The year ending will go down as the one where Scottish football banished the Armageddon fears voiced in the summer of 2012.
As the year draws to a close there is silverware in the boardrooms of Aberdeen and St Johnstone while Dundee United, Kilmarnock, Hearts and Aberdeen don’t have to make themselves scarce when the bank manager comes calling.
In the final domestic fixture of the year 6,614 watched Peter Pawlett score the only goal of the game against Inverness Caley Thistle as Aberdeen moved to within two points of Celtic, when Ronny Deila’s side visited Inverness in August the attendance was 5,862.
With the chance to edge ahead of Celtic on offer on Thursday Pittodrie is expected to host a crowd close to 20,000 for the visit of St Johnstone with three European ties earlier in the season drawing an aggregate attendance of over 50,000.
Aberdeen sold out their allocation of tickets for Inverness as they had for their previous away match at Tannadice.
With the Scottish game finally taking place on a level playing field supporters are rediscovering the feeling of hope even if suspicions of the motives of the governing bodies remain on high alert.
Watching Kilmarnock, St Mirren and St Johnstone lift trophies in the last three seasons has shown what is possible at clubs whose home attendances rarely stretch beyond 5,000.
As the shambles at Ibrox implodes there is plenty of life elsewhere in the Scottish game with yesterday’s attendances showing that the need for ‘a strong Rangers’ is as much a fantasy as link-ups with the Dallas Cowboys and kit deals with adidas.
Yesterday McDairmid Park hosted 7,384 supporters to watch a re-run of the Scottish Cup Final with St Johnstone winning this match 2-1. After staging two Eurpoa League qualifiers and selling Stevie May for close to £1m St Johnstone’s outlook and finances have been transformed.
Perhaps the most obvious example of Armageddon being banished was at Livingstone as Hearts stretched their lead at the top of the Championship to 15 points.
Four days after taking 3,000 fans to Cowdenbeath Hearts took double that amount to Livingston yesterday, swelling the attendance to 8,178 that’s up by over 2,000 who attended the visit of Sevco in October.
As Barry Hearn pointed out recently Scottish football badly needs a shake, fresh blood and ideas and an energy to promote the game positively- perhaps in 2015 those far fetched notions will finally breeze through the corridors of power at Hampden Park.
Hibs 4-0 Sevco
Premiership highlights of 27 & 28 December