I echo a lot of what you touch on CodPiece. To talk about Scottish football you have to really break it down, like you allude to.
http://www.raithrovers.net/prices
Season Ticket Prices
All Stands Adult
£250 Senior Citizen
£125 Junior
£30
Gate Admission Prices All Stands Adult
£18 Junior (Under 16)
£9 Senior Citizen (Over 65)
£9 Pre-School Concession (only available for non-ticketed matches)
Free Parent & Child (only available for non-ticketed matches)
£21 College/Uni Concession (only available for non-ticketed matches)
£12 Jobseeker Concession (only available for non-ticketed matches)
£12 Disability & Carer Concession
(Disabled person, Carer = FREE) £9
Austerity has hit Scotland hard. My local team, from childhood is Rath Rovers. I used to live and go to school two minutes from the ground in the Links. Kirkcaldy used to have mines and manufacturing industry and a thriving high street. My dad was a taxi driver for over 25 years. In the 80's when times were tough under Thatcher, he still made good money, then every five years it got worse and worse. Not long after he retired, he told me a story about how he'd somtimes sit in his taxi waiting for a hire and look at his taking for the day, or the take that was his commission. Sometimes he'd work six hours of a 12 hour shift and have 20 quid for his troubles. he said he often wanted to burst out in tears.
When taxi drivers are struggling you know people have less disposable income. Same thing when Cinemas and pubs close. You walk along Kirkcaldy high street and all you see is empty units where once there were shops. Now you see loads of charity shops and pound shops - even MacDonalds who had a prime location on the corner where hepworths used to be closed down a few years ago. We used to have two tescos on the high street, now we got none.
You can see much the same thing all over Scotland. So the idea of stumping up even 12 quid if you're unemployed, or £18 quid if you're on a low wage, and low wages and unemployment are prevalent all over Scotland, well, for a lot of people it's an easy decision, cos by and large you're watching shite football, and as we all know, there's always a good game on TV or on your computer on a live stream.
Less kids are taking up the sport. Local teams, your Aberdeens, Dundees and Falkirks and so forth could gather the local talent and build a team from a pretty decent local nucleus. That's not true anymore. It's a numbers game. It's true CodPiece, kids have internet, play station, social media, sport on TV, and other pastimes and distractions that can be seen to be better uses of their time. True, we couldnae wait to get hame, jam some mince down our throats and get out ontae the field, the park, the street with a baw and find a game, get a game going. And we played until it got too dark or whoever it was whose baw it was went hame. I wonder if it makes a difference that there were some Scottish players worth pretending to be.
But, another thing...as time goes by we will always sell of common ground to private investors and parks go that way. In Burntisland my home town. We played on the Toll Park. The school team and BBs and Burntisland Utd and all the kids played on Toll Park and it's where we had the yearly civic week five a side tournie, one of my favourite weeks of the year growing up. They had three pitches, two full size and one half size. It was great. But when it became clear that Burntisland's Primary School was unfit for purpose and had to close, and a new school built. So they built on the toll park...and the land that the old school sits on will not be used for public or recreational activities. Not good. If we want more kids playing, we have to make it easier for them to play, not harder. Now these are specific instances that prove nothing, and one would have to do a tour or gather information from every town and village and city, to find out how the access and availability of football pitches has changed/reduced over the years, but I see less kids playing football in parks.
I live near bellahouston Park in Glasgow, one one side of the hill by Pasley Road west you have five a side pitches, where you have to pay to play. They do good business. Round the other side, lots of flat space...plenty space for a kickabout, i never see anyone there. The growth in football participation has been amongst adults playing five a sides, that industry is booming in glasgow. But that's not gonna get us a decent national side.
Edit: Formatting for shite. And i don't think you can talk about Scottish Football without talking about Scotland, where it is and what it's going through.
