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REMEMBER the outcry when Stewart Milne stood at Hampden and blasted Stewart Gilmour and Roy MacGregor?

Apparently they were destroying the future of our game by refusing to agree to hair-brained schemes like 8-8-8, more like 6-6-6.

This season has shown the scaremongers were talking rubbish.

Going into the last week we had the fight for runners-up ongoing and the race for European places raging.

On Sunday, Aberdeen and Motherwell will have a last-day showdown for second. At the bottom, we’ve had one of the most exciting jousts in recent memory with five teams in danger of joining Hearts in going down.

Now a battle royal at Easter Road tomorrow between Hibs and Kilmarnock will settle it.

Three teams could have gone the other way, with Dundee, Hamilton and Falkirk in with a shout of automatic promotion going into the last game.

We didn’t need major change. The introduction of the play-offs was all we needed to tweak.

The split is a success, no matter what anyone says. Every year the bottom six is a dogfight and this one is the best, thanks to 11th place now also being in trouble.

Imagine if they had got their 12-12-18 plan, which bizarrely switched to 8-8-8 at halfway? Hibs. The story. The excitement right now. They wouldn’t even be involved.

Milne talked of serious damage which had been done by Gilmour and MacGregor’s stance.

Funny that after a really good season for the Dons the only time we’ve heard him this season was when he dropped sweary words into an interview after his club bagged the League Cup.

Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell said we had too many meaningless games.

What meaningless games? Going into this last week only 25 per cent of the Premiership had nothing to play for.

The only team that had meaningless games is Lawwell’s Celtic.

You could have split it 6-9-9 or 4-10-10 or 2-11-11 – it wouldn’t have mattered.

They would still be a million points clear due to their financial clout.

Fans who don’t go stay away because they have other interests, simple.

They said the cut-throat environment would stunt the development of young players but it hasn’t stopped Andrew Robertson from getting into the Scotland squad or stopped Juventus watching his team-mate Ryan Gauld. It hasn’t stopped Stevie May becoming the real deal or Peter Pawlett fulfilling his potential.

They said it would force managers into playing dreary football. Didn’t seem to stop Alan Archibald or Danny Lennon from trying to play silky football. With cloth now also being cut accordingly, clubs are getting back on their feet financially.

Lack of interest? Aberdeen had 40,000 fans at the League Cup Final and Dundee United will have over 30,000 at the Scottish Cup Final.

We’re lacking sponsors but that is as much down to those employed to find them as the product.

Put it this way, either the Grim Reaper is holed up in a bunker beside Charles Green or he’s gone for good.

If there was cash value in hot air there wouldn’t be a club in Scottish football with debt.

Is it La Liga? No. Is it packed with genuine quality? No. But it’s also not the League of Oban as some would tell you and it certainly doesn’t lack excitement.