Bennett (Hastings), Robertson. Unused - Gray. One week later there was a Third Division record crowd of 3157 in Dingwall for a scoreline of Ross County 1 Caledonian Thistle 3 which included nine yellow cards and two red (Gary Campbell of County and Mike Andrew of CT.)

Do you not mean another word that sounds a little bit like "prophetic"?

Scotty, your comments have, as always, been very reasonable and there's possibly not much more I can add to them given my status as a humble freelance (ie non staff) contributor to the BBC. I don't therefore know the basis of this season's changes any better than those who heard Richard announce them on Sportsound some months ago. I don't know either what the listener figures were for the various commentaries. But do remember that the Radio Scotland/ online slice of the Saturday afternoon audience was presumably being split several ways among Open All Mics and typically four or five live commentaries, either online or on air or both, some of these only going on air to local areas (Highlands, Grampian and formerly Gretnaland). As a result, the size of audiences in relation to the costs involved may have had to be looked at. I would also add that other functions such as post match interviews, online updates and online match reports, which directly or indirectly depended on having a commentary team at games, have been maintained by other means. I would actually agree that in an era of global football the SPL, with the kind of crowds it gets, can hardly be called a "top tier" league and hence it gets relatively generous media coverage as a whole. I am also interested that you have been able to confirm that the veto of certain individual SPL clubs is the reason for the withdrawal of certain online services outwith the UK.

Scotty I'm just pointing out that I think the BBC's coverage of what you define as not a "top tier" league - possibly justifably given that attendances are frequently less than 5000 - remains pretty substantial across radio, TV and online. I am aware that there is an issue about some online services being "geoblocked" but am not familiar with the reasons for that and, for instance, whether this is at the insistence of some individual clubs.

Until this season there had been a commentary team at all SPL games, which also meant that virtually all ICT games kicking off at 3pm on a Saturday could be heard online, on air within the Highlands and Islands and sometimes across the entire Radio Scotland network. As observed, live commentaries at 3pm on Saturdays have been reduced this season to one game. That, as far as I am aware, is the only cut. However the BBC does still offer Open All Mics as an integral part of seven hours of sport coverage on a Saturday afternoon, The Results Programme on BBC 1 Scotland, online text updates, online match reports and post match interviews, online video highlights which are also broadcast on air on Sportscene, and from BBC Alba there is one game per week shown "as live" or occasionally "honest to God" live, with ICT figuring fairly prominently there. But I suppose there is a limit as to what can be done within the two quid odd a week licence fee paid by UK based BBC users......

Sorry chaps, I don't know much about the online side of things but I can confirm that Sportsound will be coming live from the Caledonian Stadium on Friday right through until 10pm with Richard Gordon, Scott Davie, John Robertson, Billy Dodds and Jim Spence and full commentary of ICT v St Johnstone. That should be 810 medium wave and I expect online as well.

Stewart Speed! I didn't realise he was old enough to have been an assistant manager by that time. And indeed Evelix was some mansion back in those days when "message boys" were known in Inverness as "bowshers"!

Nae me anyway, I'm in Magdeburg, fecking gutted at missing the game Are we not now safely in top six slot after Hibs being beaten last night? So you won't be in the ICT Social Club with your great granddaughter tonight then will you Michael?

I don't want to take this thread off topic so probably the best way of putting this is to say that those who are unable to be among whatever the attendance is can get live commentary on BBC Radio Scotland 103.5-105FM in addition to Robbo on Open All Mics on 92-95FM.

So this will be the Local Government on which the SNP is currently imposing a Council Tax freeze and hence preventing it from providing adequate local services? It rather more looks to me as if the SNP actually wants to cut both Westminster and local authorities out of the equation and concentrate all the power on itself in Edinburgh.