Going To Seed

I HAVE previously used the expressing 'Aye Beenism' (it's aye been done that way) in these blogs. I make no apologies for using it again here.

Because one of the least-helpful examples of Aye Beenism is Scottish football's refusal to fully embrace seeding in its cup competitions. I appreciate the CIS Insurance (League) Cup is partially-seeded, in as much as the SPL clubs are kept apart in the early rounds, while those clubs in European action also have their situations kindly viewed when it comes to when they enter the fray, but this is not full and proper seeding.

I appreciate too the age-old convention whereby the top teams do not enter the Scottish Cup until the third round, but, here again, seeding is not, in my view, taken far enough.

At one time it didn't really matter if Kilmarnock or Dundee went out to a Highland League team, or if Rangers fell at the first hurdle, at Berwick - today such calamities might hurt Scottish football.

Because these days, Scottish football has to try as hard as it can to ensure we get our best clubs into Europe. We've managed it this year, with the clubs which finished first to fifth in the SPL - the five top clubs in Scotland - getting the five Euro spots, albeit as much by good luck as good judgement.

But in recent years this has not happened, with dire consequences for Scotland's UEFA co-efficient, our standing in Europe.

In tennis or match-play golf, you will never see the top players going head-to-head in the early rounds. Going into any tournament in which all four were playing Nadal, Federer, Murray and Djokovic will be seeded to be the four semi-finalists. It very rarely happens that they are, but if they're not, it will be because someone else had a good day and beat one of them - not that two went head-to-head before the last four.

The seedings means the cream will rise to the top, unless someone puts a spanner in the works, which is still good for the sport.

In Scottish football, the third round draw for the Scottish Cup could throw the top eight SPL clubs together in four head-to-heads. The four survivors could then be paired in the fourth round; the two survivors in the quarter-finals and you end up with a semi-final quartet comprising one SPL team and three SFL teams.

The SPL team then does an Aberdeen or a Celtic and loses in the last four: et voila, you've got two finalists who couldn't attract midges to a picnic and a Scottish Cup winning team which is going to lose to a Leichtenstein team in the first qualifying round for the Europa League, whereby Scotland drops another two places in the UEFA co-efficients.

This insistence that: "It's aye been done this way", that the luck of the draw has always thrown big clubs together in the early rounds is all well and good. But this goes directly against THE big thing about cup draws - the element of surprise, the way it occasionally throws up shock results such as Rangers losing at Berwick or Super Cally going ballistic at Celtic Park.

Seeding will not prevent such welcome surprises, but it will go a long way to lessening the damage done to Scottish football by teams such as Gretna qualifying for Europe.

Seeding might even help make our lesser competitions more sponsor-friendly. The Alba Challenge Cup draw was made yesterday and two of the top eight SFL clubs will not be in the quarter-finals, since Ross County were paired with Morton and Dunfermline Athletic with Queen of the South.

Call the Challenge Cup a diddy competition if you must, but the integrity of the event still calls for the better clubs to be there at the business end and losing two of these to too-early head-to-heads doesn't help this.

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WHILE I'm being radical, what about the CIS Insurance (League) Cup?

This event is run by the SFL, who graciously allow the SPL clubs to compete. Since this is probably the competition in which they've got their best chance to beat the Old Firm, the other ten in the Top Twelve, plus the Big Two, are only too-happy to be involved.

But, this competition doesn't have the cachet of European qualification for the winners and with its demand for extra midweek games at a time when some clubs are still involved in Europe, frankly it's an intrusion.

The League Cup in England is viewed in a similar light, but down there, the bigger clubs tend to treat it as an opportunity to blood their best young players away from the pressure of Premiership points-gathering, so it has become an interesting side-show. The fans of the Big Four or Five clubs get a chance to see what young talent their club has coming through.

Would that the same opportunity was offered to Scottish fans. There is a lot of good young talent in the Old Firm's reserve ranks, as there also is elsewhere in the SPL, but because they HAVE to win every game - even a midweek diddy Cup tie against a lesser club, Messrs Smith and Lennon dare not be too radical in their team line-up.

Alex Ferguson could send a reserve squad to Scunthorpe for a midweek League Cup tie and nobody would bat an eye; were 'Walter' or 'Lenny' to do the same for a match at Elgin (like Scunny the 40th-best team in their land): cue banner headlines, a media frenzy and accusations of not taking the competition seriously.

Maybe the SFL should offer some encouragement, by simply amending the League Cup rules so that participating clubs had to field all-Scottish line-ups, or if that's a step too far, what's wrong with bringing back the "eight diddies" rule - whereby only three non-Scots can be on the field in any 11 players?

Scottish cricket has a Scots-only rule for some of its lesser cup competitions, why cannot Scottish football. You never know, we might just find the next Dalglish from this.