BRAVEHEART SURGERY
How big do we have to write the words “greater good” on a billboard before our clubs stop driving past them because they’re so busy looking out for themselves?
It took Brian McClair four months of diligence, speaking to every voice he could hear in Scottish football, to establish what he perceived to be our problems.
Another four to come up with what he believed were solutions.
And five more to realise what a waste of time the first eight were as soon as he encountered the politics of trying to get things done.
The fact the SFA have lost their second Performance Director in little over a year shouldn’t be a reflection on McClair, more on the organisation who employed him to do a job then couldn’t give him the autonomy to see it through.
We’re forever being told that the clubs ARE the SFA, that they’re a members’ organisation.
So if that’s the case, if their leadership can’t inspire their own members to see that radical change has to happen, when we sit at the lowest ebb in our history in terms of both player development and results, when are they ever going to manage it?
Stewart Regan claimed McClair’s job had become untenable because he was spending more time being a politician than a coach.
But everyone knew his skill set, prodigious though it is, was missing what turned out to be the one component apparently essential to the job. Not the ability to recognise what needed changed but the silver tongue to persuade people to do it.
Surely that makes the employer rather than the employee culpable? When do we see the acceptance of responsibility for that?
He’s right on one thing. McClair was sick of it and other aspects of his role which he believed required change but never saw it forthcoming.
He understood perfectly where our game was failing though. As do so many of us.
Look back to MailSport’s Braveheart Surgery special in November and you’ll see it all in our manifesto for change.
The ridiculous over- population of our supposedly elite academy structure, with more than 70 per cent of the 3000 kids in there little more than jersey fillers.
A system made moribund by grant- based, box- ticking funding vastly outweighing incentive- based payments for measurable outcomes, leaving clubs reliant on handouts rather than focused on producing.
The blockage in the game between the ages of 17 and 21 which had seen first-team development and consistent appearances for young players at our clubs fall through the floor.
They’re things the former Manchester United Academy manager understood and his proposals reflected that.
But as soon as he made them, as soon as the clubs realised change meant them actually changing and maybe not all of it being for their benefit, he was done for.
He was given a working group, some high quality people, but every concession to a club’s needs became a dilution of the principles he was working to, a drop more water in the hard stuff.
Not every idea made the cut. His proposed draft system between Premiership and Championship clubs to get more Under-20s first-team experience