SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER
TV blackout of Rangers v Hearts and Dee v Dons at 6pm up against Strictly is ridiculous
IT might have gone a bit quiet on the Covid front as life gradually gets back to normal and restrictions are lifted.
But there’s still plenty of folk who are being forced to stay in the house with 2000 new cases a day making sure a huge chunk of the country remains in quarantine.
At some point most of us have been stuck behind closed doors but if there’s one thing we’ve got used to in the last 18 months, it’s sitting on the couch with the feet up.
We’ve also got used to having pretty much everything we want to watch available at the press of a button.
Except Scottish football it seems. We’ve been left like wee Oliver Twist when it comes to feeding our desires to tune in to our national obsession, constantly begging for more.
What the heck is going on here?
This weekend is huge. The domestic game is back after the international break, it’s straight down to business with some tasty fixtures.
Yet armchair fans would be as well staring at the walls.
Rangers are involved in a top of the table clash with Hearts. Not on the box. Celtic are at Motherwell, no telly involved.
There’s one match being broadcast over the entire weekend.
It’s Aberdeen’s trip down the A90 at Dundee with a 6pm kick-off – and it’s not even being broadcast in this country. Dave Cormack is hoping a few of his American chums tune in to the pay per view while the rest of us will be left with Strictly Come Dancing.
When it comes to our games on telly we’ve been told to Foxtrot Oscar.
The whole thing is bonkers. The rest of Planet Football are grumbling about having too much football on TV, too many kick-offs moved, too much inconvenience for fans going to games.
We’ve got the opposite problem. We don’t get enough games screened to meet the demand. This is not knocking Sky by the way.
They get some grief but they put on a good show and the Scottish game is always pretty high up in the cycles on Sky Sports News.
But there’s just not enough live matches. The previous deal with Sky and BT Sports got us 60 games a season.
Now it’s down to 48. It might mean more dosh per game but it also leaves us turning elsewhere when all eyes should be on the SPFL.
There is no need for it. This is 2021 for goodness sake. Don’t give us the nonsense about the good old days of Sportscene and Scotsport back in the day.
We loved those shows but the actual coverage they got was guff.
It’s a shame it’s not much better now. People don’t put up with this nonsense in this day and age and broadcasters moan about folk turning to dodgy streams.
Can you blame them?
It’s going to get worse as well. Clubs are still flogging games on a match by match basis right now due to Covid but that’s not going to last.
It’ll be back to normal soon enough and back to blackout.
But what about this weekend? How long can we put up with this nonsense Old Firm diktat about not showing games from Ibrox and Parkhead?
We’re meant to be showcasing our game, not hiding away the good stuff.
Rangers v Hearts is a blockbuster on Saturday. It deserves to be on television. It deserves a wider audience as it’s not just Gers fans and Jambos interested.
Yet it’s under lock and key as it’s not one of the four games allowed to be shown from one of our best stadiums.
Even the 3pm Saturday blackout is no excuse any more. UEFA gave the green light to bin it a while back but only us, England and – weirdly – Macedonia, keep it going, and England are going to get shot of it soon.
If an alien hitched a lift back from space with William Shatner and got a taste for Irn Bru, fish suppers and Scottish fitba, they’d find it easier to master interstellar travel than how we present our game.
ET would be wondering if he’d crashed into the 1980s as while the rest of the world have demands met at their fingertips, we’re still putting the hands out and pleading for more.