6pm kick offs - just not fair, surely?

Hey, 

Rangers played their rearranged match with St. Johnstone in Perth on Tuesday. Playing a midweek match, on its own, is nothing new. However, what makes this particularly newsworthy is that the match kicked-off at 6pm, in order to allow it to be screened on television and not to clash with the night’s Champions League fixtures in Madrid and Milan.

The decision to push the kick-off back by roughly two hours represents, yet again, the wishes of fans being ignored. Perth is 60 miles away from Glasgow and, combined with rush-hour traffic, the 6pm kick-off was tough for away fans – and indeed many of the St. Johnstone fans also – to make. If decisions were made in the interest of fans, such kick-off times would be unheard of, however we all know that this is not the case. The money received from television money is in many aspects the life-support of many clubs, and the scars of the collapse of Setanta Sports have yet to heal. The SPL are keen to not bite the hand that feeds, and if that means working yesterday’s match around Inter Milan versus and Shalke – a match where a clash in of interests does not seem likely – to keep Sky and ESPN happy, then it is something that has to be done.

Of course these arguments about the interests of fans being ignored are very much regurgitated ones. It was only a matter of months ago in which Henry McLeish’s report on the state of Scottish football was published. The report, which was highly critical, proposed an expansion of the Scottish Premier League from its current twelve to fourteen or sixteen. This idea was popular amongst fans; it eliminated the prospect of boredom that a small league can create, such as travelling to away grounds two or three times a season. Bizarre scenarios which have occurred this season in which Celtic will meet Rangers seven times would be all but removed if they were meeting each other less in the league. Needless to say, these proposals were popular with Strathclyde Police also; fewer matches would lead to, theoretically, less violence, or at least less opportunities for violence.

When the SPL teams met to discuss such proposals however a different conclusion was reached. Most of the clubs declared a preference for the opposite of what the fans wanted, and that they wanted a smaller, ten-team top tier rather than an enlargement. Doing this would allow four guaranteed fixtures of the “big” games in the SPL, such as the Old Firm, Edinburgh derbies and such like. As a commercial product for television rights, four Old Firm derbies are easier to sell than two, especially with the bad-blood following last month’s match. Although this is not what fans want, those in favour believe a smaller league is more sustainable, since attendances in Scotland aren’t great. But surely if the league reflected the wants of the fans, a rise in attendances (and subsequently gate receipts) would follow?

Although no decisions have been made at the top table on such proposals yet, it highlights the cruel reality of football not just in Scotland but elsewhere; money talks. This is not new, but hopefully Tuesday’s 6pm start is just a one-off due to a cramped fixture schedule following the harsh winter postponing fixtures. But one worries that it can become common practice, the way it has been done in the Europa League. 

DC 

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