The poor bloke who broke the dull, leaden news of George Peat’s sleep-inducing initiative about a new “coalition by committee” for Scottish football has taken some good-natured ribbing over his glitzy exclusive last week. In fact, though, the story, while soporific in its effect, was still quite important in terms of the need to chart a fresh way ahead for the Scottish game.

Alas, it is not any coalitions of committees – as exciting as these sound – which Scottish football requires. Instead, it is a fresh surge of spectators coming through the turnstiles which must be a principal aim of the Scottish Premier League and the SFA over the next five years.

Why can Aberdeen, outwith visits of the Old Firm, not attract 15,000 crowds to Pittodrie? The city of Aberdeen is certainly big enough to sustain such audiences. The very same applies to Hibernian. And why can highflying Dundee United – likewise outwith Old Firm visits – not get 10,000 gates to Tannadice?

I’m all for Mr Peat’s snoozing ideas about coalitions, but what I’d like to see most of all is a bold set of initiatives to get people coming back to Scottish football.

I took a cursory glance around the SPL attendances at the weekend, and it didn’t make encouraging reading. There were 3,364 – can you believe that? – at Love Street for the St Mirren v Caley Thistle match. At Pittodrie, meanwhile, just 8,900 watched Aberdeen play Falkirk. At least Hibernian got into five figures – 10,427 – for their game against Hamilton Accies, while 11,362 were at Tannadice for the visit of Rangers on Saturday.

(The Celtic Park crowd of 56,000 for the visit of Hearts – as healthy as it was – isn’t really relevant for current purposes.)

Image, as they say, is everything.

How can anyone forget the bleak picture of that Kilmarnock v Celtic Scottish Cup tie last season at Rugby Park – the one where 6,500 turned up and images of those stands with their empty seats were beamed around Britain? OK, that game was live on TV, with one of those barmy kick-off times of 12.30 on a Saturday, and a few thousand Celtic fans, still nursing their headaches from the night before, clearly thought the better of jumping on their buses for the half-hour trip south at such a time of day.

Even so, the damage was done. “It certainly doesn’t look good for us,” Gordon Strachan said of the game’s nonattendance.

It is in this context that the recent idea of MSP Frank McAveety, among others, about letting children into football for nothing, is surely heading in the right direction. Imagine, say, kids up until the age of 11 getting into football for nothing, and then a policy for 11 to 15-year-olds where season-books were radically cheap in price. I hope that the SPL, perhaps in conjunction with the SFA and the Scottish Government, can explore such a policy for its feasibility.

The politics of football is essentially dull, but what George Peat and Gordon Smith, the SFA chief executive, have to come up with are draft-proposals for revival. The SFA, in fact, has an absolute requirement to act in this way.

As Jim Farry, late of that parish, used to say, the SFA’s primary remit was “the well-being of football in this country”. While it is true that the clubs themselves are responsible for attracting their own customers, the SFA and the SNP Government in tandem will surely acknowledge the importance of football to wider Scottish culture.

Our game will inevitably have its dips – such as in the mid1970s when Scottish attendances slumped alarmingly for a two-year period – but it shouldn’t be taken for granted that football will somehow just heal itself. On the contrary, Mr Peat’s imminent coalitions and committees should be highly mindful of Scottish football’s need for a fresh impetus over the coming years.

Free admission for youngsters, with Government-backed grants, would certainly be one way of going about it. And let’s see what else they can come up with.

And another thing...

We love him, we love him not, we love him...

Can you believe this? A healthy section of Rangers fans at Tannadice on Saturday actually booed the substitution of Kenny Miller when the striker left the field after 68 minutes, to be replaced by Nacho Novo.

I better just repeat that for clarity... Miller was being taken off the pitch, and the Ibrox faithful booed Walter Smith’s decision.

The collective musings of a football crowd can be hilarious: emphatic in their contempt for a player one minute, then lauding him the next. And I must say I have loved watching the way Miller has won round the Rangers support, not to say the way that Walter Smith simply couldn’t give a toss about the way some among the Ibrox faithful openly disparaged Miller’s signing last summer.

Does anyone remember those earnest, lofty statements from certain supporters groups, explaining why Rangers should not sign Miller? “Oh, really?” Smith said witheringly when informed about their disapproval. “Hi Kenny, in you come, son...”

Smith always insisted that, while Miller would be no rampant goalscorer, his pace and diagonal running would give Rangers more invention and variation in attack. And so, for the most part, it has proved, culminating in many Rangers fans being distressed on Saturday when Miller left the pitch.

They’ll be pronouncing their love for the media next.

Greek bearing few gifts

There are times when I watch Georgios Samaras and wonder if he is actually the worst international striker I have ever seen – and I include some of the Latvians in that category – and last Wednesday night at Celtic Park against Villareal was one such occasion.

The way Samaras played that night, it was as if his feet were made of wood, and he is prone to such performances. I’m not sure what sort of striker he is going to be for Celtic, but what I do know is that this Greek chap is one of those players who, over a given 90 minutes, is capable of a unique type of rank-rottenness.

I think the Celtic support should brace themselves.

Time for a Hearts stopper

At last, a cure has been found for Csaba Laszlo’s verbal diarrhoea, wherein the Heart of Midlothian coach sets off on a train of thought in press conferences and cannot ever come to a full-stop. Hacks have been known to nip out for lunch, or even get down the high street for some Christmas shopping, while Laszlo is in mid-flow.

Now, though, I discovered while listening to BBC Scotland’s Chick Young interview with Laszlo on Saturday, the secret is to just rudely butt in and cut him off while asking a second (or third) question. Chick did this to some good effect on Saturday, and I’ve seen the newspaper boys do it well, too.

It is the only way, I’m afraid, to keep the Hearts coach from warbling on at a War and Peace rate of knots.