IF common sense and compromise don't prevail, the bedrock of Scottish football is about to be destroyed.
For decades the nursery for Scotland's club and international players was schools football. The teachers involved didn't see themselves as contributing to a football development system, they believed that there was something inherently positive and educationally worthwhile about playing the game for its own sake.
They got used to senior clubs coming along and extracting players. In fact, it was quite an honour for a school to have its stars picked up by a professional team.
But it wasn't a total fluke that the heydays of Scottish schools football and international success coincided. The poor showing of national teams in the past 20 years or so is partly due to the rise in standards of other countries, but more than one commentator has equated the poor record of the national X1 with the drop off in schools football from the early 80s.
The prognosis of the chief executive of the Scottish Premier League, Roger Mitchell, is clear enough: ''In most countries schools football has taken a back seat as far as the development of elite players is concerned and it should be the same in Scotland.''
He concedes that the senior clubs in Scotland have ''not been blameless'', but now, he says, they want a more formal structure, perhaps akin to the system in England where the Football League licenses and monitors the academies or centres of excellence of the Premier League clubs.
SFA technical director and national coach, Craig Brown, while supportive of schools football, believes that ''the elite should be taken by the elite''. They both agree that the clubs should take sole responsibility for the best young players creamed off from the schools.
Celtic, so far, are the only club to operate such a system and have a squad of about 80 players between the ages of 12 and 16-years-old.
If similar arrangements are adopted by the other Premier League clubs, and if the starting age is lowered to 10, as Roger Mitchell recommends, and if the teams in the other divisions jump on the bandwagon, the arithmetic makes interesting reading.
A 12-team Premier League would skim off around 1200 of the best players from the schools system. Even allowing for the diluted (ie cheaper) models which the lower clubs would introduce, we are still talking of at least 2000 school-age footballers between the ages of 10 and 16 becoming the exclusive responsibility of the professional clubs. In a small country like Scotland the actual elite in any sport will be considerably less than 2000, so what will happen to the discarded young players?
Already, some experienced educationists are querying the wisdom of the SPL's policy. Stewart Neilson of Banff Academy, coach to the schools under-18 squad, doubts the ability of many of the clubs to apply consistent standards to benefit the boys they take in. He has also called for safeguards to make sure that individuals who do not make it are placed in a secure educational and football environment.
Bernard Fagan, headteacher of St Ambrose High School in Coatbridge and holder of the Scottish Schools FA Long Service Medal for taking school teams for 25 years, highlighted the inconsistency between the SPL approach and the ''social inclusion'' policy of the Government, pointing out that inclusion in comprehensive schools should extend to the most able and talented as well as the least able and deprived.
The role of the Scottish Schools FA is, at least, ambivalent. They claim to want elite groups to be selected at age 14 or 15, but do not appear to be prepared to fight hard to achieve this. Maybe they feel that resistance is pointless bearing in mind the big financial guns opposing them. Or maybe their only concern is the international teams, and are quite happy to allow the rules to be changed to allow the professional clubs to nominate players for international trials, as happens in England. This could maintain the standard at international level, and ensure continued sponsorship, but the effect on teacher and therefore pupil participation, the grass roots, would be disastrous.
So far, the SPL have set the pace on youth development in football, but maybe it is time for others, including the Government, to get involved. After all, the clubs and the SPL essentially have a commercial and financial agenda. Government departments, including education and sport, are supposed to be concerned with other more altruistic matters; aren't they?
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article