It’s time to walk the planks out of job to stop our ship sinking
An old history teacher of mine got an Aar-d time of it due to his resemblance to a pirate.
It certainly wasn’t due to his swashbuckling teaching style, more the menace he carried if you hadn’t done your homework and the fact we half expected him to have a parrot perched on his shoulder.
In the search for a silver lining in the midst of coronavirus, his classes, especially a lecture on the consequences of the Black Death, came to mind.
Our old ABC sea dog loved nothing more than a good old bubonic plague to get pupils engaged in all things 14th century. Not wishing to make light of a disease which wiped out 60 per cent of Europe’s population, there were positives to emerge in both cultural and social aspects of life.
It was followed by a medical revolution, wars were put on hold, people lived longer, the poor enjoyed a period of relative prosperity and there was less unemployment.
That’s the history lesson over but there are chinks of light to be taken from this dreadful period and applied to sport now.
Scottish football’s first shockwave hit a few months ago and the panic created an unseemly every man and woman for themselves mentality.
The economic earthquake has shaken clubs to their core and now we see the wage cuts and clearing of the decks as youth coaches, sports scientists and other auxiliary staff are made redundant.
Shrink to survive, slimline squads will become the norm, salaries will be brought down dramatically and elite sport will become survival of the fittest as chief executives look at every way to ease the financial pressure.
And smaller first-team numbers will provide a more realistic pathway for young players to progress as professionals rather than just chasing the usual pipe dream which ends in a development logjam, which has been the norm for decades.
A new reality is developing across the Premiership with the majority of clubs asking players to forego a portion of their salaries and take wage deferrals, or using the UK Government’s Job Retention Scheme to furlough staff.
The creation of new, more sensible financial models should be welcomed.
What this virus has done is to accelerate the boom and bust of our game which for too long has been overstretching itself.
And in many cases that short-term hand-to-mouth existence has been exposed a as a flawed and u unsustainable approach as fo football looks to m move forward.
We are seeing a n new-found c connection b between clubs a and supporters.
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That detachment had been allowed to grow as greed g gripped the game and fans were v viewed as a g gullible cash cow.
You can sense t the change, clubs a and fans rallying as one to ensure their team comes through this crisis.
The political landscape will also need to be changed for the better, the SPFL leadership has shown itself not to be fit for purpose.
Once the court threats and dramas have been concluded, a root-and-branch review of Scottish football stewardship must bulldoze the current set-up and create something so much better.
Neil Doncaster should start the ball rolling by walking the plank and others should follow.
So shiver me timbers and take heart, now the penny has dropped that our game is so much more than pieces of eight. ga nc ba Th ua