Joemcc wrote:Ultimately Accies have spent a lot more than a minority of their history in the top league prior to the 10 team setup in 1975 - that setup was a disaster for the smaller clubs in Scotland and continues to be so. We need a change in the whole league structure for the benefit of Scottish football as a whole - not just 2 Glasgow teams
Simply not true.
You seem to be trying to back up a theory about league restructuring in 1975 being detrimental to small clubs, so let's start with that. I'm sympathetic, but not convinced. There's a correlation (not necessarily causation) between that restructuring and the general decline of Scottish football. That structure has stuck because it favours medium sized clubs from Aberdeen to, say, St Johnstone (and arguably including us in the last decade), by giving them extra games with Celtic and Rangers (= increased gate receipts). No club in this group - or aspiring to be - is going to vote against this cash bonus. It's a triumph of short term cash gain over long term interest. FWIW, I favour a return to a 16 or 18 team top league, although that's probably as much of a structure as can be sustained.
The other point is about how big Accies have been historically, and it's wrong to suggest we have typically been part of the top flight. The period before WW2 is ancient history: to have lived through it, and watched us at the end of that period, the 1930s, you need to now be at least in your late 80s. But OK, in that period we were in the top flight for 32 years from 1906/07 to 1938/39; the corollary is that we were not in the top flight from our inception in 1874 to 1906 - an equal period of 32 years.
Many more of today's Accies fans have followed us since 1947/48. Even taking your chosen period to 1974/75, that adds up to 27 seasons, 24 of which we spent outside the top flight, compared to 3 in it. Then from 1975/76 to 2016/17, we've spent 8 out of 41 seasons in the top flight, 33 out of 41 outside it. (As an aside, you could infer from those stats that we've benefitted from 1975 restructuring, but let's not go there.)
In summary, pre-WW2 we spent 50% of the time in and 50% out of the top flight, post-WW2, 84% out of the top flight, 16% in it.