By Michael Wood
After two years of being dubbed ‘the Viaplay Cup,’ the Scottish League Cup has reverted its sponsorship to Premier Sports following the Irish pay television sports channel requisition of the UK branch of the Swedish streaming service back in April, 18 months after Viaplay paid £30 million to take over Premier Sports.
Since 2020, the cup has had exclusivity on one of the two providers after outbidding BT Sport, who had coverage of the competition for four years and took it behind a paywall following a dozen on the BBC.
The previous two runnings of the now 78-year-old competition have had no regionalisation, meaning Ross County could face a 11-hour round trip to Stranraer stadium to stadium, and just the Highland outfit’s luck they will have too.
The Scottish Professional Football League announced ahead of time that record prize and TV money of over £3.5 million for the 2024/25 edition – an increase of 14% on last season. This campaign’s winners will receive £400,000, while each participating club is guaranteed to receive at least £30,000; in comparison, the English League Cup champions’ take-home was £100,000, with the first round participants only receiving £2,500.
Dunfermline Athletic fell at the group stages in both of James McPake’s two seasons in charge of the club; it is his biggest failing, seeing as extra income from cup competitions has been lacking well before his tenure. However, even the much maligned Peter Grant managed to navigate through the divisional phase before being obliterated by Rangers.
In the 2022-23 running, DA missed out on a best runners-up spot due to a penalty shootout defeat to Alloa Athletic, which would have seen them through to the last 16 thanks to their superior goal difference over Queen of the South, denying them another televised, money spinner at Ibrox.
Last season, had they snuck to the top of the table being at least drawing at home with Kilmarnock, a feat runners-up Raith Rovers managed on the road at Rugby Park, then the Pars would have hosted champions Celtic, again in a televised outing.
At the draw, Athletic sat in Pot 2 for the first time since 2022, thus eliminating matchups against teams that finished second through ninth in the recently completed Championship season.
It did keep alive potential games against Livingston (1), recently relegated to the second tier; Arbroath (3), just demoted to League One; bitter rivals and League One champions Falkirk (3); and Championship play-off winners Hamilton Academical (3) – none of them ideal based on the familiarity of the clubs in sharing a division either in the upcoming year or the one just gone.
Since the resumption of football post-Covid-19, Dunfermline has played 32 of the 41 other SPFL sides and will play Livi in the league later this year, meaning in the past five years, the only sides that the club has not faced, in order of recency: Celtic, Stranraer, Stirling Albion, Livi, Aberdeen, Motherwell and Cove Rangers.
The perfect draw for old opponents would have been Motherwell, last played in the Scottish Premier League in February 2012 and Cove, while friendly challengers in recent campaigns have not faced one another competitively since 1995.
Having never come against either Spartans or Bonnyrigg Rose, the two most recent additions to League Two after their promotion from the Lowland League, having both of them could have been possible as they resided in Pot 3 and 4, respectively.
There is no hard and fast reasoning about who plays who when. Yet, there has always been a structure about where. So, Pot 2 hosts Pot 3 and 5 while travelling to 1 and 4.
Dunfermline supporters seemed keen on away days to either Easter Road, Fir Park or Pittodrie, followed by an away day in Annan or 3.2 miles north-west-west of Leith in Pilton at Ainslie Park.
The most straightforward home ties would have been Queen of the South and one of Elgin City or Stranraer – the worst travellers in League Two – or the fifth tier options of East Kilbride, Buckie Thistle and Brechin City. St Johnstone and Edinburgh looked the most vulnerable from the teams the Pars would have potentially had to travel to.
There was also the possibility of a Fife derby with Kelty Hearts at East End Park at playing East Fife in Methil. But the most difficult group on paper would have been Aberdeen (best Premiership team in 2024 in the competition), Falkirk, Annan Athletic (second most points this calendar year of remaining League One clubs) and Clyde (fourth tier leaders since the first of January).
In the end, Dunfermline was drawn in Group E with Pot 4 Spartans and they will open up their season in the capital on the 13th of July, just as Championship winners Dundee United had last season, when they were boo’d off the park after losing to then Lowland League champions. It is the club’s first trip to Ainslie Park since playing Edinburgh City in 2019 when they ground-shared the venue as the Pars lost one-nil in this competition.
In the final pot was Forfar Athletic, who gave the Fifers their first Scottish Cup win in five years back in 2022 after routing the Loons four-nil on Halbeath Road, where this game will commence on the 16th.
Livingston came out Pot 1, meaning a return to Almondvale for the first time since February 2018 with the first team after the youngsters won the Reserve League Cup last month over the Lions, and it will take place on that second Saturday.
A week after their journey to West Lothian, their Pot 3 opponents Cove Rangers visit in the first competitive game between the pair at EEP.
Even with two of the better League Two sides and a poor League One outfit, the aim will be to secure at least nine points, which could well be enough to progress to the round of 16.
(Image credit: Premier Sports)
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