Doncaster discovers grounds for optimism

[ian1964 10,720]

NEIL Doncaster is on a sort of unofficial tour of the country: Almondvale last weekend, Firhill tonight, Dumbarton until half-time tomorrow and then on to Celtic Park.

 

It would be facetious to say heâ??s travelling the country to try to win friends and influence people, even if there is a vague sense of a charm offensive about the man who has just swapped jobs without swapping offices. Just as the rest of us have to get used to the idea of him being chief executive of the Scottish Professional Football League now rather than the Scottish Premier League, so the man himself must adapt to the idea of being responsible for 42 clubs, not 12.

 

That is potentially 30 new sets of fans to take a dislike to him. Doncaster has been in Scottish football for four years â?? easily long enough to realise that a role as high profile as his attracts criticism (some of it justified) and personal abuse (which never is). He will not perform any ceremonial duties for the governing body ahead of the first fixture in the SPFLâ??s history tonight â?? Partick Thistle v Dundee United has that honour â?? but, if he did, he knows his name would be jeered were it to be announced.

 

â??If you donâ??t have a thick skin in football youâ??re not going to enjoy your life,â? he said. â??You have to do your job, get on with it, not worry about how youâ??re seen, do what you believe is the right thing, have the courage of your convictions, and ultimately be judged on your results. The commercial results that the SPFL enjoyed in its guise as the SPL speak for themselves. Weâ??ve been able to increase incomes at times of enormous difficulty for the game. If you donâ??t enjoy this sort of job, youâ??re not going to enjoy any job.â?

 

He regards himself as being in â??a key position in world footballâ?. If that sounds a bit puffed up for a man answerable to everyone from Celtic to East Stirlingshire, it is typical. No-one could ever accuse him of talking down Scottish football, and the top-flight clubs valued him to the extent that he was always going to be their choice over the Scottish Leagueâ??s David Longmuir to become the first SPFL chief executive.

 

Six lower-league clubs voted against creating the SPFL and a few held their noses while voting it through, believing that it was less a merger than a takeover of the SFL by the SPL. Scepticism remains, and it is natural to assume some frostiness towards Doncaster when he arrives in their boardrooms.

 

He claims there has been only warmth so far. â??Iâ??ve been quite pleasantly surprised over the past few weeks. There has been a genuine open-mindedness and desire to embrace the future. Whatever happened on that long day at Hampden [when the SPFL was voted into existence on June 27], people have moved past that. Weâ??ve had a really good dialogue with even some of the [previously] most vociferous characters. Iâ??m trying to get round as many grounds as possible.

 

I made it my business in my first four years here to get around the grounds and Iâ??ve been to probably just over half in the lower leagues.

 

I am getting to meet as many as possible of the people and personalities at the 42 clubs, rather than just talking about them.�

 

There has been criticism of the SPFL for simply copying the English naming model for its four divisions. Criticism, too, about some kick-offs being moved to 5.15pm on Saturdays to accommodate broadcasting schedules. And then there is the elephant in the room: why doesnâ??t the new league have a title sponsor to replace Clydesdale Bank?

 

Doncasterâ??s position is that a league sponsor is not financially essential. â??More than 90% of the income is from broadcasting.

 

And title sponsorship is only a part of the remaining 10%. The actual amount of money that comes in from the title sponsor is far less than we get from selling broadcast rights outside the UK and Ireland. Broadcast rights make up the vast majority of the income we generate. On the basis that we have at least four years of stability with Sky Sports and BT, the clubsâ?? distributions from the league are going to be robust.

 

â??It is important to have a title sponsor but the market requires certainty [about league reconstruction] and weâ??ve only had certainty for a few weeks. Weâ??re going out as a new organisation to speak to as many large companies as we can who want to use the huge power of Scottish football to help their companies and their brands.â?

 

The lack of a main sponsor has become a cause celebre, though, and doubtless will be one of the issues put to him when he is interviewed by the SPFLâ??s new broadcast partner, BT Sport, as part of its coverage from Firhill. It will be the stationâ??s Scottish football debut. Doncaster will appear on it while recording the entire coverage to watch later.

 

â??I am very keen to see how the game comes across on BT Sport. Iâ??m looking forward to see how they present the games. They have gone about it with massive enthusiasm. They seem determined to showcase Scottish football to its best, the way Sky Sports have done for years.â?

 

http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/opinion/doncaster-discovers-grounds-for-optimism.1375433310