Encouraging well-run clubs while subsidising the bloated incompetents

It is almost two years since we wrote in favour of a 14 team SPL with a top six, bottom eight split after teams have played each other twice.  Under this model teams at the top of the league would play the same number of games against top six (20) but would play fewer games against teams outside this group (16 instead of 18).

This model also gives clubs whose sole objective in life is to cling onto TV and gate money generated by Celtic fans a better chance of surviving.  The decades old business model of many of these clubs is under threat, not from huge clubs like Celtic, as they would have you believe, but from innovative and well-run clubs from places like Dingwall (population 5026), from where Ross County are about to demonstrate what good scouting and coaching can achieve.

More teams in the SPL will enable the league accommodate small well-run clubs like Ross County or Hamilton Accies before them, while continuing to drip-feed subsidy into those in the kind of debt that would make Sir David Murray wince, like Kilmarnock and Dunfermline.

Remember to get your application in for the CQN Charity Golf day on Friday 3 August at Aberdour Golf Club. Costs are £70 for golf and evening meal or £40 for the evening meal only. To apply email cqnopen2012@gmx.co.uk by 28 March.

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