On the day that the English Premiership announced a £5bn plus television deal Roy MacGregor has predicted that part-time players could soon feature in Scotland’s top flight.
The Ross County chief has generally been one of the more independent thinkers in the game, steering his club through the divisions without artificially bloating the club with his own personal wealth. Despite his success on and off the park MacGregor has never been invited into the decision making corridors of the game.
The continuing presence of Stewart Regan, Neil Doncaster and Campbell Ogilvie casts a shadow over the game for most supporters despite the upsurge in interest and success at a number of clubs particularly along the east coast.
Appointing an ambitious and trustworthy management team to govern the game would be a massive step away from the horrors of 2012 and make the Scottish game a more progressive and welcoming environment for sponsors and broadcasters.
Sadly it seems that there is no real appetite for change in the boardrooms of our clubs with MacGregor gloomy about the direction that the sport is moving in
“The number of full-time players in Scotland is diminishing the whole time, you’re going to see part-time football in the Premier League within two or three years,” the Ross County owner predicted.
“It’s definitely coming, it’s just straightforward economics. The fan bases are not there any more and if you don’t entertain, eventually the quality will get less and the finances worse.
“The players of talent will either play for the biggest clubs in Scotland or go to England. The scenario of part-time teams in the Premiership is where it’s heading if, as a football nation, we don’t get crowds through the gates and get our act together.”
There is little scope for increasing crowds at Scottish clubs- Ross County, St Johnstone, St Mirren and Motherwell are never going to sell 5,000 season tickets whatever they do.
What the clubs can do is install a management or commercial team that can promote the game and bring in imaginative deals that can add significantly to the money coming in to every club.
With Sky Sports and BT Sport paying £10m per game for Premiership football why shouldn’t the SPFL negotiating team go looking for a £50m a season deal from the same companies that rely heavily on subscriptions from Scottish viewers. The club finishing bottom of the Premier League in 2017 will get £99m for failing!
An exclusive television deal with one company should be the minimum demand from the authorities as they scrap for the crumbs from the broadcasters table.
Anyone who watched the bang average fare between Burnley, West Brom, Stoke and Newcastle on Super Sunday ought to be able to come up with a competitive Scottish package that doesn’t involve two Friday night Aberdeen v Motherwell telly disasters.
Avoiding the obvious disconnection between supporters and those in charge of the game MacGregor speculated over the issues affecting Scottish football.
“There have been a number of causes,” he suggested. “The increased financial discipline of clubs has affected the brand and you can see that in the way we can’t even get ?a sponsor.
“My own belief is it will still be difficult to get a sponsor as long as Rangers behave the way they have been. We’re not projecting ourselves as businesses that can self-manage ourselves (as designed by the Five Way Agreement).
“There are good things happening when you look in certain quarters. Hearts, for me, are one club that have gone and identified where they got it wrong and then rebuilt.
“All the benefits of rebuilding last year have really given them momentum, especially with the younger players this year. So out of all the bad, sometimes comes good.”
Working on the good things happening along the east coast from Pittodrie to Tynecastle and in pockets elsewhere, such as Inverness, Falkirk and Dumfries together with a new regime inside Hampden might just give the game a badly needed boost.