Opinion: Sportscene has deteriorated over the years, just show the game, analyse and repeat

Regardless, on Sunday evening away from the precarious business of doing the ironing but not well enough to be asked to do it again, I managed to squeeze in some time in front of the box to be transported back to the dark winter weekend night ritual of bath time, Batman pyjamas, tea and supper before watching the football highlights. What a year 2013 was.

But in all seriousness, the experience that I suffered on Sunday evening during a rare opportunity to watch Sportscene live did little to hurl me back to the halcyon days of a snappy-dressed Richard Gordon chewin’ the fat with Gordon Smith after a 25-minute highlight package of Hearts v St Johnstone. Considering the pair were pilloried nearly 20 years ago for their low-tech approach to tactical analysis – everyone surely recalls the wee fridge magnet tactics board? – It says something that the modern day production just shows how far the once great Scottish institution has been reduced to nothing more than source of ridicule for some of those who suffer through it.

The BBC show has now been on the go for 40 years, a fact that was celebrated just a few months ago with a documentary citing the various achievements and, pardon the pun, highlights the programme has brought us over the years. And it has, that's not in question. However, it only helped to underline just how it has deteriorated over the years – Imagine Miss World 1936 thumbing through some dusty photo album to prove she still had it before the speed dating night down the legion.

In theory, it should be a fairly simple concept. Show game, analyse, and repeat. But even that seemed to be a struggle for the show’s producers on Sunday night, who seemed keener to fouter with pictures of pumpkins and ghosts – those quirky scamps – instead of producing a sports highlights programme.

After a bizarre piece involving Partick Thistle mascot Kingsley that almost took precedence over the actual match at Firhill on Saturday, we were treated to firstly 55 seconds of highlights from Inverness Caledonian Thistle versus Dundee, before a whopping 18 seconds of wonderfulness flashed up on the screen from Kilmarnock against Motherwell. Yes, you read that right, EIGHTEEN seconds. To put it in more galling terms, that is shorter than the 37-second-long opening titles, and three seconds under the airtime given to the wee graphics of the Celtic and Aberdeen starting line-ups. They even had the audacity to have a Motherwell player in the studio to discuss it.

It appears me and my bowl of Coco Pops were not the only ones who were left incredulous at an offering that can be described as nothing other than a disgrace. The hashtag Sportscene was trending on Twitter (it was causing a right stooshy on ‘tinternet) with a barrage of bealin’ punters taking to their keyboards to vent their frustration. The unfortunate Stuart Gunn wrote: “Made the mistake of blinking when the @MotherwellFC highlights came on on #Sportscene and missed them. #BBCSportScotland #Getitsorted.”

Football fan wants to watch football games on a football highlights programme. Who’d have thought it?

Sadly, the words that yesterday spewed their way out of the mouth of Barbara Slater, the BBC’s head of sport, would suggest Mr Gunn’s wish is likely to remain unfulfilled. Appearing as a keynote speaker at The Future of Sport in Scotland seminar in Edinburgh, she confirmed that no more cash was to be thrown at improving Auntie’s Scottish football highlights show. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that a corporation which pours £68million a year into the over-hyped English game compared to the crumbs off the table that are served up here - £1m - doesn’t think of our game as an investment but merely as a necessary nuisance.

In recent weeks Sportscene has also been bumped on to BBC2 Scotland, meaning games can’t be watched in high definition (most Aberdeen fans may see that as a blessing) while the poor selection of camera angles do little to offer much insight into the games. That is if they show them at all, of course.

These factors still don’t mitigate the nonsensical approach to almost making the act of showing football matches on a highlights show something of a side. If Sportscene is to once again become the pillar of Scottish sport that it still professes to be, it must take its take its own trip down memory lane and rediscover its roots.

Before we all turn off completely.

AND ANOTHER THING

There was a day when dressing up in a furry costume was a noble profession. It wasn’t that long ago we had the Paisley Panda wiping his derrière with a Morton top, or when Renfrewshire’s favourite son romped with an inflatable sheep in front of a horrified Aberdeen support. Ah, great scenes.

Yet even the wacky world of mascots has its own share of commercial sell-outs. On Saturday, Kilmarnock’s latest recruit toddled his way on to the park in the form of a giant pie, with “WHO” and a No.8 on his back. How droll.

Is this how far our game has slipped that baked goods are being used as glorified cheerleaders? What next? The Stark’s Park Steak Bake Man?

Call me traditional, but give me sexually deviant Pandas any day of the week.