Game over

Most non-old Firm fans will roll their eyes at those lamenting Celtic potentially retaining their clean sweep of domestic trophies as “bad for the game”.

As ever, the real point is sidestepped: it matters not a fig if Rangers stop them in the Scottish Cup semis if they go on to win it themselves. It’s beyond overdue that Scottish journalism acknowledged the rotting elephant in the room which long ago died of old age and boredom.

From the inaugeration of Scotland’s football league in 1890, only three seasons out of 128 have seen neither of the Old Firm winning one of the three major trophies (for the record 1894/95, 1951/52 and 1954/55) – no other nation displays such a shocking degree of inbalance in its professional football domestic system.

The bankrupcy of Rangers (which equally dented Celtic’s coffers from the lost quarterly derby revenues) proved a false dawn for our game with overall attendances rising as other clubs for the first time in a century saw winning one of the three national trophies as a realistic aspiration.

The return of “the natural order” has proven the last straw: many fans electing for English football on TV as a better use of their precious leisure time and money than their local forlorn hope. It’s now commonplace for today’s children to support English clubs but no Scottish ones – encouraged by parents wanting also to remove them from the social problems association with the Old Firm brings.

Economic history proves no consumer market can realistically be expected to survive such stifling of competition – yet the authorities see this hegemonic duopoly as a good thing, and hence the inevitable slow death of Scottish professional domestic football over the next two decades.

MARK BOYLE Linn Park Gardens, Johnstone