ThePlan

A Plan

Let me be transparent from the beginning. There is no point or reason to be anything else. I live in the North of Scotland, in the Highlands, the deep Highlands. The sea is three hundred yards down the croft. The islands are on the horizon. The nearest supermarket is twenty-five miles away. It's fifty-five to the nearest railway station and eighty-five to the hospital. Our games here are football and shinty. Rugby and cricket are from another planet. And a decade ago I for three seasons brought up one of our major, Scottish football teams to coach our youngsters. That is seventy kids and their parents would pay to come from up to seventy miles away for two days in a row to take part. Yet seemingly, although they were very clearly interested enough to warrant my effort, in the final analysis they were not interesting enough to warrant the club's. The annual sessions ceased amidst, well, acrimony. We were seemingly too far away and too few to be worthwhile, with the apparent, if subliminal suggestion that we were somehow genetically unable to play the beautiful game in the same way as can Glaswegians, Ecuadorians, Israelis, Swedes, Englishmen and the list goes on.

Yet, check modern DNA studies and there is no region in the World that is more genetically like Iceland than us Northern Scots. Indeed the 330,000 or so Icelanders came from here, at least the majority of the women did, with the football gene, as far as I am aware, not passed solely down the paternal line. Here the Charltons come to mind. And was it not that same Iceland that, albeit a thousand years later with the Norse-Celtic porridge well-stirred but remarkably unchanged, produced a team able to reach, with Scotland not there at all, the quarter-finals of the last European Championship, eliminating England in the process? And was it not again that same Iceland that reached the 2018 World Cup Finals, by some margin, topping qualification Group I by two points, with Scotland once more nowhere to be seen? Which all begs the question, if the Highlands are Scotland's Iceland genetically, might we also not produce a football team to match?

The easy answer would be that it is impossible to know, not least because the comparison is not a completely fair. Iceland has its population, the Highlands a third less at just 234,000. We are missing a hundred thousand. But just a wee minute! Add in the other bit of the mainland north of the Cairngorms, i.e, Moray and its 88,000, and now with 322,000 we are not far off. Then mix in the 26,000 on the Western Isles, our maxi-equivalent of Iceland's footballing hotbed of the Vestmann Islands, and the magic number is surpassed. You might even add in the rest of Scotland's Norseland outwith Caithness, i.e. Orkney and Shetland, and a total of 390,000, perhaps a little more, is reached. We are already a quarter ahead. Moreover there are other measures, which strengthen the comparison. Around Inverness there is a concentration of population smaller but not dissimilar to the 123,000 in Reykjavik itself and the 216,000 living in it and the six municipalities around it. Inverness itself now has 70,000 and its own six "municipaities" 240,000 or so; Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey 100,000 plus, the Black Isle and Easter Ross 32,000 to which could added 6,000 from Drum, Beauly, and Muir of Ord and 95,000 from Morayshire. Then from Reykjavik in the west to Borgarfjordur Eystri in Eastern Iceland it is 427 miles and 283 miles from Dalvik in the north to Vik in the south and, whilst it is only 220 miles from Mallaig to Thurso and 160 from Elgin to Uig, it is 450 or so from Barra to Lerwick and 230 from Cullen to Scolpaig.

True, the area is now not the Highlands per se, or even the Highlands and Islands but with a little re-branding it does become "North Scotland", which is surely satisfactory enough in the football-political sense. Moreover, with more in population than the cities of Aberdeen and Dundee combined, it has, does it not, firstly heft and also become sufficient, given Iceland's example, not just for qualification for Europe but a little bit more, perhaps European qualification by right plus a more than good chance at the Worlds every four year cycle. All we have to have is Iceland's, our cousins' intent, some money and again like Iceland, a plan.

Two North Scots play for the Scottish national football team just now. Both are Inverness-born. One is Stuart Armstrong but he was Aberdeen-raised. The other is Ryan Christie, also Inverness-born of a footballing father famous in these part and also from Sneck. Before them there was Thurso's Gary Mackay-Stevens in 2013, whilst the first had been John Macdonald in 1886, a man perhaps with a considerable future in the game down south somewhere had he not wanted to be a doctor rather than a professional footballer. He chose to come back to practice in the Highland capital rather than chase the leather somewhere between Blackburn and Birmingham And in-between there were several more of note, from Elgin's underrated but hugely successful and influential, R.C. Hamilton, via two who grew up in the same Inverness street, Andy McCombie and the, if anything, more influential Peter McWilliam, a man without whom both London and modern, European football would have been radically different, to Lossiemouth Stewart Imlach, Thurso's Bryan Gunn and more recently Dingwall's Don Cowie. And when there have been none the Scottish national team has been the poorer for it. It is fact that with one exception, the Wembley Wizards, the national teams that have from the beginnings of Scottish football achieved the greatest successes have had had significant non-Lowland input or have even been proportionately non-Lowland. Check it out! Yet today it seems such is the paucity of Northern talent that the two Highland teams in Scotland's top divisions have virtually none in a first-team squads of imports, from the Lowlands and from abroad. As I write Ross County has one outfield player, the returned Don Cowie himself, and an eighteen year old goalie, with the others roughly half Scots mainly Lowlanders and half from abroad, whilst Caley-Thistle has just three of its 20-strong senior squad born actually in Inverness with twelve from the Lowlands and five from outwith Scotland.

In 1996 Icelandic football was in much the same position, at least in part. The difference was that few players were non-Icelanders and, although there are a few more now the proportion is nowhere near ours, but, like Scotland, it had four main divisions and it hardly produced a player of note. One of the few exceptions was Asgeir Sigursvinsson, in 2003 voted Iceland's outstanding player of the previous fifty years, who played in Belgium and Germany from 1973 to 1990 and forty-five times for his country. Another was Arnor Gudjohnsen, a forward who had a successful career in several countries other than his own in much the same period, with perhaps his best years spent at Anderlecht in Belgium where he averaged almost a goal every three games. He retired from the international game in 1997 after 73 caps over eighteen years. Yet neither was a World star. Iceland's first would emerge a year later. It was Arnor's son, Eidur, who having made the move from Iceland to PSV in Holland went onward to Chelsea and Barcelona but with the two generations never taking the field together. The closest they came was son being substitute for father against Estonia in 1996. It was also that same year that the Icelandic Football Association produced a paper that was to lay the foundations for European success twenty year later.

The plan was as simple as it was fair, that is inclusive, and comprehensive. On the playing side at its core was a determination to produce two things, top-flight players and a competitive Icelandic, national team. The financial commitment was £35 million at 1996 prices over 15 years. The physical commitment was to build fifteen indoor halls, at least one in every populated part of the country, intrinsically recognising Iceland's, read North Scotland's, weather and realising that individually the best players can as easily live in a small town, on a farm, a croft or in a remote fishing community, on mainland or island as in the city. However, behind both the money and the geographics was a recognition that to produce team coherence from what would inevitably be a relatively small number of players over a potentially large land area coaches, of which there were to be plenty, one to every hundred children between 6 and 16, were to work with the boys and importantly girls throughout using just a single, specified style of football. It might be limiting. The children who came through would be the best but perhaps at that system only and the football produced might not be of the prettiest kind. But it would be to a style to suit the Icelandic mentality and physique; a style where the how of playing together would be intrinsically understood, no matter where players stayed, north, south, east or west, island or mainland, town or country.

For the football halls the Goldilocks' principle was employed. They would all be "porridge", i.e. all have indoor, artificial playing areas, but they would not be equal in size. There would be Daddy-Bear's, one large one, in Reykjavik, where and in nearby towns live over one third of the country's population. Then there would be two medium-sized halls, one immediately to the north of Reykjavik and another in the eastern North Lands, population 27,000. All three would have full-sized pitches. That left twelve small ones with half-sized pitches, five of which were again in Reykjavik and its environs and the others in each of the areas across the country with populations of 15,000 or fewer, including one on the Vestmann Islands, three miles off the mainland, population just 4,300 but with a professional team in the top league, the birthplace of Asgeir Sigursvinsson himself and the home of Heimir Hallgrimsson, then the islands' only dentist yet the man, who would become Iceland's successful, national team manager, the equivalent of a Scottish national manager being a vet from, say, Kirkwall.

So at this point let us pause and compare and contrast. The Scottish Highlands have in Dingwall The Highland Football Academy with its medium-to-large, admittedly indoor playing area but chronic funding shortages and no access because of time and distance for some of Moray's population, most of the Highlands' and none of the Islands'. However, beyond it additional Scottish Football Association input is derisory. There is no SFA Performance School north of Aberdeen. Dundee has one and south of the Tay are five more. That's it. Inverness has a SFA Development Centre with nine more to the south. But in Moray there is nothing and the Inverness facility is outdoors so rendered "difficult" much of the time. Yet Caithness has a population of 24,000. In Icelandic terms that alone is a medium-sized hall. Elgin has 23,000 inhabitants, a league team and potentially is another medium hall, with perhaps a small one in Lossiemouth, certainly one near Forres, another in the Keith area and fourth around Buckie, each places with their own Highland league teams. And the principal can be extended. The West Coast north of Ullapool to Durness would also justify a small hall as would Nairn. Dingwall and Ross County have and justify their existing medium facility but there might be a smaller one by Invergordon. Skye and Lochalsh certainly have a case for a small facility, perhaps a second and even a larger one. Lochaber also justifies two small academies, perhaps even a small and a medium, one based at Fort William, with its Highland League team. Badenoch would merit a small hall as would Speyside and also East Sutherland, perhaps based at Brora, again with its place in the Highland League. Each facility would then be seen to match the third, seeming requisite of the Icelandic system – that all settlements should be, where possible, no more than an hour's drive from the nearest football hall and certainly no more than an hour and a half.

That's the rural, rural done. What then remains in terms of infrastructure are Inverness and its immediate area with its population of 60,000 plus and the Islands. That Inverness justifies a large hall is arguable either way. Perhaps it would be better to retain the Dingwall facility as the main centre and expand it accordingly but the capital of the Highlands on population suggests a medium hall, perhaps the SFA Development Centre with a roof on it, and at least two small ones, one east and one north. It would mean on the Northern mainland fifteen to eighteen halls in total, to which should be added on the Vestmann principle small halls on Lewis and/or Harris, another on the Uists and perhaps even a further one on Barra, plus, of course, on Shetland and Orkney a medium hall each or for logistic reason four small facilities, two each.

So, having decided where facilities might be placed there remains the question of style. Here perhaps the Icelandic route might not be the best. We are not quite Icelandic in physique and temperament. Yet, given the state of Scottish football, more of what there has been is perhaps equally unwise and here the Highlands and Moray at least we have some previous and therefore perhaps something innovative to offer, certainly regionally and even, if they will listen, nationally. And it need not be based on physique but tactics and technique. It was after all men of Moray, who were largely instigational, indeed, inspirational in the formation of Scotland's first club, Queen's Park, and the development of the World's first organised, on-field tactic, the box-four defence, a ploy seemingly to have gone unnoticed by pundits as it was reinvented to great success as a box-six by the Welsh at the last European Championships. Moreover it was shinty-players in the Leven Vale but of Highland descent who transferred the concept of pairing and therefore interplay through passing from the old game to the new. Then R.C. Hamilton was himself the first False No. 9 and mentor of Jimmy Hogan, openly acknowledged as the inspiration of Hungarian national team of the 1950s and their highly successful employment through Hidegkuti of precisely what Hamilton pioneered. And Peter McWilliam was the inventor, during fifteen years as manager of Tottenham via there, Charlton and Ajax, of the “cantera”. His La Masia might have been Charlton Athletic but was Northfleet United, where his junior players were deliberately sent to learn the “Spurs” way before returning to White Hart Lane. It was one of his Tottenham players, who took the McWilliam approach to Holland, to Ajax and Heerenveen. It was another, himself a Northfleet graduate, who is partly credited again via Ajax with the emergence of Total Football in Holland and the beginning of its then transference via Michels and Cruyff to Barcelona and the present day.

In short we invented styles and there is surely scope to do so again. Except, of course, there is a problem. In fact there are three. The first is the Scottish Football Association has historically not always been the most enlightened of organisations and certainly not the most innovative. Sea-changes are not its thing. The second is the money. The demand from the SFA for the North Scottish grass-roots is the 2019 equivalent of Iceland's 1996 £35m, perhaps £65, to be invested at £4m+ per year over 15 years. And it is to be an investment to be done firstly

using the approach to playing the game we decide suits us and ours, secondly to train OUR coaches, thirdly to build OUR football centres

and, even initially we are to plough our own furrow, in the the long term to sign-post at the very least footballing change in other parts of our country. The difficulty will be, where will the money come from, to which my reply is, if Iceland can find it so can we. And the third problem is that the North of Scotland, in the same way that Central Scotland isn't either but too often is assumed to be, is not Scotland as a whole and we are one country with one football team. Bluntly put the Icelandic model might also fit Argyll and its islands, The Borders, Dumfries and Galloway, even South Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire and possibly Buchan east of the Highland line but it will not be suitable for more urban Scotland and there, no matter the sign-posting, another solution will be needed.

Now at this point I could just roll my eyes, mutter Aye Reet and give up. But that is not the Highland way. This is a whole country problem but here again we have to look at facts. The first is that The Lowlands are not what they were. The second is that, although the bulk of the football might still be there, the population is not. A little under five and a half million people live in Scotland. Glasgow has 600,000, Edinburgh 475,000, a fifth of the total between them. But two fifths live outwith those two cities and the Central Belt, which leaves two fifths outwith the two big cities but in the Central Belt itself. In short Scotland is three fifths Lallands and two fifths not. In football terms it means that on average for every three players in the national team from the Central Belt there should be two from elsewhere, I don't mean England, and there are not. A precise way of looking at it might be that a balanced national team should be expected to have two players from Glasgow and/or Edinburgh, four from the rest of the central belt, four from North Scotland, The South and The East Coast, from Fife to Fraserburgh, and one from the Diaspora; England, Canada, Australia, Spain, Timbuktu, it doesn't matter?

Of course it has been rarely like that. In part it is a worldwide phenomenon. Live in or near a big city then you are more likely to become a professional footballer than a country boy. But then it has been ever thus. Look at any other country and the same pattern is repeated. At the last World Cup seven of France's squad of twenty-three, so 30%, were born in Greater Paris, which has only 18% of the country's population, with two born abroad and interestingly none in the country's south-west, where rugby is king. Brazil, which I know well, draws fewer and fewer of it players from its more rural north and, if you want to shine, be born in or near Sao Paulo in particular. But Scotland's figures are still more startling. The breakdown as I write of the last Scotland squad to play is seven of the twenty-three born in Glasgow, ten in Greater Glasgow, four born in Edinburgh, five in Aberdeen and Angus, one in the Northern Scotland, three abroad, none in Aberdeenshire, none in Perthshire, none in Fife, in fact none anywhere else. Simply put it means more than a third were born in Glasgow, when it should be about 11%, 70% were born in the Lowlands, 30% elsewhere, when it should be 60:40. There is a bias, a pattern, particularly in recent times, repeated in squad after squad after squad often with worse ratios still. Two fifths of the country's talent, the rural and small-town talent, even some from larger towns is hardly tapped as Lallands football, some might say the Glasgow football played has not been good enough.

Now it is fine to criticise but stupid do so without construction. Highland football has been in need of reinvention. Lallands football has simply proven itself unfit for purpose, unable even to register in any meaningful way at UK or European club level. Internationally too for at least a generation there has been a failure to compete more than anything qualitatively. To the Highland dilemma a solution has been suggested with three aims, to bring back football to communities not conurbations, to improve technique through style and to produce players fit for our national team. The model suggested is Iceland II, i.e. through infrastructure and coaching, one which can be extended to other rural parts of the country, Argyll, Dumfries and Galloway, Aberdeenshire and The Borders. It might even be extendable to rural Perth- and Stirlingshire, to Fife and Angus and South Ayrshire but outwith those areas the dilemma is different. The infrastructure might, at least in part, be there but technique is not. Results prove that. Coaching is poor. Results prove that too. And another solution is required based seemingly on organisation, for which there might also be an example..

In addition to Iceland the other European country to have produced a remarkable crop of players over the last decade is Belgium. With 11.35 million inhabitants in terms of population is almost exactly twice that of Scotland. It has a total area is 30,000 kms2, whereas Scotland has an area of just over 80,000 kms2, but it is also a country with no Highlands, Argyll or even Borders or Dumfries and Galloway equivalent. It is also a linguistically divided country. Two thirds of its people live in Flanders and speak Flemish, one third in Wallonia and speak French. It also has regions in its south- and north-east, one third of the country, that are rural but not in a North Scotland way. They are more Moray, Aberdeenshire or Perthshire and lie part in Wallonia and part on Flanders with Liege and Hasselt/Genk their inland Aberdeen and Dundee. That leave 20,000 kms2 as urban. Scotland in comparison has a similar 10,000 kms2. It means in simple terms some 8.5 million Belgians fit into those 20,000 kms2, or 425:1 and some 3.7 million Scots fit into half that or 373:1, so less dense but not incomparable.

In 2018 Belgium's FIFA ranking was 1st. Scotland's was 40th. In 2000 Belgium's was twenty-seventh. Scotland's was twenty-fifth so clearly something has happened in the meantime and it was a plan. In 1998. Belgium had been eliminated at the Group stage from that year's World Cup in France, precisely the same fate as suffered by Scotland. Back in Brussels it prompted some self-examination. When 30 or so coaches from all parts of the country met to discuss it was pointed out that firstly, although there were thirty-four professional club, a number of which were successful at a European level, most playing a counter-attacking game, each played a different system, sweeper/no-sweeper, 4-4-2, 3-4-3, even 3-5-2, and, secondly, there was no vision for the youth game, where, in light of national results, a new and radical approach might be needed. Thus it was that in 2006 the Royal Belgian Football Association published its "The Development Vision of the RBFA" but as a culmination of change not its beginning.

Of the coaches at the 1998 some had experience in Holland and therefore knowledge of Ajax and by extension Barcelona, where in both organisation and style owed so much to Peter McWilliam. Other had worked in France with its Hungarian influences and it was proposed Belgium's approach should be adjusted accordingly, away from a rather British robustness, a different type of player was needed, one with an ability to dribble and take on one-V-one and a freedom, and to produce them Belgium youth teams should all adopt 4-3-3.

This new playing philosophy was in place by 2001 but there was as yet no structure. However, there was money generated by profits from the 2000 European Championships, shared between Belgium and Holland. Part of that money was used to build a national football centre at Tubize, just to the south of Brussels but importantly politically just on the border between Flanders and Wallonia. In addition the number of children's coaches was increased several fold by making the entry-level coach free, an arm of the University of Brussels appointed to oversee it all and make recommendations and the University of Louvain (Leuven) commissioned to make a detailed study of youth football in general, involving the filming and analysis of 1,500 age-group matches.

Meanwhile there were conversations taking place with the clubs and there it was the Leuven study with the analysis done by a player and coach from a Second Division club that is said to have proved to be the turning-point. The doubters in the other clubs' academies were faced by the evidence and from that moment on it became clear that long-term development with small-sided games and not competition and short-term ranking.

Nevertheless there was still resistance and problems. The resistance was from the clubs and the problems came not least from the national team also switching to 4-3-3, sticking to it and at first losing games and failing to qualify for competitions. However, during that same period time there was also quiet development. Between 1998 and 2006 eight Topsport schools had been opened. They were distributed across the country - four in Flanders, Bruges, Gent, Genk and Leuven, two in Wallonia, Liège and Mouscron plus Tubize, for Brussels and Wilrijk for Antwerp. They provided additional training, double the previous amount, four mornings a week, two hours at a time, taken by coaches that worked for the association, this in additional to a standard, formal education. They were positioned to allow pupils to commute from home and still train with their clubs. And they also produced a reaction. The clubs, somewhat threatened, themselves began to create tie-ups with schools local to them. In other words they set up Topsport clones. For example Anderlecht in Brussels have two and has adopted the methodology, replicating the systemic approach but not necessarily the same system. Anderlecht's youngsters play 3-4-3 not 4-3-3 but also provide sound reasons for the difference.

“Every time we play a match we try to have 70% of possession. So it means if you are going to play with four defenders, you are going to put them at an early age in a comfortable situation. We are playing with three defenders at a lower age to put them in difficulty.”

And this imitation has now had a profound impact in two ways. On the one hand Topsport schools are now less popular because there are alternatives but on the other clubs find themselves investing from their own and not association funds substantial sums in young talent, which then, having developed further and faster, at sixteen or so moves on to larger clubs, not least in England, for amounts that do not necessarily repay the effort. There is a question-mark about how long they can afford to do it but in the the meantime there is a template for Lowland Scotland, with some of the pitfalls already apparent and with thought therefore avoidable. A young player's individual training account, on which an investment premium is then paid is one suggestion.

However, the question remains as to what impact the Belgium system has made not on a macro, national level, that is already clear from results, but at a more micro club and player level. The top Belgian league has sixteen clubs. Nine are near top schools and all their academies are also overseen by Brussels University. Four of the clubs are in east, with Charleroi on the southern edge, Dunfermline-like. Three, including Charleroi are in Wallonia, one is in Brussels, one is in Antwerp and eight are in Eastern Flanders, including two in Bruges. The Topsports schools are placed about 40 miles apart. Outwith Flanders the current clubs are spaced about the same, whilst in Western Flanders they are half that. The result is that there are few places in the country that are more than an hour's drive from one or the other and most, certainly in the more heavily populated west, the Belgian Lowlands, are little more than half an hour. And of the twenty-three players that represented the country at the last World Cup from "semi-rural" Belgium came four players or just under two fifths, two from Liege itself, one more also from the French area and the fourth from the Flemish. Then two more, the Hazard brothers, came from the remainder of the rest of the country's French-speaking area of Wallonia with its total population of 3.85 million; five in all, 22% of the squad from 33% of the population. In addition four more came from Antwerp and its environs, population half a million so like Edinburgh, 17% of the squad from 5-6% of the population. Five came from from Greater Brussels, with its 2 million inhabitants, roughly the same as Greater Glasgow and two more from around the capital, one north, one south, seven in all, so 30% from just 18%, and the rest, six, from the 5 or so million that live in Flanders outwith Antwerp and Greater Brussels, equally 27% of the squad but 44% of the population.

The figures are even in terms of Belgian population distribution frankly not great. Rural Belgium has been to a great extent failed. It is still the case even there, if you want to be a footballer, be born not just urban but city-urban. However, if translated to Scotland they would mean roughly three from Aberdeenshire including Aberdeen itself, Angus with Dundee, Perth and Kinross, Fife and Stirlingshire, three from Edinburgh, four from Glasgow (five from Greater Glasgow), eight more from the Central Belt, five drawn from elsewhere in Scotland and the Diaspora, which is still better than Scottish reality and could no doubt be improved somewhat.

So here's what we might do. Firstly, we take on board what Gordon Stachan said as he departed from Scotland's management; that the problem with our football was our genetics; turn it on its head and choose a style of playing that suits us and not our opponents. Robert Gardner taught us that the day he led his team onto the field for the first ever international. The English players were said to be bigger and faster but they didn't win. Spanish are not big men. Neither are Brazilians. Germans are so don't play like them. Secondly introduce, using that style of play as the standard in both, two systems of football training and facilities, one like Iceland's for rural Scotland, the scope of which has already been outlined, and a second like Belgium's certainly for urban parts of the country and possibly in the semi-rural areas too. But we have to be a bit canny about what is rural, i.e. where in doubt don't abandon but tend to the Icelandic. Thirdly, see what has happened in Belgium and instead of setting up schools per se, where possible combine school and club academies from the beginning and save the friction of reaction.

And it might provide a second. specific, non-Highland blueprint as follows. Part One would be the Central Belt where there would be a need for three schools, including two due to certain local rivalries in Glasgow and Edinburgh and one shared between Hamilton, Motherwell and Airdrie and three clubs, Kilmarnock, St. Mirren and Livingston and their academies with none much more than three quarters of an hour from the next. Part Two would start in Aberdeenshire where Aberdeen is an hour's drive from Fraserburgh with Peterhead in between and there is a large and populous interior. There needs to be a school, perhaps with the club, in Peterhead and halls in Fraserburgh, somewhere equi-distant from each coast and the deep interior, such as Turriff or Huntly and one at Aboyne. And in Aberdeen itself there would be either an independent or Aberdeen F.C. Topschool. Further south a school would be required in Dundee for the same reason as in Glasgow and Edinburgh with halls perhaps at Montrose, Kirriemuir, Cupar in Fife, Comrie and a good sized hall in Falkirk and club academies at Kirkcaldy/Glenrothes, Perth and Stirling for Stirlingshire. That would be nine halls, three schools and three clubs. And finally Part Three would cover Argyll, The Borders, Dumdries and Galloway and South Ayrshire. Argyll would require halls - Oban, Tarbert, Campbeltown, Arran, Bute, Inveraray/Carndow and Tyndrom/Crianlarich - seven in all, as would The Borders, at Peebles, Tweedbank, perhaps a school and hall, Hawick and Duns, four more. Which leaves Dumfries and Galloway and South Ayrshire with two club academies and five halls.

For Scotland as whole it would perhaps mean fifty halls, three times those in Iceland, at least six Topschools, two fewer than Belgium, and ten club academies, £120 million more or less for the halls, perhaps £60 million for the schools and the same for the club academies, £250 million in total over ten to fifteen years, so £16-25 million per year. It seems a lot but no more than at today's prices a dozen good, young players or a single good, mature one sold south per year. The alternative is doing nothing or what the SFA seems to be doing just now, tinkering. I'll leave you to think about it.

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