The SFL sits on its hands and grumbles

The Scottish Football League is not exactly a proactive organisation. It's the oldest football league in the world, and it acts like it wishes it was still 1890. Surprisingly, they do have a website, but it is clearly the website of an organisation that resents the invention of computers and wants to punish the people who use them - it's ugly, hard to navigate and out of date.

Rather than try and modernise, then, the SFL have their own way of dealing with today's fast-paced world: moan about it.

Take, for example, their reaction last week to the announcement that the Scottish Premier League, who broke away from the SFL in 1998, want to invite another 10 teams into the fold, to create an SPL2.

"I'm very disappointed. This has all been done very quickly", moaned the SFL president, John Smith. He went on to suggest that the proposal to create an SPL2 had been a complete surprise to his organisation. The SFL secretary, Peter Donald, didn't go that far (probably because trying to claim they were surprised by the announcement was ridiculous) but he, too, was shocked at just how quickly everything had happened. "Football is looking for instant solutions to financial challenges", he surmised.

Let's make it clear: last week's announcement was neither surprising, nor sudden. There have been proposals knocking around to create an SPL2 for at least 5 years. Many of the clubs in the second tier of Scottish football (currently SFL Division One) have been complaining that the current financial position is unsustainable for a lot longer than that. At the beginning of this summer, a few of them launched proposals for changing the structure of lower league football. And if none of that was enough to get the SFL off its arse, there is currently no league sponsor and the proposed TV deal with Setanta isn't finalised, meaning there is no money coming in.

The message isn't that hard to understand: SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE.
There is a chance - just a chance - that the SFL might wake up soon and realise this, before they are cut out of the picture altogether. But don't hold your breath.

What we have at the moment is a proposal that meets the short term needs of those Division One clubs, and provides a little more income for the SPL, with some vague thoughts about what might happen to rest. Naked self-interest, then, but that's to be expected. Left to their own devices, clubs will always look out for themselves. What is needed is someone to rethink Scottish football at every level, and come up with a long term strategy. Anyone? anyone?