The news that the Lowland League issue is resolved is good news for Celtic, and I am pleased that it has been resolved with their division squeezing more money out of the three clubs who want to put colt teams in the competition.
We deserve that for our cheek and presumption, and their league will benefit from the extra cash.
We’ll benefit from having somewhere for our reserves to play, and I am especially pleased with the idea that there is a development element to this; seven of the players have to be produced in Scotland, and that’s smart stuff and makes good sense.
But I remain unconvinced that this is the right place for our youths to be.
They have to be somewhere though and the Lowland League has at least offered us a berth, even if they are charging for it. The SFA should be the ones organising youth football in Scotland; as per usual they are simply glad that someone else has picked up the slack.
The fact remains that the game’s leadership continues to let us down lamentably.
Celtic has had to engineer its own solution, and that simply can’t work in the long term. We do have a place to play now, and it better than nothing … but there were better solutions than this.
All of them, though, depended on the SFA taking a lead.
The standard down there isn’t high enough to bring our people to their best, but it is what we’ve got and we are paying for the privilege. Celtic knows this isn’t going enough, but we’ll take it because what other choice is there?
Narrow options drive a club to narrow solutions and this feels like a weak one and it always has.
That’s nto our fault, and at least the Lowland League has offered us something.
It is more than the governors of our game have.