GLF78 - The title says it all.....
SPL YOU’RE HAVING A LAUGH
After months of being told by Neil Doncaster that there was only one way forward for the SPL, and that was a ten-team format, it finally became apparent this simply wasn’t true and the proposal died an unseemly death.
But, his belief this was the only way forward must have blinded them to any alternatives as we have been left with a massive vacuum since this announcement. We are therefore left this season with a league that really no one wants! We still have the unbalanced fixture list provided by a 12 team league and a split with five games left of the season.
While I am one who accepts the split does provide excitement, it will always cause issues with team playing 18 home games and 20 away games, OR playing one team at home three times and away once and vice versa.
What do we need to do;
- Stop playing each other 4 times would be a good start – it's a bit boring going to the same places over and over again, although I do admit this is probably not going to be easy as the league size would need to increase to 18, and I am not sure we have the depth of quality to support that.
- If we can’t do that we still need to make the League bigger, either 16 or 14, but I think this may require a split of some sort to give us the number of games the clubs would be looking for.
- Reduce prices – people are no longer travelling to away games in any numbers, and this is largely down to having to pay more than £20 to watch the product on show at the moment. In some cases also for the conditions we are being asked to sit in! I believe £15 is the maximum that people should be asked to pay for an SPL game, until the product increases.
- Talk the game up a bit more – hard to do given our European performances this season, but domestically I have seen five SPL games at the time of writing and have enjoyed all five. There has been an attempt by almost all of the teams to get the ball down and play rather than hoof the ball long, but we would rather accentuate the negative than the many positives this season.
Hopefully the SPL board, or whoever will be making any decisions, get their fingers out and make the right decisions, after getting all the right people involved (including the fans!).
Graham Barnstaple
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