THIS week's fixtures row was just so avoidable.
I can picture SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster sitting in a wee room with secretary Iain Blair and the other fixtures people, thinking this is what we have come up with. But I don't think they can have thought through the various scenarios, or the consequences of their actions.
I can understand Hibs having a wee moan about the fact they were asked to play their last-day fixtures 24 hours before Hearts versus Rangers. Imagine that was a Rangers-Celtic situation, if both Glasgow teams were going for the title and it meant Celtic knew what they had to do or vice versa.
Rangers and Hibs are fighting it out for that second spot in the championship and that could be vital. So I just can't understand the SPFL trying to make Hearts and Rangers play on the last day with Hibs playing on the Saturday. Even your common punter in the street knows that is not on. It is crazy. The SPFL have seen the light now but it is far too late.
The one time I remember being in the situation of everybody kicking off at the same time was when I got relegated with St Johnstone in 1994. We beat Motherwell 1-0, but ended up going down by one goal. I am sure it was Partick Thistle who stayed up but you don't have to go back as far as that.
Everybody remembers May 2005 when Celtic played at Kilmarnock and Rangers played Dunfermline on the last day with the SPL title at stake, when every goal became significant.
It was the same in 1986, when live TV might not have been there but the drama was. Celtic won 5-1 at St Mirren and won the league because Dundee beat Hearts.
You could even look at England three years ago, when Manchester United's match had finished minutes before two late Manchester City goals against QPR won them the Barclays Premier League title. Who wouldn't want that kind of climax?
I don't want to ridicule the SPFL but we still have a lot to learn from the professionalism down in England. There is huge money at stake there but it is still rare that a team has a go about fixtures, or play-off schedules. Each team in the championship has 46 games to get through but still they can manage to get the league season done by the start of May, so they can build up to a one-off showpiece match at Wembley.
Sometimes I think the SPFL and the SFA tend to over-complicate things, which causes them to make the wrong decisions. That is when all the furore kicks off. If you have it all sorted at the start of the season there is more of a transparency. Everybody knows what they are playing for.
Let's face it: the Scottish play-offs should have been done at the start of the season. Everybody knows the play-offs are still a work in progress, that the teams in the Premier League weren't wearing it unless it totally favoured them, and hopefully in time we get that corrected.
I would make our final a one-off too and ideally take it to Hampden or another neutral venue. Let's say you ended up with Rangers and Motherwell. You can't tell me that isn't going to fill Hampden for a one-off showpiece. But to be here, a matter of weeks before the conclusion of the season, still not knowing when the competition is going to end is a nonsense. Why could they not make a couple more midweek cards, just to get championship games out of the way?
Things could have been so much worse for the SPFL if Falkirk hadn't beaten Hibs in the Scottish Cup semi- final yesterday. This year more than others, there was a fair chance that a championship club would have been involved in the final. It turns out that club was Falkirk, and not Hibs, whose involvement would have meant the season having to be extended and the SPFL facing a bill of anything up to £100,000.
Jim McIntyre and I had spoken about it at Ross County and it was just another reason why the last thing we wanted was to be dragged into those dreaded play-offs. The extension of the season was one potential headache, while meeting Hibs or Rangers, or even our former team Queen of the South, would be a proper play-off. No wonder we are desperate to avoid it.
I am not going to knock TV. I have worked in the industry so I know what it is like. They want as many games as possible, but spread out, so they can maximise their audiences. I understand where the broadcasters are coming from and quite frankly that is where we are all at, because we need their money - even if they are coughing up less of it than we would like right now.
Until we get a product together we will just have to sit and suffer, and dance to their tune. We need to concentrate on improving our product. Then we can start dictating the terms to TV again.
MY initial thought on the Paul McGowan situation is that he is a lucky boy. I don't know all the ins and outs of his case, but from what I have heard he is a like-able boy who obviously has got anger issues.
I have heard it all in Scottish football, all the stupid reasons for missing matches, like stepping on a nail or a microwave blowing up in a player's face, but it is a first for me that a player is unable to participate in a night match because he is under effective house arrest with an electronic tag and a curfew.
Even he must realise now that he is in the last chance saloon.
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