Gordon Smith: It will soon be ‘Down Periscope’ for the fans watching on mobile phone streams

Fans are using technology at games (PA Archive)

The Scottish Cup replays between Hibs and Hearts and Kilmarnock versus Rangers were two crackers which pitted the best of the Championship against Premiership opposition.

Likewise the top flight encounter between Dundee United and Motherwell was crucial in terms of determining who will be relegated at the end of the season.

Yet while all three held plenty of appeal for broadcasters, they couldn’t be screened because they clashed with Champions League action.

This despite the fact the majority of fans I spoke to would far rather have watched one of the domestic games over the likes of Paris Saint-Germain against Chelsea.

That they weren’t able to is as much down to bad planning by the authorities as UEFA’s ridiculous rules on live football. Had they been played a week earlier there would have been no such problem.

As it was, we had a new issue thrown up, with huge numbers of Rangers fans – according to some estimates even more than the 20,000 who packed into Easter Road for the Edinburgh – resorting to watching Periscope feeds from fans’ mobiles at Rugby Park.

These don’t tend to be the best quality, but again they illustrate the huge pull of a game, which could have easily sold out its 8,000 away allocation several times over.

These amateur broadcasts also present a problem for the SFA because the BBC, BT, SKY etc can’t be happy at any solution which circumnavigates the rights issue. There is a good reason they plough money into the game year after year.

So while the amateur offerings are no serious rival to those provided by the professionals, I do believe they will be cracked down on.

And that just as there used to be warnings in cinemas to deter the video-camera pirates – whose copies of Hollywood blockbusters would show people nipping off to the toilet – so we will see notice at football grounds declaring that live streaming of the game is not allowed.

Not that we might have many more Scottish Cup replays, with the SFA and SPFL poised to rule ties be settled on the night in future to help ease fixture congestion.

I appreciate this can be an issue. Back when I was the SFA’s Chief Executive, I actually proposed doing away with replays in the early rounds of the competition for that very reason. But the smaller clubs wouldn’t have it due to the loss of potential revenue.

Anyway, they may be going soon and, while I feel that will add a little more romance in terms of a guaranteed result on the night, it is a shame because our two big knock-out competitions will be losing a little of their separate identity, with the League Cup ties already played to a finish.

On the plus side, though, the move to play the League Cup in its entirety before Christmas is a positive change. It guarantees three showpiece games – the semi-finals and the Final itself – at a time when the leagues are a long way from reaching their conclusion.