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Who's Afraid of the Dark?

The "midweek fixture" has been a long-established concept in football in Scotland. Indeed, most international matches, league cup games and an ever-increasing number of league games are played on an evening outside the weekend. There's a completely different atmosphere at these games as anyone who has been at a cup semi or Scotland match on a Tuesday or Wednesday night will tell you -- a whole different type of theatre and drama from a Saturday afternoon.

The difference isn't so much the day of the week that the game is played on, I feel, as the time of day that the game is played on. Put simply, darkness creates a new kind of atmosphere, and I think it would be worth the Claymores' while to try playing a match on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday night in 1998. It was tried before in 1995, with admittedly limited success in the form of another late defeat and a crowd of seven and a half thousand. It seems to me, though, that this was not solely a consequence of playing a game at night ... there were a few other mitigating circumstances.

The first of these is obviously the team's absolutely dire form in 1995. Attendances had been dropping as soon as Amsterdam cuffed us at home; maybe playing the game on a Sunday afternoon wouldn't have helped - as it is, the last home game of the season had a smaller attendance (somewhere in the region of six and a half thousand, I believe). The second contributory factor relating to this game in particular might also be the fact that the Scottish Cup was on the very same day. This meant that at the very least, the attendance at Murrayfield that night was one smaller than it would otherwise have been, although on a personal note I have to say that if the same circumstance arose again, I'd choose Murrayfield first every time.

So, the jury is maybe still out on night games being a guaranteed attendance-dropper. If the Claymores have a half-successful season this year and manage to consolidate to an average attendance in the region of fifteen to twenty thousand (entirely possible), that would indicate that they're building up quite a large base of loyal fans, who might be tempted to give night games a go, at least as a one-off. Maybe if there's an early-season game against the Monarchs in 1998, that would be the one to go for. Both teams will most likely still have everything to play for, and there would also be a fairly large away contingent there to boost the numbers.

Now, I'll finally get to the point. So far, I've explained how I think night games might actually work from an attendances point of view, but the question remains, why bother? It all relates to what I said in the beginning. Darkness offers a completely fresh view of how the game can be presented, a new way of showcasing the drama and tension of an crucial game. It works in football in one way, and it can work in American Football in another way, only I feel that there's far more potential in it for American Football.

Just imagine ... the glare of the floodlights glinting off the silver helmets down on the field ... the ball arcing into white haze before being plucked from the air by returnee Sean LaChapelle ... loud music thumping out into the packed east and west stands and the dark, starry sky above ... people jumping up and down to the power of the game and the rhythm of the music ... mazy spotlights following the Mexican wave right round the stands ... a laser show at half time and a massive fireworks display after the last play of the game. Bliss! And don't tell me that it would be too cold for the cheerleaders, it's hardly as if the Claymores play in a tropical climate most Sundays.

There's just so much potential to make the game so much of a different proposal to the Sunday afternoon set-up. It's maybe not the kind of thing you would want to happen every week, but maybe once a season wouldn't hurt too much, a change is as good as a rest and all that. It's certainly an idea which has captured this particular optimist's mind.

Alan Gibson