Mince and Tatties 06: My wet dream, Kilmarnock and yet another league format?

In what has been a season of disappointments, I want to tell you about my recurring dream, the one I usually have right before my beloved Aberdeen play a game.

In this dream, the Dons win the SPL by a single point on the final day of the season in front of a packed-to-the-rafters Ibrox, with Darren Mackie firing in a 93rd minute winner despite being a good 10 yards offside. The ref has seen nothing wrong, and as the helicopter carrying the trophy lands on the center circle at Ibrox, McGhee is fired and Walter Smith agrees to leave Ibrox to come to Pittodrie, where he'll get a contract and regular Champions League football.Ah well.

My Scottish football wet dream will have to wait another year. After today's disgraceful performance by Aberdeen (in which they lost 3-1 to Hamilton, with Foster and Diamond both getting sent off) I should be on my hands and knees thanking God for the existence of Killie and Falkirk, because we are lucky to still be playing in the SPL this season. We have been awful and not really deserving of our place in the league.

That's a harsh admission to make, I know. But sometimes I can't help thinking that a year in the SFL might do Aberdeen some good. Taking a leaf out of Newcastle United's book who, like Rangers in the SPL didn't lose a home game all season and cruised back to the Premier League, we might find our natural level there, down in Division One.

We would win and be successful and play in front of packed stadiums (relatively speaking) every week. When Saturday comes, fans would flock to Pittodrie in buoyant and confident mood, knowing they're about to see their team dominate and win. Every game would be like being Rangers or Celtic.

But nice as though that might sound, relegation would be a bad thing for most clubs in the SPL. Just how bad it will be may well be evidenced if Kilmarnock go down this year.

Kilmarnock, a mid table club from a small town in a relatively sparsely populated area of Scotland, have much-publicized problems, with debts running just short of £12million. After their defeat today against St Johnstone, they'll need to beat Aberdeen next Saturday and hope Falkirk lose away at St Mirren on the same day. That way they'll move three points clear of The Bairns, and with superior goal difference they could afford to lose their final game (against Falkirk would you believe it; the Good Lord must be a St Mirren fan) and so ensure not just SPL survival, but their survival as a football club.

Killies' average attendance this season (so far) is 5,713, putting them exactly in the middle of the table. Accies have the lowest average attendance this season with 3,000 fans coming through the gates, while Rangers are top with an average of 47,411.

But if you take Killies' average attendance compared to their capacity, they'd be slap-bang at the bottom with a mere 32%. Rangers and Hearts (93% and 84% respectively) would lead that table, with Celtic, Hibs and Falkirk just behind. Accies, Aberdeen, St Johnstone, Motherwell make up the other poor performers, with none of these teams making it past the 50% mark.

Financially speaking, relegation would be a disaster for a club like Kilmarnock; the chances are they would not survive for very long. Deprived of what little TV revenue there is, and with sharply reduced takings at the turnstiles (on average the SPL has pulled in just under 14,000 paying punters per game, compared to just under 3,000 in the SFL), a year in the SFL could seriously impact their future prospects.

Along with Ayr United, relegated to the Second Division today following their 2-1 defeat against Morton, football fans in south-west Scotland could be in for a bit of a nightmare.

...... oOOo ......

Aside from another year of having my dreams and aspirations crushed and not seeing a Raith Rovers v Ross County Scottish Cup final, my biggest disappointment this season has been Dundee's failure to win the First division.

Now, it's not so that I have any great affinity for either the team or even the city (my brother still lives there and I occasionally go to Dens if the opportunity presents itself), but I would have loved to have seen Dundee come up, if only because they would have been a good addition to the league, and would have been nice to have someone different in the SPL.

Killie and St Mirren (and to some extent) Falkirk have been like a fart in a lift: not particularly pleasant, and you're stuck with it all the way down. But St Johnstone by contrast have been a breath of fresh air this year. And while Inverness Caley are more than welcome and deserve their place in the SPL, I can't help feeling there's a certain deja vú about it all.

If you look at the teams that have come up in the last 10 years or so, five still play in the SPL (St Johnstone 08/09, Hamilton 07/08, St Mirren 05/06, Falkirk 04/05 and Hibs 98/99), while the others (Livingston, Partick and in particular Gretna) didn't last very long.

So while we talk of Old Firm league domination, things are not any more competitive further down the league, effectively being a closed shop, with a small group of teams going up and going back down again.

There has been talk again of league reconstruction this past week, with the SPL cautiously announcing that they're considering a 14-team league from next season, which would see clubs play each other twice and split after 26 games into a top six and bottom eight. A play-off system involving the runner-up in the First and the 11th placed team in the SPL adds another level of interest in both leagues.

Those of you who know me will know that I'm a fan of the split, not because it is a well-thought through plan (I'm the first to admit it has its flaws) but because in the absence of anything better, it does keep the league marginally more interesting than it would be if we didn't have the split but did have a twelve, fourteen or even forty-two team league.

But opening up the league, or at least making it easier for teams to make their way up the divisions, would be a terrific move forward, even in the current 12-team format.

The thing I like most about the new proposal is the idea of possibly having two teams up from Division One. As we've seen with Dundee (and Ross county, Raith and Queen of the South), there's actually some decent football teams down there down would give some of our established SPL teams a run for their money.

I agree with Dundee United chairman Stephen Thompson when he says that change in Scottish football is about more than just introducing two new teams into the league. Change has to come to every nook and crannie of Scottish football, and if you're going to expand the league, then the first thing you must do is do away with the restrictive barriers that prevent clubs from being promoted, barriers such as capacity, under-soil heating and floodlighting.

With those gone, we could actually see a Ross County or a Queen of the South in the SPL, or even a Stirling Albion, a Cowdenbeath or an Alloa if the form of those teams continues. I'm not saying these teams will have a long term future in the SPL, but at least they'll have as good of a chance of making it into Europe as Aberdeen, Rangers and, assuming they're still around, even Kilmarnock.