Thirty-one years after it disappeared, the Tennent's Soccer Sixes is back. All 12 Scottish Premiership clubs will field legends teams at Braehead Arena on 3 and 4 October, with the SPFL backing the revival and Premier Sports broadcasting it.
This isn't a nostalgia gimmick for the sake of it. The original tournament ran for nine years from 1984 and was a genuine fixture in the Scottish football calendar — clubs sent real players, not charity XI afterthoughts. That legacy gives this revival actual weight.
How the tournament works
The format is tight and watchable. Twelve teams split into three regionalised groups of four, with group stages on Saturday. The winner and runner-up from each group advance to the knockout rounds, joined by the best third-placed team. Every match has a winner — draws go to a penalty shootout, with a bonus point on offer for the team that wins it. A sin bin is also in operation, which should keep things spicy in a six-a-side format where one man down feels like half your team.
Partick Thistle — currently in the Championship rather than the Premiership — won the last edition in 1993 but won't be involved this time. A minor injustice, maybe, but the SPFL's decision to restrict it to top-flight clubs at least keeps the competitive logic clean.
Whether the legends format delivers genuine quality or descends into a fun-but-forgettable kickabout depends entirely on which clubs take it seriously enough to recruit recognisable names. The ones that do will have a home crowd advantage in the stands and on social media. The tournament's commercial appeal — and any associated markets that open up around it — will live or die on that.
The Tennent's Soccer Sixes was never high football. But it was good football, and Scottish supporters clearly wanted it back. October will tell us if the sentiment holds up on the pitch.
