Gordon Smith: Criticism comes with the territory of being at the top of the SFA

East Kilbride manager Billy Ogilvie (SNS Group)

Get something wrong at the top level of the game and everyone is going to know about it. Get it right and you are unlikely to see the praise up in headlines.

But I knew back when I was Chief Executive of the SFA that it came with the territory and the same certainly remains true today.

The description of the ticket allocation for yesterday’s League Cup semi-final at Tynecastle as ‘outrageous’ by St Johnstone players and officials was an example.

I think they had a point. For Saints to receive less than a third of the briefs allocated to Hibs did not seem fair for a match of this stature, the fact they had initially been promised more merely rubbing salt into the wound.

At the same time, though, I have never been – and will never be – an advocate of splitting the tickets 50-50, regardless of the average home gates from the respective clubs.

Do this and you deny many committed football fans the chance to go and watch their team in a showpiece occasion, simply because they follow a well-supported team.

Why should a stay-away fan of a much smaller club get their pick of the seats for the same match?

Common sense is usually the key to good governance, a quality that can be most conspicuous by its absence.

East Kilbride and the row over where their Scottish Cup tie against Celtic was to be played is a great example of this.

Take their suggested list of venues and you can score out Hampden and Celtic Park straight away. Both are far too big for the size of audience they will attract. Likewise EK’s own K Park is far too small, and the police were never going to allow it.

So you come down to the sensible ones, the likes of Hamilton’s New Douglas Park and Airdrie’s Excelsior Stadium.

The former would have been fine but unfortunately the politics went awry. The latter looks just about perfect.

It is not too far away from East Kilbride, is a very decent modern facility and, as such, can be easily policed.

The 10,000 capacity, built to meet the standards imposed on the club by the authorities, should be just about perfect to meet demand and retain the romance of the Cup.

Speaking of which, big congratulations to Linlithgow Rose.

For a Junior club to win a Scottish Cup replay away to Forfar, a senior outfit, is hugely impressive and confirms what I was saying in earlier columns about the benefit to the game of bringing these teams into the fold.

If their next tie, away to Premiership Ross County, is liable to be exceptionally tough, it will also be another nice reminder of the heights that can be attained by clubs with ambition.
County it was, remember, who beat Celtic in the 2010 Scottish Cup semi-final,

And that less than two decades after playing in the Highland League – a fairytale indeed.

Gordon Smith: League reconstruction with Old Firm B teams would be a boost to everyone