The Scottish Summer League
The S.S.L. is my alternative to the real (boring) Scottish Football League. It stands for the "Scottish Summer League" (or alternatively, the "Scottish Soccer League") and has it's origins in the mid 1970's, at which stage I was beginning to show an interest in the organisation of football leagues and cups.
Around 1974 I heard that there had been a plan (so far unsubstantiated) that the imminent Scottish Premier League of 10 clubs was to eventually be merged with 10 clubs from the English League, to form a kind of Super League. I'm not sure if this was true or just the figment of someone's fertile imagination, but it obviously never materialised. However,I experimented with an imaginary league of my own arranged along these lines but no records of this survive. I then decided to try to simulate Scottish leagues instead.
In the beginning: The Albion Cup
In late 1976 I had a plan to simulate a British Cup competition, called the Albion Cup. This would have 2 areas, North and South, corresponding to Scotland and England. The results would besimulated using two dice (from a game of Monopoly), one representing the home team's score, and the other the away team's score. Obviously the actual values on the dice could not be used as the scores, there is no "nil" for a start. To have some kind of "form" I had a sliding scale of equivalent values depending on the clubs' relative positions in the league (ratings). The higher a club's position relative to the other, the higher their possible score. The home scale was slightly better than the away one as well, to reflect home advantage.
The first Scottish area Albion Cup took place, using the final 1975-76 Scottish League placings as "ratings". The final was contested between Aberdeen and Kilmarnock, Aberdeen winning 3-0. An English Cup was also done, with the intention of having a final between the two winners to decide the overall Albion Cup champions. There are no records of the English version remaining nor whether any play-off final ever took place and there was no further English participation in the competition. The competition continued in Scotland, however, becoming known purely as the Albion Cup. The only surviving records of the early seasons of the cup is the participants in the finals and the scores.
The League Championship
In season 55 I began a League championship. There are also no surviving details of the scores in these competitions apart from the league positions in the first two seasons. For posterity, the final Premier Division positions for Season 55 were:
- Celtic 124 pts
- Dundee Utd 109 pts
- Rangers
- Aberdeen
- Partick Thistle
- Motherwell
- Hearts
- Hibernian
- Kilmarnock
- Ayr Utd
In Season 56 the Premier Division was increased to 12 teams and the positions were as follows:
- Rangers 74 pts
- Celtic 72 pts
- Hearts
- Motherwell
- Dundee Utd
- Aberdeen
- Kilmarnock
- Ayr Utd
- St Mirren
- Partick Thistle
- Clydebank
- Hibernian
The league now had 40 teams with the addition of Third Lanark and Inverness Utd and, in Season 72, these clubs were reorganised into two divisions of 20, with three up and three down promotion and relegation between them. Apart from the tables above, the records that survive from Season 57 onwards are limited to the top two in the league, until Season 74, when some records of league positions survive. The records available between Seasons 74 and 86 cover all teams up to Motherwell in alphabetical order and therefore, for clubs after this such as Partick or Rangers, the correct league position is not known unless they finished in the top three of Division 1. However, it has been possible to surmise the positions of some of the clubs and these tables have been included in the League Tables 74-88, showing the known and surmised positions for each season.
The "Hibernation" Period
All of this occurred between late 1976 and mid 1977. In late 1977 I obtained a piece of kit called "Logacta Chart Soccer", which comprised specially set up books for arranging imaginary leagues and cups, and six special, colour-coded dice, with different ranges of possible scores on them. This in itself was a major improvement on using Monopoly dice. The books were ingeniously laid out so as to arrange a 16-team league championship using teams of one's own choice. I experimented with English, Scottish and British leagues, but none of them took off in any way.
As regards Scottish Leagues, I did not continue with the S.S.L. for a awhile as I had lost most of the records and it seemed logical to start afresh, however none of these leagues worked out due to a lack of "realism", although the original S.S.L. was not that realistic at times, e.g. Clydebank as League Champions. So, in 1979 I began the Football Federation for English clubs, which was immediately successful, and the Scottish Leagues took a back seat. (See A.F.L. site for history of Football Federation).
The "Revival" Period
In 1987, I decided to try and reconstruct some of the old league tables, using the partial records of seasons 74-93 mentioned above, just out of interest. These proved much easier to compile than I thought and proved very interesting to see in full. I then thought to myself, that the "realism" I was looking for was probably not attainable, without being as boring as the real life league. However, a bit of "history" might help and I realised that I had this already with the existing S.S.L. records, so if I tagged the new one onto that it might give it a bit of "legitimacy". In addition to the league tables I was amazed to find that I still had lists of the Albion Cup final scores from the beginning and the top three in the league, so I had details of ALL the honours winners since the beginning. I therefore hit upon the idea of continuing from where I left off in 1977.
After season 85 the number of clubs was reduced to the 38 clubs in the league at the time of the "ratings season", i.e. the real season I was using as ratings. This was an attempt at realism and also due to an interest in the history of Scottish Football. I was working back from 1975-76, to the end of World War Two, and had reached 1963-64. In season 88 I had re-organised the divisions on a 14-14-10 basis, but as I wanted to have an 18-20 setup I decided to wipe seasons 88-93, and restart with 88, thus following on from the 18-20 setup that existed at the end of season 87.
The ratings were coming from real season 1960-61 and Rangers won the title on goal-difference from Kilmarnock who, incidentally, had won the league in seasons 83, 84, 86 and 87. The biggest coincidence of all time took place in the Albion Cup, which had originally been won by Hearts over Dundee by a score of 5-3 in a replay. This was the first of the "wiped" seasons, and I had some heartache at scrubbing these records. However, in the replayed season 88, Hearts and Dundee, amazingly, both reached the final and, again, it went to a replay, which was won by Hearts. The score was not 5-3 but, in order to provide a kind of link between the old and the new, I decided that the records would show 5-3. This, I feel, was a good omen, as the league has, at the time of writing, completed a further 57 seasons. (see champions pages for details).
Current Period
The league carried on with an 18-20 configuration until season 148, when it changed to a two-division setup with 16 teams in each division. These are now called the Premier League and League 1. Below these are various feeder leagues, topped by League 2, also comprising 16 teams. Promotion and relegation is three up three down between the Premier League and League 1, and two up two down between Leagues 1 and 2. The League Cup is contested by the main 32 league clubs on a group baisis, and the Albion Cup is contested by the top three leagues.