Protect the communities formed around sports teams

Sport plays an important role in the lives of millions of Scots. Whether watching or playing, it forms important aspects of community life.  

Take football for example, no country in Europe attends football games at a higher rate per capita than the Scots. Why do we love it so much when it’s no secret the Scottish game isn’t the highest quality nor the most entertaining? When at times it can be so arduous and utterly depressing? 

It’s not about the sport; it’s about the family history and relationships formed and maintained by attending football. It’s sharing the pride after your team wins an important game or the agony of a heavy defeat that brings people closer.  

There is personal history and heritage intertwined with Scottish football. We created the modern game after all, when young men, mainly from the Highlands and Perthshire, met in Queens Park in Glasgow in 1867. Having obtained a copy of the FA (Football Association) laws, they amended them to conform with a near-scientific blend of dribbling and passing – that style is why it’s the world’s most popular sport today.  

That history makes the potential demise of Inverness Caledonian Thistle Football Club – one of only two professional clubs in the Highlands – so upsetting. 

The club – known by many for its classic Scottish Cup upset win against Celtic in 2000 and the now infamous headline that followed, ‘Super Caley go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious’ – fell into administration this month after years of mismanagement from the board. 

It’s standing at the top of a cliff, looking over the edge at extinction after losses last season ran to £1.2m. The club has forecast a similar loss this year, and that figure does not include money spent on restructuring following relegation into the third tier of the Scottish professional leagues last season.  

Things have become so bad that Inverness manager Duncan Ferguson, who has now been let go, worked the last few months for free and was said to be paying the fuel of some of the players. While that sacrifice must have been hard, my sympathy is with the fans. 

Since its formation, it has been a club that not only serves Inverness but much of the Highlands too. For the last few decades, Inverness and Ross County have been the only teams that young boys and girls living in that area of Scotland have seen in the topflight Scottish football.  

If Inverness does cease to exist this will be catastrophic for the next generation of young people from the Highlands that love football. Will we see another Ryan Christie, a product of the Inverness youth academy and the scorer of the goal that helped Scotland to its first major tournament in two decades? Probably not. 

And for the families who have been going to see the team for decades, who watched their team rise from obscurity in the 90s to win a Scottish Cup in 2015, all that could be reduced to memories with no hope of making any more.  

Sadly, with a failed public fundraiser, huge projected losses, and the club’s insolvency meaning a 15-point deduction in the league which has left them bottom of the table by quite some way, it looks like bad business management could permanently devastate the Highland club and the communities formed around it.

That devastation has been felt in England in the last few years as Bury and Macclesfield Town ceased operations. Partly in response to this the UK Government has launched a bill to strengthen football governance. It would see an independent regulator for the English game established and would improve the financial sustainability throughout the leagues. The UK Government is offering solutions as the business of football has become more and more unsustainable. It’s time for the Scottish Government to do the same.