It is disappointing, and frankly boring, that the Scottish football leagues should be renamed along the same lines as the English.
Not to mention hilarious that Alloa Athletic and Cowdenbeath will be competing for the Scottish Championship, a title formerly known more appropriately as the Second Division.
An opportunity has been missed for imaginative thinking by the Scottish football authorities. Yes, that was a sentence containing the phrases "Scottish football authorities" and "imaginative thinking".
The Scottish Premier League might have been called League Alba. It sounds classy and could be confused with other more interesting European divisions. It has the marketing advantage of not having the words "Scottish" or "football" in the title. There is the cultural benefit of matches being shown free of charge on BBC Alba.
League Alba will split halfway through the season with teams in the bottom Ochone section battling against relegation. The Och Aye clubs will play for the title and European places.
Some good old Scots words might have been pressed into service. Such as muckle and mickle. As you know, mony a mickle maks a muckle.
With sponsorship from a well-known housebuilding company we will hear announcers doing the classified results from the Mactaggart & Mickel Muckle Scottish League. Down in the Mactaggart & Mickel Mickle league there will be scores such as Forfar four, East Fife five. Which is nicely alliterative but not in the same class as Grampian football's most famous score Echt five, Fyvie echt.
There will be a pyramid structure of leagues on a geographical basis – the Diddy Division East, West and so on, inspired by the pejorative name for the Scottish League Cup competition.
Inevitably, some matches in the lower end of the pyramid will have attendances averaging three pensioners and a whippet. These leagues may be named after Jock Stein, the Celtic and Scotland manager who famously said that without the fans, football is just 22 players keeping fit.
The football authorities also missed the chance to integrate men's and women's teams.
The ladies would start out in the Big Lassies League but inevitably progress to challenge their male counterparts.
Some men's teams may be relegated to the wee lassies division. Or wifies as they will be known in Fife. They will look lovely in the new away blouse.
tom shields Bland football brands
on ...
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