We were light years ahead of Iceland once

IT’S not been a good year for our national teams in football and rugby.

In the round-ball game we failed to qualify automatically for Euro 2020. And in the Rugby World Cup we missed out on a quarter-final place.

What can we do about the situation? Well, one of the smaller nations in Europe had an even worse record but found a way to improve matters.

Iceland is a country with a population of 335,000 and by the end of last century had never qualified for either a World Cup finals or a European Championship finals.

The Icelandic FA decided to do something about the situation. With the TV money coming in from UEFA, they set up a scheme to train coaches and now has 600 qualified coaches, 400 with UEFA B licences, or one per 825 people.

Clubs and local authorities joined together to build large indoor football pitches all over the country. The halls are heated, open to all and staffed by qualified coaches.

And Iceland has done something extraordinary with schools football. The FA bought land next to the schools and erected artificial pitches, there to be used by all ages of pupil at all hours after school.

The result of all this has been to raise the interest in football and it has certainly helped the quality of play, Iceland having qualified for its first Euro finals in 2016 and its first World Cup finals in 2018, the smallest nation to reach that stage.

There is no reason why these facilities couldn’t also be used for rugby, hockey or even cricket.

I recall my own children trying to control a ball on freezing cold nights and hope my grandchildren will have much better facilities in their era.

There is one new idea we embraced long before the likes of Iceland – 141 years ago yesterday Third Lanark had invited Vale of Leven to play a match under lights.

These were the early days of electricity and the ‘lights’ amounted to a single beam shining down from a platform 50 feet above the ground.

The operator of the light must have been in a very precarious position as he tried to follow the ball. So a lot of the match was played in darkness but goals did arrive, Thirds winning 2-1.

Not the most auspicious of circumstances – but beat that, Reykjavik!