The Sweeper: Franchise Football in Scotland
Big Story
The words “Franchise Football” strike fear into football fans across Britain. The reason that Wimbledon’s move to Milton Keynes, where they became the MK Dons, continues to generate outrage now many years on is because it abrograted a simple cultural belief common to the vast majority of fans: in some sense, a team “belongs” to its local community. It shouldn’t be moved about like a McDonalds.
But, as Bobby Brandon wrote on these pages last year, MK Dons were not the first “Franchise FC” in Britain; a Scottish precedent had been set in 1995, when what is now Livingston FC (then known as Meadowbank Thistle) abandoned Edinburgh for a new home and stadium in Livingston, West Lothian.
And then in 2002, Airdrie United bought out Clydebank FC to take their place in the Scottish Second Division, killing Clydebank FC despite extensive efforts by United Clydebank Supporters to save the club (the rise, fall and rise again of Clydebank was covered in detail here by Damon Main last year).
Now it looks set to happen again, and unless the Scottish FA steps in, a trend of “franchising” could spread in Scottish football. This time, as the outstanding Scottish blog Away from the Numbers explains, “Cowdenbeath FC and their supporters seem to be facing the fight of their 119 year history at the moment, as it was revealed that they may be looking at possibly groundsharing or possibly a merger with/takeover by Edinburgh East of Scotland non-league side Spartans.”
Details are sparse, but Away from the Numbers speculates it could mean “a takeover by Spartans to buy the Cowden name, move them lock, stockcar and barrel to Edinburgh and have them play under Spartans name in Spartans’ Ainslie Park ground.”
One reason Spartans might want to do this is the same as that of Aidrie United’s reasoning before them: the lack of a true pyramid system in Scotland means the incentive to “buy” a place in the Scottish League is strong for clubs below that level.
In this case, Spartans currently play in the East of Scotland Football League, one of three “non-leagues” immediately below the Scottish Football League, which does not have automatic promotion and relegation with those leagues below (a lack of promotion/relegation isn’t just for MLS, folks!). Opportunities to join the league are thus rare, and in 2008, Spartans were denied their application to replace defunct Gretna.
The situation, then, is not quite comparable to the way MK Dons jumped the pyramid in England by taking over and moving Wimbledon (in England’s true pyramid system, they could have started a local club and fairly moved all the way up the league, as Wimbledon originally did starting in non-league football).
The Scottish football authorities could alleviate what seems to be a growing pattern of clubs attempting to parachute up the pyramid by instituting a promotion and relegation system from the non-leagues to the Football League.
If they don’t, more franchising may well follow.
Quick Hits
- Oh, Sven: saying you’re not paid well at £2m for a few months work managing the Ivory Coast at the World Cup probably isn’t too clever, especially when that country’s average daily wage is £3.
- David Conn on the financial fiasco at Hull City.
- You may be interested to know that Declan Hill’s blog says a new version of his excellent book “The Fix” on corruption in football is coming out soon.
The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.
“Parachute up”? Maybe “paraglide”? How about “ascend”?
I keed.
This is one that seems to have been misreported by the media here in Scotland. Essentially, the issues behind the possible merger stem from SFA beaucracy with respect to ground guidelines and the fact that the owners of Cowdenbeath are pretty much self seeking and not too interested in maintaining the heritege of the club.
Spartans meanwhile are a smallish club, which originally was formed as an Edinburgh Univ FP’s club. It think more of itself than it actually is, slightly up its own importance. Its no coincidence that they have a club hierachy that is in on the ‘financial system’ here in Scotland and therefore ‘accusitions, mergers’ and ‘kill-offs’ is part of the ethos behind the club.
Essentially, its a bit of an pretentious amatuer club (they dont like criticism) who are based about 15 minutes from Edinburgh City centre to the north of the city. The arrogance runs through the club. There are amatuer, junior, womens, under 18 sections and a flashy website and decent infrastructure but the club has zero fan culture. Everyone who goes to Spartans games does so out of interest rather than a passion for the club. They all support someone else i.e. Hearts or Hibs.
Spartans have a small ground that effectively consists of a stand and a pavilion. There is no terracing, its a little like a show/parade ring at a racecourse. Spartans have tried lots of times to get into the league but have been knocked back a number of times. The club have tried to promote is hierarchy for the SFA Chief executive as they feel there is an agenda against them getting into the league.
Spartans will do just about anything to get publicity and the name of the club at the forefront of newspaper print and stories. The club jazzed up stories about one of their players being racially abused and used the influence of a member of the playing staff who was a journalist at the Scotsman to get the story published and into the public eye. They spoke about about perceived bias from the SFA towards the club i.e. the SFA did not take the racist issue seriouslyand tried to push it to UEFA.
In short its a cliquey club and there is a lot of ‘cronyism’ at play around it.
There are quite a lot of clubs in and around Edinburgh (junior and senior) who are much bigger than Spartans. These include Newtongrange Star, Linlithgow Rose, Bo’ness Utd and Edinburgh City. These clubs (especially the first three) have bigger crowds, better grounds and histroy.
Cowdenbeath are a very proud club with loyal fans. Its ground is not exactly modern and flashy but it has masses of character, terracing and on display each week is more passion or loyalty than Spartans could ever muster in a league game. With the stock car race track that surrounds it its like something out of Mad Max.
The SFA have said that its pitch dimensions are unacceptable and the floodlights are poor. This of course is nonsense and unneccessary rules as it is a nice ground whose pitch is better than many of those at the SPL level. The club keep getting fines from the game rulers in Scotland and obviously they cannot pay these fines on crowds of 500 each week.
Stories like this make me mad really and the fact that its Spartans makes it worse. Cowdenbeath are an institution in Scottish football and everything should be done to retain the historical fabric of such a club within the confines of Scottish football. Strict merger/accusition strategies like those being promoted have a place in the immoral world of the financial sector but no place in football.
Cowdenbeath are more of a club than Spartans ever will be. Edinburgh has no room for a third league club but there is plenty of room in Fife for Cowden’.
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