Scottish Premier League philosophy

On today's Guardian website, their football page is headed by the redoubtable Ewan Murray's preview of the Scottish Premier League. In it, the Guardian's main football guy north of Hadrian's Wall suggests that Celtic are a shoo-in for their 8th SPL title in 15 years. With Rangers out of sight – and lucky to be alive – the SPL looks like being the most boring league in Europe.

Barring an ebola breakout in Glasgow, Celtic will run the table this year. In fact, given the lack of overall talent available to the SPL, the most interesting storylines are likely to be whether the Hoops can play the year through undefeated (unlikely) or if manager Neil Lennon receives more death threats (more probable).

To anyone without a vested interest, the other teams, always also-rans, are now barely relevant. The league simply doesn't have the finances – or European pulling power – to lure imports of quality. With some of the religious element minimised (temporarily?), Scottish football will struggle to gain much press outside the British isles.  The whole has become far less than the sum of its component parts.

It's been a long, gloomy autumn since Roy Keane finished his career at Celtic. Despite Rangers NewCo securing some SPL-level players probably able to earn rapid promotion(s), the entire Scottish football system stares at losing its relevance. Despite being eligible, no Scots feature for the abominably-named Team GB while the Scotland national team continues to slump in the world rankings. Now, their top division looks more like a wasteland than a garden.

Lennon. Courtesy: guardian.co.uk

With Rangers' best now filling out Premier League squads, Celtic are the only team capable of fielding even a middling outfit. That said, the Parkhead giants have accumulated a barnful of mediocre talents rather than any players of absolute quality. Yet even with a severely flawed squad and fallible gameplan, the Hoops would probably defeat a “best of the rest” team seven times in ten.

With only a modicum of competition, the league only stands to lose popularity and even Celtic's vitality will dissipate. For so long Celtic and Rangers have been Scottish football's Ying and Yang – each depending on the other to give their existence meaning. Now shorn of their Yang, Celtic surveys the remnants of the SPL and must begin to doubt their own global importance.

Bombs sent to Lennon's home casts sad light on Scottish football sectarianism

Neil Lennon is as an abrasive manager as he was a player. Perhaps his three most obvious qualities are his forthrightness, his Northern Irish heritage and his love for the green and white hoops of Glasgow Celtic Football Club. With the latter goes a certain antipathy - antagonism, even - for local Old Firm rival, Rangers. But when bombs are sent via post to his home, all perspective has been lost and football becomes a pawn in a much larger game.

Lennon, who as a player asked and gave no quarter, is in his first full season managing his alma mater and finds himself successfully beginning to move the club on from Tony Mowbray's disastrous reign. He hasn't taken any backward steps - neither have supporters from the green half of Glasgow - but has found himself under literal fire in ways his immediate predecessors seem to have (mostly) avoided. Also targeted in this most recent campaign were two high-profile Celtic supporters.

Lennon and his family have moved from their property and are living secretly under twenty-four hour guard. For football to come to this doesn't make a mockery of the sport - when violence, or intended violence begins, the game becomes a canvas for much larger social issues and casts a sad light on the religious divide between opposing sectarian factions in Glasgow. Traditionally, but this is far from a hard and fast rule, Celtic are known as a "catholic" club and Rangers a "protestant" one.

For decades the Old Firm derby has been amongst the most hotly contested rivalries in Europe, both on the field and between supporters. But when a man's life is endangered simply because of his status as manager and his inflammatory remarks about football, then any sense of perspective has been thrown from the nearest window. Has Lennon actively harmed anyone with words or deeds? Or has his legal representative, QC Paul McBride? Each may speak their mind and express their views as is their right. But words should never be the catalyst for actions such as this.

It has been said that sport is for everyone. It can be all-inclusive and has the ability to bring together opposing sides and even heal emotional wounds. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the Christmas Truce football match between Allied and German forces during World War One. If the English and Germans could put aside their differences in such a climate, how can a game be taken so seriously as parcel bombs, bum-stabbings and other acts of violence? It seems some people just use sport and the tribalism bred by it to be extremely crappy to one another.

One February 2006 episode of the British television series Life on Mars said it best, an episode revolving around 1970's football violence between blue and red halves of Manchester. After an organised brawl, Detective Sam Tyler chases the instigator into a corner and explains the consequences football sectarianism so clearly you can't miss his foreknowledge of the Hillsborough and Heysel disasters.

If you wish harm to a man, in cold blood, because his football - and perhaps religious - sensibilities differ from yours, then you don't deserve the enjoyment and escape of sport. Football is wonderful, but it's never that important.

A-League's declining crowds need addressing

Though streets ahead of the factional National Soccer League, peacefully and thankfully euthanised in 2004 after a fraught reign as Australia's national football competition, failing supporter bases for the A-League means once again the FFA is faced with the challenge of enticing and maintaining supporter interest.

In the NSL days much of the public was alienated by violence and the overly patriotic fans boasted by each club. Clubs were divided very much along national lines: if you were of Greek parentage you supported South Melbourne Hellas. Even 1/16th Croatian heritage meant a Melbourne Knights fan. It's the way it was. Furthering the league's violent image were the stories told by old security guards of the old Olympic Park: the most galling I heard was punters making sure their flares got into the game by hiding in a stroller beneath a sleeping baby. The A-League's come a long way just by renouncing the nationalistic culture endemic and integral in the NSL's supersession.

Shortly after the Perth Glory's Nik Mrdja banged in the winner that snared the 2004 NSL Cup, the twenty-seven year competition ended mercifully and without complaint - as pros say about retirement, "it was just time". The football public was promised more: an eight-team league. Partisan, but friendly crowds. The sport would burgeon Down Under.

But NOOOOooooooOOOOO! (Channeling John Belushi). The A-League, encouraged by a smart and sustainable start decided on expansion. The initial eight teams though each had enough recognisable faces and interest sufficient enough to support a reasonable fan base. Spurred on by the Melbourne Victory's incredible second season - on which laurels some argue the Victorian club still rests - where 50,000 regularly appeared in their Docklands home base, the A-League included franchises from North Queensland and the Gold Coast. The struggling Auckland-based New Zealand Knights, horrible nickname and all, were reborn on the South Island as the Wellington Phoenix.

While Melbourne and Adelaide have continued with strong crowd number, other A-League clubs have struggled - see the chart below. Last year the Victory boasted average crowds above 18,000 , Adelaide United drew 11,000+ and the Melbourne Heart with nearly 9,000. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Queensland franchises struggled; the appallingly-monikered North Queensland Fury's attendance barely reached 4,500 and Gold Coast FC appealed even less. The latter club's owner, mining magnate Clive Palmer, even caused controversy last year by locking out some Gold Coast fans rather than spend extra money opening other stands in their stadium. It's telling that in all of last season, the Melbourne Victory - with identifiable stars Kevin Muscat, Archie Thompson and Danny Allsopp - featured in eight of the ten highest-attended games. However they are not immune to the malaise which has engulfed football in Australia; their declining crowd numbers this year can be attributed to several factors, most notably the Melbourne Heart emergence as a second franchise for the city.

After last night's debacle, the FFA and A-League must acknowledge that change is needed for the A-League to retain its credibility. The 17-11-1 Brisbane Roar (sporting an awful mascot) defeated hapless North Queensland in front of only 1003 spectators. True, North Queensland has been devastated by a combination of natural disasters usually only seen in movies like 2012, but 1003 fans attending what is ostensibly a top-flight league is embarrassing and harmful for the A-League's future. It seems the Gold Coast fan base is to blame: they have also turned out record-low crowds on two other occasions this season. For a team playing such delicioius football as the Roar to draw such a pitiful crowd should finally close the book on the experimental expansion franchises North Queensland and the Gold Coast. They no longer deserve their teams.

The examples of league overinflation are obvious, patent and alarming. The NBA went from the ultimate in excitement to uninspired within a period of five years as undeserving cities received franchises: Vancouver, Memphis, Charlotte, Atlanta, Oklahoma City and New Orleans each have done enough to receive a team, but not enough to justify an owner spending money to create a winning team. The NHL is similarly afflicted: the Bettman Masterplan of expansion into the USA's southern reaches has been enough of a failure that several franchises are investigating selling their home games to cities who regularly sell in order to balance the books. By starting their Gold Coast and West Sydney franchises this year, the AFL should be heeding the FFA's mistakes even though their own brand is infinitely stronger.

It's time for the A-League to fold or relocate North Queensland. Unfortunately, there are limited options as to landing spots for the Fury - Auckland perhaps? The reality is that with North Queensland recovering from floods and the effects of Cyclone Yasi, football is likely to be the last of their priorities. The warning signs were there for the club after Robbie Fowler wasn't able to collect his paycheck and forced to move to Perth: now, as the Hornets did to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, it's time the Fury bid farewell to their home base and perhaps even to existence. That they don't have a major benefactor like Palmer, crowd numbers notwithstanding, is why they may be doomed.

The Gold Coast, funded by one of Australia's wealthiest men, is a different story. They should have the population base to fund a club yet have struggled for attendance since Palmer bought the rights and recruited stars Jason Culina and Shane Smeltz. It's embarrassing that such a vibrant area draws so poorly and both Palmer and the A-League must take their shares of the blame for their failure to thrive. The A-League needs a base in the Gold Coast as it's Australia's most rapidly growing "city", yet Palmer's reluctance to spend means task of growing football's identity in South Queensland becomes the responsibility of the FFA and the A-League.

When compared to other sporting codes in Australia, the A-League does poorly in almost every aspect. Only the Victory and Adelaide have crowds with average attendance over the lowliest Rugby League crowds, the next lowest draw in the Australian sporting hierarchy. FFA should aim for a leaguewide average of 10,000 fans which would ensure a healthy competition as well as room for growth. Before any expansion can be considered, clubs need to be certain that they themselves can survive.

Hope though can be drawn from the struggling Scottish Premier League. The SPL includes twelve teams, with only two ever having a chance at the title, Celtic and Rangers. The remaining ten clubs have voted overwhelmingly to reduce the number of teams in the top division from 12 to 10, meaning each team receives a greater percentage of the league's TV rights money. A ten team league nearly indistinguishable from the current setup where the only interest is who will be relegated. The mooted Scottish setup, no matter how broke the clubs are, proves an allegedly elite league can exist with only a few teams. With Australian sport looking more to American models than to European, it appears unlikely that the SPL model will be adopted.

There has never been a more crucial time for the A-League.