Accountability, Transparency, & Brave Sir Robin

ByBig Pink

Accountability, Transparency, & Brave Sir Robin

Over the weekend, we ran a quick poll on Twitter (View Poll).

Do you trust the SFA to administer football in the interests of the sport?

Around 1500 took part and the percentage shares were as follows

No: 95%
Yes: 3%
Don’t Know: 2%

Not exactly scientific, nor do we make any claim that the sample demographic is representative (although the sample size is substantial).

However by any measure the overwhelming disapproval of the SFA, or the clubs that form the major part of that body, is something that cannot simply be tossed aside.

Even if the 95% (nearly 2% of the match attending public) are mistaken or deluded, it is a very badly managed industry that would ignore the perception of mistrust held by its customers.

Of course the SFA and the media will ignore the results of this poll. It doesn’t speak to the shiny-brochure, all’s-well narrative – even if the facts prove the narrative to be false.

The authorities are under siege at the moment; the government are closing in on the strict liability issue, the fans voicing disapproval and lack of trust in how the game is run, and a major member club approaches a potential financial meltdown. On top of that, there are excruciatingly bad choices made on match scheduling, venues for neutral showpiece games, and the self-acquittal process of the cup final inquiry. Not to mention that those incompetents who run the game have presided over and actively helped bring about the (arguably)  most bitter and widest polarisation of fans in the history of the game.

Even if the 95% (nearly 2% of the match attending public) are mistaken or deluded, it is a very badly managed industry that would ignore the perception of mistrust held by its customers.

Cue Stewart Regan and club chairmen across the country burying their heads even deeper in the sand, because all is well is it not?

It is a not unreasonable expectation that governing bodies should find solutions to problems in their field of expertise. The SFA are not by any stretch of the imagination part of any solution process – in fact they are a major part of the problem itself.

Football is a public-facing industry. In Scotland, because of poor TV revenues negotiated ineffectually by, wait for it, the governing bodies, the sport relies almost 100% on attendances – on fans staying loyal to the sport. Those fans (you would think) should be cultivated, engaged with, and paid heed to.

Staggeringly though, the SFA’s civil service, in the shape of their full time executives and PR machinery have done the opposite. Instead of engaging with the customer base, they have actively waged war against them.

Regan has breathed into life the wonderful fiction of Monty Python’s Brave Sir Robin.

The originally welcome transparency of the Chief Executive’s move to communicate via Twitter became increasingly opaque in the face of tough questions. Nowadays sightings only appear sporadically; and only if you are quick enough to spot him popping his head out the bunker to take a cheap shot at a critic, or childishly ejaculating “Nothing!” at public events when asked what he will do about corruption in the game.

Sir Robin – Ran Away

Regan has breathed into life the wonderful fiction of Monty Python’s Brave Sir Robin. He  spends more time running away than fearlessly facing his critics whilst his PR chief provides snide and contemptuous invective as cover for his and his boss’s retreat.

They are consummately arrogant and filled with contempt for the fans, but to be fair, they are no different from club directors in their disregard for fan opinion. In my experience there is a culture in football that deludes itself into thinking that the directors are doing the fans a favour by providing the football club for them. They actually expect gratitude from fans for taking their money and portray themselves as martyrs if those same fans seek to hold them accountable.

It’s a bit like your boss farting so much during a conversation that you feel compelled to say “pardon me!” and take the blame for the offence yourself.

Of course there are always wonderful words about the fans from the clubs, and from the SFA and SPFL. These are merely platitudinous lip service, a box-ticking exercise to be quickly completed before reminding fans that they “really don’t have the skill-set to have a say in the running of a modern football club”.

This from people who have presided over our country’s steep slide into the footballing wilderness where our clubs and national side have disappeared from prominence and high regard .

It is no surprise then that this kind of culture in clubs, which patronises and just about tolerates fans, has woven its way into the fabric of the governing bodies itself.

95% of football fans do not think the SFA (the “clubs”) can be trusted to run Scottish football. That is a staggering statistic

95% of football fans do not think the SFA (the “clubs”) can be trusted to run Scottish football. That is a staggering statistic, and one which provides at least enough discussion for greater accountability, but more likely a root and branch change in the governance of the game.

Too often in the past, the authorities have used partisan fan interest to divide and rule. The time has most definitely come for a mass, non-partisan fan representative body to challenge the authorities, to lobby government, and to wrest control of the game away from the mediocre, self-interested failures who have slowly destroyed it over the past three decades.

I believe that such a force is coming, and I hope SFM is part of it. The people currently charged with the running of our sport excel in only one area – in their contempt for the paying public.

It is time we moved into a new age, a post SFA age where accountability, integrity and love of sport, not riches, takes priority.