Search: ' Dunfermline'

Mark Poole explores current plans to restructure the Scottish Premier League, but are TV demands too much of a stumbling block?

In an effort to halt the decline in interest, revenue and quality in the game, the Scottish Premier League is working on a blueprint to restructure the competition. They recognise that the current format, with the 12-team top flight that splits into two after everyone’s played each other three times, isn’t working. The SPL will only confirm that they are looking at various options, including the possibility of an expansion and play-offs, and that no further details can be discussed until later this year.

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Alex Anderson reflects on the unusual task he has set for himself, of going to watch every team that has reached a European cup final

I’ve seen 66 of them. That’s exactly two-thirds. There are probably some who’ve seen the lot though. Probably even more, like me, will have realised that “every European finalist” is as worthy of bagging ambition as “every League ground”, “every League champion” and “every club Neil Warnock’s managed”. No doubt, I’ll be far from alone in recognising it as worthy of that kind of on-the-autism-spectrum attention. But when the list hits 100 – and Fulham last season were number 99 – everyone will want a piece.

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Celtic's Lost Legend
The George Connelly Story
by George Connelly with Bryan Cooney
Black and White, £17.99
Reviewed by Jonathan O'Brien
From WSC 272 October 2009 

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A Bhoy Called Bertie
The Bertie Auld Story
by Bertie Auld with Alex Gordon
Black and White, £17.99
Reviewed by Jonathan O'Brien
From WSC 272 Oct 2009 

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It’s a truism that long-retired players almost always produce autobiographies far more absorbing than those of their still-playing or recently quit counterparts. Any Celtic fan unfortunate enough to have parted with hard cash for the memoirs of Henrik Larsson, Paul Lambert or Gordon Strachan won’t be making the same mistake again in a hurry. Mercifully, these offerings from a pair of late-1960s/early-1970s cult figures are both a cut above the usual dross.

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Dear WSC
In WSC 272 Jonathan O’Brien finds it remarkable that Celtic’s Bertie Auld “straightfacedly asserts that beating Dunfermline in the Scottish Cup final in 1965 was more important than the title win a year later”. But Auld is not alone in his assertion. No less a man than Jock Stein said in the Dunfermline history Black and White Magic: “It wouldn’t have gone as well for Celtic had they not won this game.” The Celtic history The Glory and the Dream also notes: “The largest framed photograph in [Stein’s] office at Celtic Park showed Billy McNeill borne aloft at the end of the match.”Celtic had won nothing since “the 7-1 game”, a freakish League Cup final triumph over Rangers in 1957. So this win, Stein’s first trophy seven weeks after officially becoming manager, stopped a rot which was threatening to turn Celtic into also-rans in Scotland. Without it the Lisbon Lions may never have been and there may only ever have been one “nine-in-a-row” in Scottish football. And that would never do.
Mark Murphy, Chessington

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The home team have suffered in semis, the visitors lost at the last step in Europe and their title challenge has gone awry. One more disappointment is coming to someone in the SPL's Thursday night climax, in front of Dianne Millen

The romance of the cup. Sometimes a welcome distraction from poor league form, sometimes merely a chance for plucky minnows to be patronised, the source of memories we either can’t stop talking about or can’t bear to repeat. In Scotland, where the league is a binary battle, the cup competitions assume greater importance – and while tonight’s game is the league climax, the cups are what has truly defined the ­season for both teams.

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