Happy Birthday to us!
On 16th September, the Scottish Football Union was incorporated as a Community Interest Company. Since then, we have been quite busy...
SFU Activity to date (15th September 2026)
Introduction:
The SFU was incorporated on 16th September last year (2026).
Our membership model is based on the TUC, in that organisations affiliating to us don’t necessarily have to agree with everything we do, but in general are supportive of our work to unify the various strands of Scottish football and represent fans in each and every area of the game in Scotland. Currently, our affiliated members total just under 107,000.
We seek to do work that will benefit all football fans and the wider game, at all levels and in every part of the country. In our view, one of the problems that bedevils Scottish football is that all the constituent parts do not work together as effectively as they might. This is apparent in many areas (see, for example, our report on Referee Recruitment and also our Disability Seminar, which brought together para-football and disabled fans). It also applies, again in our view, to the need for more joint working between ourselves and other parts of the ‘Scottish football family,’ including other reputable fans’ groups. We call this ‘joining the dots’ and after our first year in business, we believe we have been able to achieve some small successes in this area, as well as many others, as the list (in no particular order) below shows.
Football Regulator
We believe that, as borne out by the Minutes of the last Scottish Government Round Table meeting, the prospect of a Regulator is now currently well buried. With one exception, the entire meeting was against the idea and we can’t see the government proceeding, especially given the cost at a time when saving money for more important things is paramount.
Maximum pricing for away fans
We wrote a paper for our website, supporting the football clubs/authorities but also making a rational argument for far more work to be done in this area and noting that there are other areas (travel subsidy) that might also be pursued.
Alcohol in grounds
We conducted an interview with St Johnstone owner, Adam Webb, on his ideas for bringing American fan engagement to Scotland, including the increasing use of fan-zones and, ultimately, the controlled reintroduction of alcohol into grounds for some matches. We look forward to working with the football authorities to seek the best (and safest) way ahead on this issue, including the section in our survey (see below) on this topic
Hamilton Accies
We have kept in touch with David Equi and others at the Accies Supporters Association and offered our support (particularly on social media) when they were struggling to keep their club afloat. We are pleased to see that Hamilton is now on the path to recovery.
Women’s game
Some 19% of our individual members are women. Following the SFA President’s request at our last meeting with him and the CEOs in Alloa, we are seeking to create a coherent group of fans of the women’s game across Scotland. We have a plan to grow this over the next year, with a view to organising an in-person meeting at which the key issues that these fans are highlighting can be discussed and, where possible, acted upon. This plan has the support of the MD of the SWPL and the Chair and CEO of Scottish Women’s Football. We have created and started to distribute over 1,300 QR code cards which draw attention to our work in this area. We have also begun to publish a series of interviews with members of our women’s team, with a view to encouraging other clubs’ fans to get involved.
Young Sportswriter of the Year competition (sponsored by News UK/Scotland)
This is a competition, sponsored by News UK (Scotland), to give media and sports-related students the opportunity to win £200 and have their article published online in the Scottish Sun. We attracted over 30 responses and we are pleased to say that News UK has agreed to support us again for the 2026-27 season. Alfie Robinson (a student at City of Glasgow College, who also plays for Berwick Rangers) won with this article on inclusion and racial discrimination in Scottish football.
Walking Football
We conducted a substantial piece of research for Walking Football Scotland, looking at the cost of Walking Football across the country. The survey was statistically very robust and the reception has been uniformly positive, with Walking Football Scotland and Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland being very pleased at the results and the impact they have had, with anecdotal evidence that the publicity has helped increase numbers participating in Walking Football at a number of clubs. As a consequence, we have been asked to be a partner in the ‘Healthy Goals’campaign that Walking Football is currently running and are featured as such on the website and their promotional materials.
Community Trusts
Our programme of interviewing Community Football (and related) groups, started with Cumnock Juniors and has now extended to the Foundation of Hearts, Hibernian Community Foundation, Dundee United Supporters Foundation, Dee4Life, Aberdeen Community Foundation, Caledonian Braves Kilmarnock, Orkney Dons and St Mirren (with more in the pipeline – Dundee United and Stirling Albion Community Trusts). By way of illustration, this link shows the interview with Derek King, of Cumnock Juniors Community Enterprise. The intention here is to highlight the amazing work these organisations do and bring this to the notice of fans. We are also seeking to find ways to ‘join the dots’ and get, for example, the Community Trusts to inculcate respect towards referees from day one of their coaching of youngsters. In our soon-to-be-published interview with Lisa Croll of Dundee United Community Trust, she made the link between the very successful and long-established ‘Show Racism the Red Card’ campaign and how this might be extended to a similar project to tackle referee abuse from day-one of youngsters’ first contact with football training via the Community Trusts/Foundations.
Para-football
Following meetings arranged by us with Ashley Reid, the CEO of Scottish Para-football, our Ambassador for Para-football and our Referee Ambassador, Calum Murray, the SFA referees are now working on a programme of training for Para-football referees, there being some areas of Para-football where referees have had to be brought in from England. We are also actively promoting Para-football events wherever possible (e.g. the CP internationals held at Bo’ness, the expansion of Powerchair football with the new teams being added this year). Tommy Mackay, a striker with the national Amputee team, has joined the SFU disability team and we are actively seeking more members from para-football.
Disability
We held a very successful disability event at McDiarmid Park on 7th May, with support from the SPFL. There had not been such an event for two seasons. The intention was to bring together disabled fans and players and to discuss issues that affect both. Owain Davies, the CEO of Level Playing Field was one of the speakers and we continue to be in regular contact with that organisation. Several, influential SLOs have said to us that Scotland needs an organisation such as LPF and it may be that the DAO Scotland initiative, outlined at the recent SLO/DAO meeting (9th September) at Hampden is one way to approach this.
We have championed fans with both visible and non-visible disabilities. An example of the latter is a number of interviews conducted with the help of David Tanner and Rex Blind Parties.
Jon Attenborough, of our disability team, has been on his travels, working with UEFA at their recent event in Athens and he has also been consulted by other Football Associations in the last year. He, and Stephen Reside, our Lead on Disability, are recognised figures within Scottish football’s disabled community. Adding Tommy Mackay, as noted above, will strengthen this team.
We are also embarking on another series of interviews, with established DAOs, starting with Dougie McInnes of Partick Thistle. The aim here is to work with the football authorities (principally the SPFL) so that these can be shared amongst other DAOs, many of whom receive little or no help or training from their clubs, so they can learn from their peers’ experiences. We have also conducted interviews with other organisations, such as Kick Mental Health and Claremont Colts, while Jon Attenborough, a key member of our disability team, has ‘road-tested’ the amazing GiveVision headset.
The feedback from the McDiarmid event was extremely good and we are now working on the next event, to be held at Tynecastle, hopefully in November. And leading on from this…
Andy Goram’s kilt
Andy Smith, our chair, had Andy Goram’s kilt from the 1998 World Cup. Stephen Reside, our disability lead (who has cerebral palsy), took this to the World Cup this year, achieving massive publicity in the press and broadcast media. We are now going to auction this, alongside Para-Football Scotland, and give the money raised to the national Cerebral Palsy team.
Support for the national team
Prior to the World Cup, we conducted wide-ranging interviews with Martin Riddell and Graeme Baxter of ATAC. We continue to have a good relationship with ATAC and look to continue to develop this. Stephen Reside, our Disability Lead, was interviewed by the BBC about the shameful lack of seats for disabled fans at the World Cup and we supported the SFA in their lobbying of FIFA for more facilities for disabled fans.
Referee Support
At their request, we have audited SFA referee recruitment and presented the report to William Collum and the senior management at Hampden. The recommendations have resulted in some immediate action/quick wins, but there is, in our view, much more that can be done to improve referee recruitment and retention, especially if the ‘football family’ can come together and help support the men and women without whom we don’t have a game. We suggest a presentation of the results (as has already been done for the referees) should be made to the CEOs/Leaders of the SFA, SPFL, SWF, SWPL, SYFA and SPFL Trust, to demonstrate how they can all work together to reduce referee abuse and improve recruitment. This, truly, would be ‘joining the dots’ and there is much to be gained from such a meeting.
At William Collum’s instigation, we assembled some 30 or so fans from a variety of (mainly west-coast) clubs at Hampden to hear him talk about the new changes to the laws and how referees approach their duties in the coming season. This was immensely successful and we are now working with William on a programme of ‘Roadshows,’ starting with one for Tayside and Fife, at McDiarmid Park on 19th November this year where we shall have some 40 fans from different clubs in attendance.
Also, and again with a view to demonstrating our ‘joining the dots’ strategy, we interviewed Andy Halliday, the lead for Walking football refereeing.
Survey - Key issues in the game for fans
We are trying to work with SDS and the SPFL/SFA/SWF/SWPL on a two-stage survey about what issues fans are most concerned about just now. This has been a frustrating exercise, taking far too long to get agreement, but we hope that the end is now in sight. If it turns out that the football authorities and the SFU cannot agree on a final set of questions, we shall still go ahead, but given that we announced this, with no objections, at the last Round Table, it would be preferable if we can all be seen to be aligned on this and the survey can proceed as soon as possible.
Football Banning Orders
We submitted a response to the Consultation on FBOs to support the football authorities’ position. We continue to support Hampden on their approach to football violence and antisocial behaviour and have been heartened by the strength of the sanctions (and their success) imposed recently by both the SFA and SPFL. Fan violence has no place in Scottish football.
Investment in the long-term for Scottish Football
Since our last meeting with the football authorities, we have been working to put some number together to calculate the likely costs of an annual programme that supports children of school age and helps inculcate a love for football in them from Primary One. We have more work to do on this before we can meet again. In particular, the money provided from the Scottish Government, plus the political debate around the SG’s ‘rucksack’ for Primary One school-children, has, in our view, muddied these waters. Nonetheless, we believe that with support from government and the private sector, we can set up a fund that looks to the very long-term and will provide support for future generations to enjoy the game in the decades ahead.
PLZ
PLZ has started to use SFU members to articulate supporters’ views and thus allow us to reach their substantial audience. See, for example, this interview with Foundation of Hearts director Graham Robertson about Hearts recent game in Europe.
We continue to work with PLZ in other ways, including supporting their own promotions and events.
Media and Social Media
Since our formation, various members of our Ops team have been interviewed by/featured in, amongst others:
· PLZ Soccer,
· The Scottish Sun,
· Daily Record,
· The P&J,
· The Daily Mail,
· Sky
· Channel 4
· The Nicky Campbell Show on Radio 5 Live,
· Radio 5 Live afternoon show,
· The World at One on Radio 4,
· BBC Radio Scotland,
· Clyde Super-scoreboard and Black Diamond FM (local Midlothian station)
Our social media presence is small, but growing. We use Facebook, X, YouTube and TikTok. To give you an idea of how much work we have put into these platforms, in our first year we have published 116 videos on TikTok and nearly 100 Reels on Facebook and YouTube. If you don’t already follow us, please do! Our reach and relationships are such that we are followed by the SPFL, SWPL and SPFL Trust on X.
Our social media strategy is to ensure we don’t substitute quantity of followers for quality of followers. To that end, we actively share as many posts from the referee associations, the women’s game (at every level), Community Foundations, Youth football and also some key influencers (e.g. Scotland’s Coefficient, with whom we will soon publish an interview). We have recently recruited a sports journalism graduate to help support our social media/marketing.
The Scottish Football Heritage Project
We have worked with Historic Environment Scotland to promote this important project to our members and the wider football world, interviewing one of their team about the work involved and also drawing on our knowledge of Scottish football history to point them to some specific sites where we know this heritage needs to be preserved.
In conclusion
We believe the SFU has demonstrated in our first year that our commitment to Scottish football and our support for those running the game is far beyond that of any other comparable fans’ organisation. While we know that there have been and will continue to be areas where our views clash with those at Hampden (the survey may be a case in point!), we shall strive to continue to develop our relationships across the Scottish football family in the years ahead.
Alastair Blair, Operations Director, The SFU
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