Keep footie local

A British football league is a fantasy pipe dream of arch unionists (Letters, 19 September) and it will never happen as English clubs don’t want to import the sectarian baggage of the two big Glasgow clubs or give up any part of their gravy train.

The money in English football is obscene but Scottish football, as part of the UK, gets a raw deal from all the TV companies when pro rata attendances and viewing figures are taken into account, and particularly compared to Norway or Austria, where local leagues also have to compete against live English and German football broadcasts. Only a handful of teams in Europe can compete with the Qatari oil wealth investment in Paris Saint-germain, and Scottish clubs would do better in Europe and increase TV revenues if they switched to a March to November season so that they are fully match fit to compete in the early rounds of European football.

Under a British league no Scottish club would play in European football for at least a decade and, like me, most Hearts fans much prefer local rivalries to glamorous trips to Colchester or Scunthorpe as part of a British lower league set up.

FRASER GRANT Warrender Park Road, Edinburgh