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Everyone on this site has football experiences, views, stories and opinions. Everyone also wants things to be better in the future too. These are bonds that make us who we are and this forum what it is.
I’ll share a few experiences with you now.
I will never forget an impromptu and inspirational 60 minute Q. and A. masterclass by Davie MacParland to a group of relative youngsters at Hampden in 1975 after Scottish Unis had played a friendly with his team.
It was “over the moon Brian” time for me on finding a £5 note in my shoe. This was after I played my first game (unexpectedly) as an S form in the Highland League when my club’s Aberdeen-based players had been held up by a road incident.
So happy and corrupted was I that I never questioned the widespread practice of giving money to amateur players thereafter so I’m part of the problem.
I also sat next to a young Jim Leyton who came to Butchart to watch himself on a match video after he had let in two goals when we dumped Deveronvale (where he was on loan) out of the Aberdeenshire Cup. It was the very early days of video and Jim had never seen himself on a tv before.
Every person in the SFM community will have equally diverse and interesting experiences and I’m going to share one more with you now in a little more detail.
In the mid 90s I was given an amazing insight into how Scottish football really worked. In many ways it hasn’t changed much since.
Back then I was part of a small group brought in to help find funding for the upgrade of Tynecastle with the urgent need to construct three new stands. At the time it was a massive requirement for a very financially challenged organisation and at a push there were potentially just about enough pots of monies available from several sources to trigger the investment from the Football Trust and squeak over the line.
The most critical pot was mobilising the fans.
My role was to find a way of getting them to come aboard working with some fine lifetime Hearts fans like the late Alex Kitson so it would all look like a Hearts Community rather than a Mercer initiative.
The then, colourful Hearts majority owner was under constant pressure on other fronts at the time.
The team was not really performing with relatively new manager Jim Jeffries trying to get best out of predecessor Tommy Mclean’s mixed bag of old pros and kids. Making things worse was a growing, highly critical and very vocal consortium of local business people trying to get Mercer out (and themselves in).
I guess you could say in today’s parlance that they were RHM and civil war was very much happening down Gorgie way.
Anyway I can’t now recall all the detail and apologies if my memories have fused a little but a key AGM type meeting for Hearts shareholders at Ingliston was coming up and there was an agenda that looked like it might hurt “The Chairman” as Wallace liked to be called.
Never any flies on him though, he had seen the danger signs and was ready in his own way.
He turned up with his trusted few and simply yet quite brilliantly hijacked the negative agenda and ignored the real issues. He didn’t have a solution for them and couldn’t implement the changes that were in reality needed but quite simply he kicked all the trouble into the long grass.
He did this because he fundamentally understood that most shareholders in the room were just ordinary football fans and wanted nothing more than to be able to talk about football the game, Hearts their club, who they were due to play next and who would be playing.
It was that simple.
Mercer’s message to all that night was “Yes things have been tough but our best possible future is with me”.
He rammed this home by confidently telling the assembled body that Hearts were on the up because we had a new manager who needed time and then blew everyone away by announcing he just signed three amazing new players for them, Giles Rousset, Bruno Pasquale and Hans Eskilsson. After the applause and mayhem died down he had won.
Bruno and Rousset were newsworthy in any Scottish football context one being a French International and the other an ex Juventus tough guy with a EUFA and a couple of Coppa Italia winners medals.
Oh and Eskilsson had amazing hair.
Mercer’s simple bit of insight, showmanship, brinksmanship, call it what you like, led to the survival of his regime.
In a parallel maybe to what the SFA did after their meeting with Craig at the Hotel Du Vin in Glasgow, Mercer had enough time to be ready for the trouble he knew was coming and used his power to ignore the real issues and the detail and move on with a big gamble.
Looking back Wallace got a lot right .
He understood what the majority of ordinary football fans wanted. He’d also learnt that good press was needed and came from feeding the football writers enough tasty exclusives so they’d look after him in a symbiotic relationship, the kind of relationship that remains much the same today.
Even back then in the days when there were less full-colour pages pre-allocated to certain teams to fill and more able journalists to fill them, the sports pages were about game reports and gossip rather than insight.
The packs of hacks all craved being handed tasty semi-exclusive stories.
It was and ever is thus and in those days the Daily Record was a wee gem with circulation nearer 700K than the 200K-ish today and amazingly all its costs were covered by it’s advertising revenue alone. The proud boast of Endell Laird was the purchase price was pure profit.
With hindsight Wallace may only have postponed the inevitable campaign by the RHM rebels that night at Ingliston. History tells us that the Robinson/Deans rebellion eventually forced their chance. They did have to dig much deeper financially than they ever wanted when their time eventually came, and soon fell out too, but that’s another story.
Wallace’s long grass was just never going to be deep enough to hide the issues he wanted to ignore but to his credit on his watch the stadium was upgraded and the first Scottish Cup since 1956 was paraded to the fans.
Mr. Mercer was an operator who like others before and since could see personal and business value in owning a club.
He cultivated friendly football writers.
He learned that the SFA could be difficult to deal with but much less so when you placed people on their various management boards. That was key to the inner power sanctums and brought you at best influence and at worst early warnings.
He may have been autocratic but knew you needed powerful friends at other clubs too and was always close with David Murray in particular.
So what has this little piece of retrospection and a handful of Finloch football stories got to do with a blog on SFM?
Last week I met Big Pink for the first time over a few coffees.
It was like meeting an old friend in the pub because of all the stuff we’ve lived through and shared over the last 5 or so years.
We talked about stuff and traded stories and opinions on life, football and about SFM what it does and what we are.
We got on to the subject of it’s future and with my business background he asked me to consider a piece for the blog about where the SFM, our fledgling business might go from here.
I maybe agreed too hastily because I have found it challenging to gather and spell out my thoughts.
So this is very much a starting couple of steps to bring in the SFM minds and set up future discussions following this blog and when we meet in Perth in April.
My starting point was to first consider what we are today.
It’s a personal view but to me SFM is a valued medium I come to most days. It’s for when I want to find out or to discuss what is happening.
It is populated with a bunch of people with different backgrounds, skills and insights, is always polite and often very funny.
I’d actually like to see more headline blogs because I enjoy them but our biggest value will always be analysis discussion and good humour.
SFM is fundamentally different to the MSM back pages that still offer us all a mono diet of whatever day-to-day gossip they have been spoon-fed by the Level 9’s of this world or made up and maybe embellished with a random phone call for a quote.
Yes their world is declining and will inevitably see fundamental restructure and change but that change has in reality nothing to do with how they cover and will continue to cover Scottish football.
I’d even posit (to use a wee word I’ve learned from the excellent JJ site I visit sometimes) that the red tops currently see their style of football coverage as a way of slowing their inevitable declines because it delivers the difficult to reach male audience their advertisers crave access to.
As a spectator I’d say the MSM in Scotland mostly seem to suffer from a polarised demographic focus/ bias too but that can never excuse their revisionism or the Spiers and Haggerty episodes we’ve just witnessed.
There is one benefit though. One you maybe hadn’t thought about from all the dreadful MSM football reportage.
The stuff they collectively generate enables all of us to have daily conversations with friends and strangers without actually saying anything about anything.
It gives us our daily top-up for the international language of football minutiae we all converse in every day.
I’ve been able to speak it fluently since I was in my teens. You know the kind of thing – the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the comings and goings and the toings and froings.
The good news, the bad news the made-up news – its all part of being involved with a team or indeed just being a football fan and it’s all conversation for the males of our species.
There are plenty of places I can and do get access to that kind of stuff but SFM isn’t and never has been a source.
I quickly found out that most of my pals don’t want to talk about side letters in the pub on a Friday, or the need for asterisked titles because they are more interested in tomorrow’s match and who will be out of contract at the end of the season.
Without being disrespectful in any way I think they are cut from the same wood as the majority of Mr. Mercer’s Hearts shareholders and if I’m honest part of me is too.
That has given our administrators and clubs too easy a ride.
Beyond the gossip it is fair to say in the last 40 or 50 years football has changed beyond all recognition.
It has become a source of power and money and as we know proverbially and in real life power can corrupt and money can be the root of all-evil.
The stuff happening at FIFA now can be no surprise to any fair-minded fan and I’d be inclined to think that there have been finagled decisions at the top for longer than the current stewardship of Mr. Blatter.
Way longer.
Football-land is a dirty world. A world where all the transparency is for show and real stuff has always been controlled and rewarding for those in the right places.
Closer to home football in Scotland is no different. Power and money have been the origins of our own North of the Border soap opera saga.
Its sometimes been very funny, often been entertaining too but is ultimately tragic and a sad indictment on our country.
Being Scotland nothing is ever as simple as it should be.
We started from a unique kind of place where for over a century we have had to live with an unhealthy, quasi-tribal, two-club duopolistic domination of all things football including the fans, the trophies, the money, the media attention and the administrators controlling our game.
The stark reality of 2016 is our biggest club/economy now finds its real ambitions thwarted, potentially forever, by its location in our restrictive league structure. It has nowhere currently to go and annoyingly the biggest league in the world is just over the border and part of the same country in political terms.
This is a destabilising influence on our game that won’t go away until change allows the next evolution.
Our second biggest economy as we now know had to cheat a little to keep up, post Fergus, and is now making its way back to the top end but with some truly nuclear baggage that I guess we still really only know the half of. Nothing will be simple in its return to what we’re told everyday is its rightful place. It too is a latent destabilising influence awaiting like a grumbling volcano.
What depresses me is the fact that the much-vaunted return of our dysfunctional duopoly is not a formula to recreate the European success we all took for granted for so long. Those days will never return.
The decline of the Scottish giant that was and is Rangers has dominated our thoughts because it encapsulates so much more than what is wrong with our game.
It is a huge business and establishment fall from grace. A shocking story that has become an elephant in the room to our politicians, our media and many of our fellow fans and is still playing out to deafening silence in some quarters.
In the manic run up to the decline of David Murray’s club we benefitted from insights from the seminal RTC and were bombarded with mass denials from almost everywhere else.
We witnessed the £1 sale to Craig Whyte, the subsequent McCoist European failure, the eventual slide into messy liquidation with tax issues etc.
Our administrators failed us all the way through because they had a different agenda.
Our MSM didn’t want to know partly because it involved more than regurgitating press releases and partly because it was real news for real reporters and not back pages gossip.
Their editors failed us there too, big time.
Now the revisionism and invention of the post-liquidation ephemeral club and company scenarios has been creative to say the least.
I remember Mr. Traynor’s initial headline and smile how he and others are now wading in a contradictory swamp of their own making. It’s all confusion when it needn’t be.
I only know the kind of stuff that really happened because of this site and its RTC predecessor.
Four or five years on and I think these guys (SFA, SPFL) acted like Wallace Mercer did at Ingliston and ran roughshod over process to “win”.
These well paid admin staff were never off-piste though and our clubs share complicity for their actions to varying degrees.
If I was Regan’s or Doncaster’s devil’s advocate I could just about comprehend that they acted because they feared for their TV revenues. The prospect of being without half of their duopoly ace card and the blue fans scared them and they were mandated by the clubs to maintain the status quo.
I don’t mean all the clubs but if we look at the key committee structures we’ll easily see who were in that inner sanctum at the time. They collectively decided to throw their rulebook out the window and there is no grass long enough to bury their collective actions because truth always outs.
Cast yourself back a few years not long before the St Valentine’s day 2012 news when the push was all for a 10 club league.
I remember Stewart Milne aggressively trying to sell us all a 10-club league because of the TV revenue it delivered (to the few).
At that time there seemed to be a collective “TV Gold Fever” prevailing in the cabal of top club chairmen that makes the real decisions and tells our administrators what to do.
Luckily they failed.
They nearly failed again too in 2012 with their tawdry 5 way agreement and we all owe a debt of gratitude to the late Turnbull Hutton whose personal integrity, bloody-mindedness and leadership meant a significant change to the premeditated 5 way plan that our top clubs had all signed off.
Since then we’ve all suffered from Armageddon and long may it stay.
SFM has been at the forefront of the last five years. A place where fans from all the clubs come together to question, analyse, give insight, balance, consciousness on all aspects of the meandering road that has been this story so far.
It’s all recorded on our archives somewhere too. We’ve noted and discussed the following and more –
- Two different signatures from the same club on the 5-way agreement
- Two different and concurrent memberships of the SFA
- Players TUPE-ing for free and no lawyers getting rich in trying to get them back
- Pre-season games being cancelled because of registration and insurance issues
- The Brechin game coming too soon for the paperwork
- The entry-round in The Ramsdens Cup for the old club or is it the new club?
- Record crowds, an even more aggressive songbook
- Ian Black getting a surprise call-up and a bit of a game to legitimise The New Rangers with their first cap
- Millions raised from a gullible city and desperate fans but still several last gasp saves needed to avoid new financial stramashes
- A charity that pays for holidays in America
- Quasi-legal stuff with dodgy parameters for questionable enquiries like Nimmo Smith
- Bryson and his logic that Spartans could and should have used to stay in the cup
- A “Hopelessly Conflicted Chairman” re-elected and a new one who has fitted in seamlessly
- Real legal stuff like HMRC appeals, and phrases like side-letters
- Charlotte Fakes and maybe even Fake Charlotte Fakes
- Fit and proper persons running our clubs
- Recorded conversations
- Onerous contracts
- Metaphysical concepts of what football clubs in our courts with big bucks being spent on our behalf by our administrators
There is and has been a whole lot more and more to come on the schedules too.
How much of this would I have found on our MSM?
Very little – so thanks to those who go the extra mile for us including John Clark, EasyJambo and others at the courts, Phil who will never go away, James Doleman and others too including JJ – all playing blinders where the hacks don’t dare.
Finally fast-forward to today.
Most Scottish fans probably know a little about the stuff I’ve touched upon and we’ve debated in depth. Not enough though.
But we have Darryl Broadfoot who is the SFA so we can all sleep rest assured each night.
Going forward we must address how we communicate as a medium to spread the word.
Ask yourself – Is what we do more important than knowing Rangers signed Dean Windass’s son from Accrington Stanley on a free because he’s going to play for England one day and stuff like that?
I’d say it is different although both have a place.
Our challenge is to create more impact with ours.
In finishing I have one serious starting proposal to make as a community but first a thank you.
Thank you to all the blog writers and posters because we have collectively created a site where real stuff can be dissected and discussed politely and in a non-partisan way.
Well done to the mods in particular and to our community In general
My simple proposal as our first step forward is to start a Wikipedia style library of the facts and keep it on our site.
Dates, happenings, people and all the stuff that will not allow any of it to stay buried forever in the long grass. The kind of detail that is in Auldheid’s amazing and resolute Resolution 12.
Chapter and verse whys and wherefores with dates and names.
This will achieve three things.
- It will create bedrock for us as a trusted media channel whatever we decide to become.
- It will put stuff factually into the public domain forever.
- It will contradict any highly paid revisionists trying to change what really happened for their own agendas into the future.
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wottpi,
“How many more hints did the Celtic board need to know there was a moment in time to act from a position of strength when others would have been more likely to join forces?”
Honestly I thought about that this afternoon. Celtic missed the boat on all these issues. I don’t want to go into the argument about whether Celtic should have led the charge or not for all clubs in Scotland. They could have done either – on behalf of themselves or leading the way on behalf of Scottish football. But sadly they did nothing. What an opportunity missed. As you said wottpi they missed the chance and I fear the time is now gone.
“To everything, turn, turn, turn.There is a season, turn, turn, turn.And a time to every purpose under heaven.A time to build up, a time to break down.A time to dance, a time to mourn.A time to cast away stones.A time to gather stones together.”
jimbo 11th March 2016 at 10:25 pm #wottpi,
“How many more hints did the Celtic board need to know there was a moment in time to act from a position of strength when others would have been more likely to join forces?”
Honestly I thought about that this afternoon. Celtic missed the boat on all these issues. I don’t want to go into the argument about whether Celtic should have led the charge or not for all clubs in Scotland. They could have done either – on behalf of themselves or leading the way on behalf of Scottish football. But sadly they did nothing. What an opportunity missed. As you said wottpi they missed the chance and I fear the time is now gone.
“To everything, turn, turn, turn.There is a season, turn, turn, turn.And a time to every purpose under heaven.A time to build up, a time to break down.A time to dance, a time to mourn.A time to cast away stones.A time to gather stones together.”
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Celtic never missed any boats to blow the lid on the SFA.
Their Directors, financial interests and well being are too closely linked to their cousins in Govan getting back quickly to the top league, as it is for the SPFL and SFA. Mainly because they need the income as the Euro prize has dried up as they get left behind by the top clubs in Europe. Follow the money.
I had always had misgivings about the OF SFA SPL cabal if you like after I read this excellent piece by James Forrest.
http://www.onfieldsofgreen.com/friends-in-low-places/
bogs dollox,
Perhaps I am being too kind on my club, but I was merely acknowledging wottpi’s point that there was a window of opportunity when Celtic & other clubs in Scotland could have rallied together. The reasons why they didn’t – you could write a book about never mind a post.
jimbo 11th March 2016 at 10:53 pm #bogs dollox,
Perhaps I am being too kind on my club, but I was merely acknowledging wottpi’s point that there was a window of opportunity when Celtic & other clubs in Scotland could have rallied together. The reasons why they didn’t – you could write a book about never mind a post
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Jimbo I’m not trying to be confrontational here but that window never existed. When Old Rangers bombed the vision of the SPFL/SFA/Celtic was to get them back really quick. When the chance to change league voting arose Aberdeen vetoed it (probably because Milne was over a barrel financially at the point and needed favours).
Our game is beyond fixing because it is fixed already!
Bogs Dollox,
I certainly don’t take your comments as confrontational, some very good points. In fact we are not a million miles apart. I said you could write a book about why Celtic did nothing, that chimes with your point of view.
Let me put it another way, if Celtic were ‘so minded’ at the time of the gathering of the clans (fan threat to st renewals), they (CFC) could have acted in any such way to expose the 5 way agreement at the very least. But they didn’t and the moment passed. A lot of fans were happy with the humiliation of the new club in the lowest tier of the SPL. In my opinion that was nowhere near enough in dealing with the whole caper.
The complicity of Celtic FC is self evident. Not the fans, the PLs of this world.
I’ve avoided saying this for a while but I fear for the Res.12 outcome now. Like everyone I have hoped against hope that Celtic were working behind the scenes pushing this forward. The guys behind it have my and everybody’s utmost respect and gratitude. But after the latest update I think they are being shafted. Only they will really know for sure. I just hope they have a plan B if the UEFA thing times out.
If it was me, I would go all out towards the Celtic board. Start a new Celts For Change, Sack The Board campaign.
We are not there yet. But it wont be long.
jimbo
We are not there yet. But it wont be long.
lose the league and we will be
To end the night on a lighter note, I’m looking forward to tomorows LC Final. The build up, everything. I’m supporting Hibs (my cousins) but afraid they will bottle it when the highlanders come charging at them with kilts on instead of shorts and no knickers on. Ross Co 8 Hibs – minus 3.
jimbo 11th March 2016 at 11:39 pm
J. I may be a bit hazy on this,but in 2012 when Sevco joined the league system, wasn’t the main gripe that they had, as a new club, jumped the queue without the requisite accounts? It was pretty much accepted they were joining as a new club, and the mad ravings of Charlie Chuckles were viewed as exactly that. Pyoor mad mental ravings of a loon
It’s unknown if any other parties had access to the 5WA and if not, it would be pretty hard to expose something they never knew the content of. The side letters kind of point to it being pretty much a secret on pain of death.
@Minty’slamb has been putting up a lot of old stories of the period, and reportage is fairly constant. The new club, or a club trading as TRFC, etc, etc. That’s exactly what was allowed into the leagues. A new club ! And it was the SFL leagues, who were thus landed with it, and were separate from the SPL,… who said “Thanks, But No thanks.
( It has reminded me of David Longmuir’s generous severance pay though.)
I don’t know if any clubs were consulted or asked if they would graciously alter their history, to align it with Sevco’s claim that it was they, and not Rangers(I.L.) all other clubs had competed against.
I don’t recall Celtic, or any other club actually making that change to their history, but that is what we are being asked to believe. Sevco cannot buy “history”, and if such a notion even existed, they would have to buy it from the teams they competed against and had shared “ownership”
It’s all a nonsense mate. A new club was permitted to join the SFL, and they were treated as such. As I say, The main cob was they were permitted to jump the queue. The jiggery pokery came in the day before Sevco Scotland, or club 12, played Brechin, and continued subsequently after. I don’t believe any other clubs were aware of what took place that day. Only the 5 who signed.
I was, as the American phrase has it, rising 10 in 1952. I have personal memories not so much precisely of the causes of and reasons for the ‘Flag’ controversy, but of the determined resistance -even to the point of being ready to quit the League-of Celtic to what was seen to be an utterly ‘unrelated-to-football-matter’ attack by elements in the SFA.
Whatever the merits of the case, the Celtic Board had the courage of its convictions.
In 2011, the SFA assaulted and insulted the whole of Scottish Football by consciously misleading, misinforming, misdirecting the UEFA Licensing folk about the actual factual social taxes indebtedness of the then RFC. They contrived to create the fiction that RFC did not owe any money to HMRC , because they were in negotiations with HMRC, checking out whether they were liable for the tax said to be due…In fact, the money demanded by HMRC was properly due, properly demanded ….quite simply, .RFC had not paid its social taxes by the deadline date.
The message given to UEFA was that RFC did NOT owe any money in taxes.
And, on that basis, RFC was granted a licence to participate in UEFA competitions.
The whole of Scottish Football, every professional club male or female, every amateur club male or female, every Schools football team, every work-place football team, every bloody Pumpherston Old Crocks’ team, every 5-, 6-, 7-aside team, was assaulted and insulted by that act of deceit.
No Scottish club has had the balls ( or the female metaphorical equivalent) to call ‘FOUL’.
Although the world of Scottish Football is very small, it might be possible to accept that some of the professional clubs might not have heard about, or appreciated, the significance of the Celtic AGM Resolution 12.
Those in that category need to wise up.
But those who do know and have stayed schtum are deserving of censure every bit as much as the Celtic Board.Possibly even more, because they could not have been seen as representing a ‘Celtic paranoia’.
But what I personally find surprising is (what appears to be) the cynical behaviour of the Celtic Board, who, knowing damned fine the truth of the assertions made in Resolution 12, decided to stay schtum, in a way that would turn the stomachs of their 1952 predecessors,by having hummed and hawed literally for years in an effort to reach the deadline date after which action would be impossible.
(I have myself emailed UEFA to lodge my personal request that the interim President,Theodore Theodoridis, should order an investigation into the circumstances in which RFC were awarded a licence in spite of actually owing social taxes by the cut-off date.It may be a work of supererogation, but I need to be sure that at least one person has raised the matter with UEFA. Or, rather, I need to be true to my own convictions, and personally acquit myself of the weakness and pusillanimity shown by the general run of clubs, and by Celtic)
In addition to that excellent post by jc, can I add something I omitted from an earlier post? At the time of Rangers submission of their ‘taxes due’ situation in 2011 to the SFA the DOS ebts were illegal. Let me repeat that illegal. Admitted. Craig Whyte agreed he would settle with the tax man but at the point of Rangers submission to the SFA they were outstanding. Regan knew this, Ogilvie knew this, Lawell knew this. That is how much this thing stinks.
Corrupt official, if the truth be told, Spartans should have been given the vacancy created by the liquidation of Rangers. Why they didn’t cry cheat remains a mystery. I have my theories but I don’t want sent to the naughty step.
Jimbo,
Turnbull Hutton’s attitude to the new club being given precedence over Spartans et al was that by any reasonable measure, and given their extraordinary fan-base and facilities, TRFC would have been given the spot anyway. In his view, the authorities pragmatically exercised their powers of discretion to short-circuit the entry application process.
In retrospect that became crucial to TRFC in their continuity myth-building, because the gap, even though it existed, was easier to Band-Aid over because of that fast-tracking.
I won’t rush to criticise TH too easily though. He was not too fussed over the minutiae of the OCNC debate, but he was steadfastly against what he saw as corruption in the SFA and SPL and was appalled by the calling to arms of the mob by McCoist and others. And he didn’t just pay lip service to it either. He was a consistent and generous donor to SFM, because he shared our view that in order to call itself a sport, football had to structure itself on the basis of as level a playing field as possible.
Whenever I doubt the merits of our case, I think of Turnbull on the steps of Hampden accusing the SFA of corruption – and the subsequent absence of a visit from the Compliance Officer.
Like all good serial offenders, the SFA avoid battles they can’t win. No engagement with TH, no engagement with the Res12 group, no engagement with the SPL over their expulsion of a 140 year old club.
Ever since Sevco were allowed a place in Scottish football, I swore I would never attend any match featuring them against my club.I have kept to this. If nothing becomes of Resolution 12,I will seriously consider whether to attend any matches at all in future. I have been a Celtic season ticket holder for a very long time and have savoured the great times and suffered the bad.However,when I see the likes of Peter Lawell hobnobbing with Quatari despots and not fit for purpose Scottish football ‘ administrators’, I begin to question whether Celtic deserve my money,leisure time and allegiance.
jimbo 12th March 2016 at 1:37 am
if the truth be told, Spartans should have been given the vacancy created by the liquidation of Rangers. Why they didn’t cry cheat remains a mystery. I have my theories but I don’t want sent to the naughty step.
………………………………………………………..
Why did none of the aspirants make a noise?
Quite easy.
The switched on clubs were all starting to form an orderly queue for the promised pyramid and as outsiders they had no clout.
Any one of them who had broken rank at the time and and made a justifiable noise would have had their cards marked in any vote situation and almost certainly not got the votes needed from the clubs.
It was also clear and probably made clear too that it would have been a “no-contest”.
The administrators and their members wanted the Blue Pound in whatever form it materialised. The 50 travelling fans from Cove, Spartans, Huntly, Gala, Preston or whoever made no economic sense.
Thats the way it was.
It was about money and the SFA and SPL had had months of planning their various scenarios none of which involved allowing applications from their bona fide aspirational members.
The new club was not allowed into the SPL because the members voted against it, as was their democratic right. In spite of their own administrators, both the SFA and SPL trying to threaten and blackmail them into doing it.
The new club got into the SFL because the member clubs voted for it. That was their democratic right and no matter what I might think of that decision it was theirs to make.
I think everyone realises it was done because a lot of these clubs would get at least a couple of paydays which would be the equivalent of being drawn against top opposition in one of the cups. But they were guaranteed games rather than hoping for it to happen once in decades. Add to that a bit of TV money and it becomes financially very attractive.
How many of those clubs were able to clear debt, or repair facilities or whatever else because of that decision.
Whilst I agree it was wrong it was their decision to make and I can perfectly understand them making it.
Damnit JC you have just created more work for me.
When I sent my report to UEFA I sent it to Allen Hansen, because he is Depute chairman of Fair Play committee, David Gill, because he is British, and Ángel María Villar, because the web told me he was interim Chairman. Now you tell me Ángel María Villar isn’t.
This web thingy is so slow that it can’t keep up with even UEFA. I think we should just scrap it. Anyway, now I am going to have to send another copy of the report, and firstly have it translated to Greek instead of Spanish, on a weekend when I was just going to settle down in preparation to watch my team win the LC. Have you no sympathy.
On another front, I am pleased that you too have written UEFA and would be interested to see what you wrote. Any chance that you could PM me a copy?
I have asked BP if it would be possible to print here what I sent as I feel it is only fair that the signatories of the petition know what has been produced in their name.
Since I posted yesterday the petition has gained a new lease of life and an extra 100 signatures have appeared. I just hope they are all legit and not just an attempt to tease me.
https://www.change.org/p/scottish-football-association-return-integrity-to-football-administration-in-scotland-94421b40-2d6b-4d4b-9cff-912c9849478f
If TRFC gain promotion in the coming weeks I think it would be a good time for BBC Scotland or STV to make a documentary on the effects of the bears journey this past few years. The kind of thing like interviewing spokespersons for the lower league clubs. What was it like to host TRFC, crowd behaviour – good or bad. How much money did they make? What improvements were they able to implement at their grounds. The shedding of debts? I think it would be really interesting. Not an exercise in showing TRFC as some sort of benevolent good fairy but from the lower leagues point of view.
Was it the godsend a lot of people – including myself I have to say – thought it would be for these clubs? A silver lining to an otherwise very dark cloud.
Bogs Dollox 11th March 2016 at 10:37 pm
As I said in my original post their was a definite and clear opportunity for Celtic to redefine themselves and break away from the Old Firm mentality. Other clubs also had an opportunity to redefine the game and give a clear message with regard to gross financisl mismanagement and financial doping.
They all failed the majority of fans who I belive would have backed a change in direction.
jimbo 12th March 2016 at 11:11 am #
Really good idea for a programme James, doubt it will be commissioned though. I’m sure there will be a programme, but it will be Goebbelian and involve the usual talking heads, and EBT recipients, and it will refer to demotion, being punished enough, and detail the glorious journey and the haters encountered on the way, a real modern day mein kampf.
Reiver 12th March 2016 at 9:48 am
‘..Damnit JC you have just created more work for me…’
____________
Sorry about that, Reiver!
I just noticed on the UEFA web-site a little ‘news’ snippet with the info about Theodore.I don’t think I saw any mention of it in the ordinary news media. But I’m sure that UEFA’s ordinary bureaucratic processes will see that any stuff received will find its way to the appropriate committee. I hope so, anyway, because the only email contact point seemed to be media@uefa.ch, which is the address i used for the following, which was written in something of a cold fury and is not as decently structured as a pen and ink job might have been, I’m afraid and slightly embarrassed ,to say.
“Dear UEFA media manager,
Many shareholders in Celtic plc believe that there is evidence to show that the Scottish Football Association (SFA) misled the UEFA Licensing committee in 2011 about the social taxes indebtedness of Rangers FC . They said, contrary to the facts known to them, that Rangers ,at the time of the relevant date for licensing purposes, were not in debt to the UK tax authority (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) [HMRC].
In fact, the Tax authorities had billed rangers for unpaid tax, and had actually obtained a warrant for Sheriff Officers ( official debt collectors) to enforce payment of the debt.
On the basis of the incorrect statement by the SFA, Rangers FC was wrongly granted a licence, to which they were not entitled , to participate in UEFA competitions. In this way, other club(s) were wrongly cheated out of the opportunity to participate on the basis of sporting merit, and denied the chance of winning additional revenue.
Shareholders at a Celtic Annual General Meeting successfully passed a resolution requiring their Board to report this matter to UEFA, with appropriate evidential documentation.
I have learned today that the Board of Celtic have decided NOT to raise matter with UEFA.With corporate arrogance, and having indulged in all manner of Fabian tactics,they have left it to individual shareholders to raise the matter.
I now raise the matter, and ask that this email be passed immediately to Mr Theodore Theodoridis, the interim President of UEFA, with a request that he ask the Club Licensing Committee to undertake the necessary enquiries to establish the truth of the circumstances.
Others may also write, of course. I am doing so now, in a bit of a hurry , in case there is a deadline-date before which matters of this kind must be raised.
It would be intolerable if the SFA was allowed to get away with deceiving UEFA , and abusing their authority,in the major matter of licensing a club that actually was in debt to the national tax authorities.
Yours in trust, “
Reiver
Apologies. Haven’t yet had time to respond, due to a current and very raging bout of man flu
However I will try to do so over the weekend.
Man Flu???? Does that mean you’ve got a Big Pink nose.
No probs BP just get yourself a few hot toddies and sit in front of the TV with the duvet wrapped around you and see what a good team looks like at Hampden tomorrow.
John,
What you’ve written links in well with what I sent. It will be Tuesday I reckon before UEFA get what I’ve sent because if you send it “signed for” it takes a couple of days longer. Go figure.
Cat NR1
Can You pls Thank that Nice Man Alex Neil for not losing to Man City Today.. On behalf of all Hammers Fans everywhere
West Ham Fan NR33
Test
Test
It is 21:08 hello
Well I think in the absence of anything to say, we could all send our get well wishes to Big Pink. Because I’ll tell you what he won’t get it from his womenfolk. They think man flu is made up in our tiny minds
With the exception of Jean Brodie, whom I think is a Saint.
Just looking in after an arduous day on hills to see how things were in the troubled world of Scottish Football governance.
Alas, I see that we are still in testing times.
‘Been a quiet old day today’ a la Arkwright. So I will just update you on the Scottish Derby that has not been reported on hitherto.
Shotts Vics 3 Shotts Thistle 2 (aet)
Wasn’t at the game, so that is as much as I know. However, a bit of background information I can share with you. One of the crocked Thistle players I met before the game and was using walking sticks and had a big medical looking shoe thing on his foot, I said to him ” Are you on the bench today?” He gave me a strange look and replied no! Isn’t that typical of modern footballers today? Only kidding he’s a smashing lad. Although I nearly fell over his sticks later on.
Big Pink, hope you are feeling better, I am assured that the best remedy is potcien sp. with honey. It will be gone in an half hour, or so I’m told.
Help!
Someone get back on here and talk about Scottish Football please.
jimbo 12th March 2016 at 9:34 pm #
Well I think in the absence of anything to say, we could all send our get well wishes to Big Pink. Because I’ll tell you what he won’t get it from his womenfolk. They think man flu is made up in our tiny minds
With the exception of Jean Brodie, whom I think is a Saint.
_______________________________________________________
You’re bloody right I am.
Soup making, decorating, grandwean watching, gardening, working fecking saint!!!
BTW thanks Jimbo
Jean, I’ve got some ironing here if you’re stuck for something to do… ???
jean. talking about home made soup.
This is the one I inherited from my mum.
Some Dundee Utd. looking carrots
Celticy looking Leeks ( not a reference to our defence BTW)
Hibby Peas, again not talking about their bottle in the big games
Ham (ilton) smoked and not stirred
Ayr Potatoes. Tasty. Pity SDM hadn’t bought them.
Seasoning as required. Although I wouldn’t Bovril.
Cheers Jean your welcome.
With love from Norwich.
West Ham Fan 11th March 2016 at 7:00 pm #OT Dear Cat NR1 Can You pls ask that Nice Man Alex Neil to make sure that his team Beat Man City tmw and do my team a gr8 favor in our quest for a top 4 Finish in our Last Year playing at Upton Park. Yours Sincerely West Ham Fan NR33
================
Alex says sorry, but was the draw any good?
0-0 draws are not usually celebrated in NR1, but there had been concern in these parts that the clean sheet gods had joined Sky Sports in forgetting that NCFC are still in the EPL. Even today I understand that the commentators referred to the visitors to the Fine City as “City” during the game, which must have confused a lot of watching City fans who thought that they were supposed to be the team in yellow and green. Perhaps Manchester City could buy a proper nickname to add to their purchased trophies?
Homunculus 12th March 2016 at 9:11 am #The new club was not allowed into the SPL because the members voted against it, as was their democratic right. In spite of their own administrators, both the SFA and SPL trying to threaten and blackmail them into doing it.
The new club got into the SFL because the member clubs voted for it. That was their democratic right and no matter what I might think of that decision it was theirs to make.
I think everyone realises it was done because a lot of these clubs would get at least a couple of paydays which would be the equivalent of being drawn against top opposition in one of the cups. But they were guaranteed games rather than hoping for it to happen once in decades. Add to that a bit of TV money and it becomes financially very attractive.
How many of those clubs were able to clear debt, or repair facilities or whatever else because of that decision.
Whilst I agree it was wrong it was their decision to make and I can perfectly understand them making it.
===========================
Had Sevco 5088 Ltd or Sevco Scotland Ltd been eligible for membership of the SFL, I don’t think any of us would begrudge those lower division clubs voting for their admission ahead of other eligible candidates. However, I don’t think it has yet been proved that either could have been presented as candidates within the rules as published on the SFA/SPL websites, which is what the member clubs entrust the administrators to oversee. The vote for admission is another Nimmo Smith enquiry, in that if the evidence presented for examination and decision is flawed, then the decision itself is de facto flawed.
.
I still would like Messrs Regan and Longmuir to explain which club played Brechin City on 29 July 2012. Now that Mr Longmuir is no longer in office, perhaps Mr Doncaster could enlighten me.
essexbeancounter 7th March 2016 at 8:25 pm # I would also suggest that you include our own The Cat NR1 in such discussions…from his posts I garner he has forgotten more than I ever knew or learnt…!
=====================
Cheers EBC.
The tenner’s on it’s way to the usual offshore account.
The Cat NR1 13th March 2016 at 12:59 am
“I still would like Messrs Regan and Longmuir to explain which club played Brechin City on 29 July 2012. Now that Mr Longmuir is no longer in office, perhaps Mr Doncaster could enlighten me.”
——————————————————————————————————————-
I doubt they will answer that, because we can show beyond any reasonable doubt, who never played them.
I thought this comment, in response to a comment on JJ’s blog about the point of Res12 if RFC IL were guilty of wrongdoing in 2011 since they were no longer under SFA/UEFA jurisdiction.
” RFC are not the target the SFA are.
Had they been a competent fit for purpose organisation the first knowledge of ebts being used would have been questioned with RFC AND HMRC in 2000 or 2001.
Think of the grief that would have saved everyone particularly RFC.
Try to imagine that some Celtic supporters don’t hate Rangers supporters but just love football enough to want it to be played honestly as a sport and not a means of fleecing both sets of supporters in a rivalry that has for far too long been poisonous.
It’s not about what CW did or did not do in 2011, it’s about how the SFA allowed it to happen and their behaviour since in order to make sure it cannot happen again.
The SFA can make a start by simply answering the questions put to them last July.
They may have nothing to hide but in answering some form of accountability will have been introduced by giving club shareholders power they do not have.
The SFA and the club’s probably fear being accountable more than the consequences of any wrongdoing that did take place in which they played a part.
SFA accountability is the ultimate aim.
The Cat NR1 13th March 2016 at 12:59 am
=============================
The SPL clubs were asked to vote on a new club joining their league. They almost unanimously voted against it. There was one abstention. There was a resounding “no”.
The same club then applied to the SFL. At that time that league had 30 members. 25 of them voted to allow the new club in, that’s over 80%, pretty much a landslide in favour.
It was the lower league clubs which allowed the new Rangers to start in Scottish football and to have any chance of survival. They may have been able to operate in the lower levels of junior football, but I doubt it. Not with their overheads. Could they have raised any money by floating, would they have raised anywhere near £20m as a new junior football club, operating in Scotland.
I totally disagree with what the clubs in the SFL did, like you I don’t see why they were even allowed to apply. However Rangers applied, and those clubs accepted them.
I believe that because the application was allowed by the SFL and because the “yes” vote was so overwhelming they had every right to accept the new club in. Did any of the “no” voters complain about the process even taking place.
Auldheid
I’m in complete agreement with the view that it is SFA that MUST be the target. Make it the dead club and you are wasting your time. Make it about the flagrant waste of a banks money by SDM and you are wasting your time. Make it about side contracts hidden by RFC and you are wasting your time. I will add one more to that that many will object to. Make it about what Celtic missed out on and you are wasting your time. This has to be about the football administrators and what they allowed/accepted. Anything else is undermined by putting into the heads of who you complain to the thought that it is about inter club hatred and they see a lot of their time wasted by that. OK so it isn’t about inter club hatred but that is the mental background with which they will deal with your complaint.
This must be about every team and no team, Rangers included. Their fans suffered due to the SFA/SPFLs’ handling of this sorry episode. Once you can get UEFA to believe that something IS wrong in Scottish football THEN you can broach the question of the reason.
https://www.change.org/p/scottish-football-association-return-integrity-to-football-administration-in-scotland-94421b40-2d6b-4d4b-9cff-912c9849478f
Medical suggestion for Big Pink
It is a well proven that the best cure for man flu is fresh air and a but of sun on your back. Now, I can’t help with the fresh air but I can confidently say that there will be plenty –
SUNSHINE on LEITH
this afternoon.
Big Pink 12th March 2016 at 8:44 am
Like all good serial offenders, the SFA avoid battles they can’t win. No engagement with TH, no engagement with the Res12 group, no engagement with the SPL over their expulsion of a 140 year old club.
——————————————————-
What is the chances of the MA case against the SFA concerning the fit and proper approval of Mr King actually getting to court?
Reiver 13th March 2016 at 11:00 am
‘…
I can confidently say that there will be plenty –
SUNSHINE on LEITH
this afternoon…’
_________
A priceless observation from Chick a few minutes go: ” Robert Burns died in 1796. He was closer in time to Hibs’ last Cup win than we are”.
Don’t know what point precisely he was trying to make, but it left the rest of the Sportsound chaps stunned in amused speechlessness!
Probably stunned at Chick continuing to be an arsehole of an irrelevance JC. Today is the LEAGUE Cup final, so does not relate to his snidey comment, made no doubt in the hope of currying favour with the larger audience (mainly HMFC and TRFC fans) who like smartass comments about Hibs. Lord knows, he has an inbuilt need to believe himself to be funny and popular, doesn’t he?
Given Hibs last won the LEAGUE cup in 2007, his assertion that Burns was closer to their last ‘cup’ win is clearly wrong. I mean he is there to talk about today’s LEAGUE cup final, isn’t he?
Horrible man.
JC
Chick was wrong. Not a first I know but definitely wrong.
He was of course getting his cups mixed up. It is true about the Scottish cup but this is in the league cup. We are closer now to our last league cup than Chick is to his pension.
Reiver, you mean Chick has at least 10 years before he retires?!?! Please say it ain’t so.
Homunculus 13th March 2016 at 10:42 am #The Cat NR1 13th March 2016 at 12:59 am =============================
<CUT>
I believe that because the application was allowed by the SFL and because the “yes” vote was so overwhelming they had every right to accept the new club in. Did any of the “no” voters complain about the process even taking place.
==============================
That last question is one that has been causing me a lot of angst recently.
.
Were the clubs willing parties to a fraud on Scottish football, or were they victims themselves?
If the former, that does beg the question as to whether there is any point in carrying on.
The Sevco 5088 Ltd/Sevco Scotland Ltd court cases may throw some light into the dark corners of Hampden’s Star Chamber.
It looks like a decent sized post-armaggedon turnout at Hampden this afternoon, and hopefully, we will have a game that is decided by the players and not an honest mistake.
.
It certainly looks like the pitch is worthy of the occasion and the Glasgow weather is behaving itself.
The Cat NR1 13th March 2016 at 3:06 pm
============================
In my opinion, and it’s just that, the SFL clubs who voted the new club into their league new exactly what they were doing.
They weighed up what was right against how much money they were likely to make, and they took the money.
Like I said though, I blame neither Rangers nor the other clubs for doing this. Once it was put before them they had the democratic right to make that decision.
The SFL administrators, supported by the SFA who had to sanction it, should not have allowed the decision to even exist. They should have gone through the normal process carried out when a club is liquidated. Unless that actually is to select a club which doesn’t even exist per se, then jump through hoops and make up rules to get them started.
I have no idea if any of the 5 no voters, or the clubs who lost out on the potential place lodged a formal complaint. That would not have suited the agenda so is unlikely to have been reported widely.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/raith-rovers-chief-launches-furious-1131547
RAITH ROVERS director Turnbull Hutton insists the First Division should reject an Ibrox newco after his club were subjected to threats and intimidation during Rangers’ demise.
=============================
I should never have doubted the man. Though to be fair that is entry to the First Division he was talking about.
Corrupt official 13th March 2016 at 9:30 am #The Cat NR1 13th March 2016 at 12:59 am “I still would like Messrs Regan and Longmuir to explain which club played Brechin City on 29 July 2012. Now that Mr Longmuir is no longer in office, perhaps Mr Doncaster could enlighten me.” ——————————————————————————————————————- I doubt they will answer that, because we can show beyond any reasonable doubt, who never played them.
=====================================
I’d just like to see some Brysonian Interpretation Theory based explanation from them, as even Alan Turing would have been unable to square that circle.
OT but may i thank the Scottish Rugby Team for trying so Hard to Hand the Six Nations to England
( Runs away very fast shouting “It was a Big Boy made me say it” )
Is it not already won with England on 8 points and France on 4 going into this game.
Sorry, there’s another game to go obviously.
That’s the problem with this time of year, you might get a couple of hours of sunshine but there is always a risk of a late afternoon downpour.
An interesting stat following today’s League Cup Final is that Ross County made it 11 different clubs who have won the last 20 Scottish domestic cup finals. That’s a pretty decent spread I reckon.
upthehoops 13th March 2016 at 7:12 pm #An interesting stat following today’s League Cup Final is that Ross County made it 11 different clubs who have won the last 20 Scottish domestic cup finals. That’s a pretty decent spread I reckon.
===================
And the Scottish Challenge Cup will have new winners this season, with both Peterhead and their opponents seeking their first ever senior cup win.
Reiver 10.56
Res12 was always a means to an accountable end. If a club’s shareholders have found evidence that the SFA may have acted against the interest of all members in the interest of one, then if those shareholders cannot provide that evidence and ask that it be investigated, what is the point of being a shareholder?
At what point does a share have less value than any other share? Res12 was not voted out but adjourned because there was enough evidence presented to suggest that it should not have been.
That evidence is not going away and either it is addressed and explained or those refusing to do so risk being guilty of covering up a fraud.
Only the RFC fraud cases prevent the evidence being made more public for fear of prejudicing the case. But that will not last forever.
UEFA will be asked to look at a clear case of misgovernance by the SFA from 2011 to present date. The RFC part is is necessary because it was they who applied for the licence and broke the rules unless the SFA can justifiably say they didn’t.
The Cat NR1 13th March 2016 at 7:38 pm
============================
I hate to be pedantic, but is it really a “senior cup” if teams from the top division aren’t allowed to compete in it.
No offence to those who are, obviously.
Auldheid 13th March 2016 at 7:48 pm
==========================
The only possible defence I can think of for the SFA is that they do not check clubs’ applications and take it on trust that everything in them is honest and complete.
Kind of like clubs doing their own fit and proper checks, and missing out that their major shareholder and chairman had previously been banned from being a Director for seven years.
If the SFA knew the tax was due, that Rangers had agreed it and they had not paid it, but still allowed the application then they have nowhere to go.
Given the circumstances it is difficult to understand why they did not seek evidence from Rangers that it was not actually due, for example confirmation from HMRC that it was on hold pending a review, or appeal.
Homunculus 13th March 2016 at 7:51 pm #The Cat NR1 13th March 2016 at 7:38 pm ============================
I hate to be pedantic, but is it really a “senior cup” if teams from the top division aren’t allowed to compete in it.
No offence to those who are, obviously.
==================
It must be if professional clubs are eligible to participate.
How seriously those clubs take the competition is another matter altogether.
I suppose that just demonstrates that Chic is as good at arithmetic as he is at telling the truth.
Give that he was born around 1954 that takes him to within 52 years of Hibs’ last cup win.
Burns is an outlier at 106 years.
Did anyone point out to Chic that it was in fact the League Cup today.
Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep indeed!
The Cat NR1
Both
Yes there is – because the real battle here is between the clubs and their ‘customers’. The clubs can in fact do as they like. They have no emotional attachment to the sport in the way the fans do. Everything is settled by a cost/benefit analysis. This particular one deemed that following the rules correctly was the downside of the argument.
They justify it by dressing the SFA up as some kind of quasi legal guardian of the game, when in fact it is just a trade association – a cartel used as a blunt instrument to con the punters.
So might we. We are still not done.
The evidence suggest strongly that the clubs are less concerned with the integrity of the game than we are.
The final outcome is dependent on our resolve. That is not in doubt at SFM. The question is;
“Are there enough of us?”
“We are still not done. The evidence suggest strongly that the clubs are less concerned with the integrity of the game than we are. The final outcome is dependent on our resolve.”
BP, I agree to an extent, but our resolve alone isn’t really enough as the past 4 years of not being heard show. Are you of the mind that simple patience will suffice and something good will come out of either the court cases, the Res12 piece or just out of the blue?
Is there really nothing proactive that we, as a group, can do?
Hi Homunculus , would CO not have known?
Christyboy 13th March 2016 at 9:33 pm #
Hi Homunculus , would CO not have known?
=============================
I’m not really sure how he would have been aware of Rangers’ tax position at the relevant time.
Did he not leave Rangers in 2005 and join Hearts.
He would have knowledge of EBTs having received one but that is a different argument.
Big Pink 13th March 2016 at 8:30 pm #The Cat NR1
Were the clubs willing parties to a fraud on Scottish football, or were they victims themselves?Both
If the former, that does beg the question as to whether there is any point in carrying on.Yes there is – because the real battle here is between the clubs and their ‘customers’. The clubs can in fact do as they like. They have no emotional attachment to the sport in the way the fans do. Everything is settled by a cost/benefit analysis. This particular one deemed that following the rules correctly was the downside of the argument.
They justify it by dressing the SFA up as some kind of quasi legal guardian of the game, when in fact it is just a trade association – a cartel used as a blunt instrument to con the punters.
The Sevco 5088 Ltd/Sevco Scotland Ltd court cases may throw some light into the dark corners of Hampden’s Star Chamber.So might we. We are still not done. The evidence suggest strongly that the clubs are less concerned with the integrity of the game than we are. The final outcome is dependent on our resolve. That is not in doubt at SFM. The question is; “Are there enough of us?”
=============
Thanks for the morale booster BP.
Sometimes it gets a bit too much like “All Quiet on the Western Front”.
Homunculus 13th March 2016 at 3:34 pm
‘…Once it was put before them they had the democratic right to make that decision.’
_________
What we would all love to know is what exactly was put to a) the members of the SPL
b) to the members of the SFL
and whether anything at all was ‘put to’ the members of the SFA as a body.
And whether anything at all was put to anybody before the 5-way agreement was signed in direst secrecy!
If your ‘professional’ CEOs spin you a lot of quasi-legalistic guff, what are you supposed to do? Argue against them and their ‘expertise’? That course requires a readiness to acquaint yourself with legal, constitutional detail, and a readiness to be perceived as being a bit thrawn, not a team-player, but just an embarrassment. And possibly someone who is going to cost other people money!
You’re absolutely right that members of any group whose constitution is democratic have the right and duty to accept a democratic vote-If they are voting in clear knowledge of the facts: not on a tissue of untruths asserting that new club is actually the self-same club that legally died the death of Liquidation.
Over the whole piece, I’m ready to cut the general run of clubs a bit of slack in relation to the acceptance of TRFC into the SFL.
What I cannot accept is their readiness to swallow the ‘continuity Rangers’ myth.
We must keep on insisting that TRFC as a matter of simple sporting reality, on top of legal and commercial reality, are a 4-year old sporting entity, with no great history of sporting achievement, and certainly absolutely no claim to the sporting achievements of what is , for all practical football playing purposes, a club as defunct as Third Lanark.
Homunculus
Art 66 says that a club must PROVE at 30 June they have no overdue payable to the tax authority.
Another Art 43? Gives SFA powers to check with HMRC.
The Takeover statement by CW in 3 June 2011 told SFA RFC had a tax liability for £2.8m that CW had agreed to take on.
Another Art required RFC to notify SFA of any significant change since licence granted.
In spite of all this RFC made a statement to UEFA which UEFA accepted as true because no one checked to ask for proof.
At 30 June RFC had an overdue payable as per the rules but since the Art 66 declaration was not questioned by UEFA then they must have accepted there was no overdue payable.
If that were true the SFA could have confirmed long before now. They cannot because the statement to UEFA was false, designed to retain the licence but only possible because of lack of SFA scrutiny.
When you add in the tone of subsequent exchanges between the SFA and RFC it is difficult not to conclude that SFA were derelict in June 2011 and they know it.
One would imagine that this would all emerge during or after the RFC Fraud trials but such are the consequences even the justice system cannot be relied on to present the truth.
Auldheid 14th March 2016 at 12:12 am
‘…..At 30 June RFC had an overdue payable as per the rules but since the Art 66 declaration was not questioned by UEFA then they must have accepted there was no overdue payable. ‘
______
As it happens, I hope in the near future to be able to ask Regan face to face a question or two about what the SFA told UEFA about the indebtedness of RFC on the social taxes front.
I think they knowingly told porkies. I accuse them of knowingly deceiving UEFA of the true state of the non-payment of social taxes by the then RFC, in order to obtain the UEFA licence to participate in UEFA competitions.
There is clear evidence that RFC were dunned for payment due, and not in ‘discussion’ about their ‘possible’ tax liability.
They were absolutely liable for tax debt. and the SFA knew it. No question.
So just what did Happen in 2005?
https://www.scribd.com/doc/304435273/SPL-Articles-February-2005https://www.scribd.com/doc/304435372/SPL-Articles-July-2005-pdf
In 1998 – when the SPL was formed – it issued its first Articles of Association. These Articles remained largely unchanged until July 2005. You may be surprised at some of its early content. I certainly was!
The original Articles said:
but, in July 2005 this definition was replaced with:
The original Articles said:
but, in July 2005 this definition was replaced with:
The original Articles said:
but, in July 2005 this Aticle was replaced with:
The original Articles said:
but, in July 2005 this section was replaced with:
So why do these changes matter?
Even if you take the Neil Doncaster/LNS interpretation of Club being a separate entity from its owner and operator as being correct (and to be clear, I do not), it can only possibly be correct from July 2005. Until the new Articles were adopted, no such construct existed. Prior to July 2005, the club was the holder of the SPL share, was the member. As with the SFA and SFL Articles, there simply was no distinction between club and company.
LNS found the “Club” guilty (but not the company) for failing to correctly register players going back to November 2000 – almost FIVE YEARS BEFORE SUCH AN ENTITY EXISTED.
If the club was guilty of an offence prior to July 2005, it was not some metaphysical entity, it is the member. It is clear from the original Articles that there was no intention to create a distinction between the legal entity which operates the football operations and the club brand.
It would be interesting what LNS would make of the changes to the Articles. I assume, since he did not mention them in his determination (though fully aware of rule changes in the relevant period) that the SPL “prosecutor” felt them so insignificant that they were not worth mentioning.
So back in 2005 when these new Articles were introduced, did the SPL intend to create some new, never before considered, concept of a football club? Did they unwittingly create a Scottish footballing franchise system. In my opinion, no! Of course not.
It may be worth thinking back to that time and remembering that the SPL put together a proposal for SPL2. Whereas the SFL was an unincorporated body, The SPL was created as a company whose members became shareholders. The problem under the old Articles was that some of the SFL clubs were themselves unincorporated associations – had no legal peronality. A club that has no legal form cannot own anything.
The changes, in my view, were introduced to allow for the increased possibility – via the proposed SPL2 – that one of its clubs could be an unincorporated association and could not take direct ownership of a share in the SPL.
As I have said many times here, the meaning of undertaking in the SPL Articles should be taken from the Companies Act and means “Body Corporate” or “Unincorporated Association of Persons”
In the case of a Club with legal personality, the Club owns and operates itself, it is still the owner of the SPL share. The Club is the Member. In the case of a Club which is an unincorporated association of persons, the official owner and operator could then be whoever the club committee puts forward as the legal owner of the share in the SPL.
Either way, the Club is responsible for operating within the rules. In what I perceive to be its intended operation, the only difference is that, in the case of an unincorporated association, the actual shareholder bears no more responsibility (in terms of the rules) than any other club committee member.
It is ironic then, that my attention was drawn to this because I noticed the SPFL have stupidly registered three unincorporated associations (Annan, Brechin and Stranraer) as shareholders.
Has the SPFL been forced to register these three clubs as shareholders, because LNS has created a false distinction between club and company that could potentially leave the true shareholder liable to fines for the actions of the club? No committee member under those circumstances would be prepared to take legal ownership of a share that could leave him/her personally liable for a club’s rule breaches.
Is this the law of unintended consequences?!!
Test
Sorry, I was too late to edit my last comment. The correct links are:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/304435273/SPL-Articles-February-2005
and
https://www.scribd.com/doc/304435372/SPL-Articles-July-2005-pdf
I think I need to clarify myself and, if I was taken the wrong way, apologise.
Res 12 is a very viable way to go, of that I have always agreed, but to make the dispute as one club against another, especially Celtic v Rangers with all their history, weakens the position in the view of those that you want to act on your behalf. Celtic are in an awkward position on this as, if they take on the case and lose, they are at risk of being charged with bringing the game into disrepute. Now we all know where the disrepute charge should be aimed but that counts for nought should this be viewed by UEFA.
If you want to make it Celtic v the SFA then the most effective way is to do it at fan level, boycotts, walkouts and protests. I think though that you risk finding out, as I have with petition, that there are not as many who care as we feel should. You then are cut off at the knees.
In addition you need to take a firm stance on club continuity or once again you end up defeating your own argument. Let me state again that I am talking about perception again. If you state that RFC died at liquidation you cannot then realistically call for it to be punished now. Better to not include the point at all and concentrate on that area as evidence of the actions of the real culprits, the SFA and SPL/SPFL.
Don’t put yourselves in a position where the SFA can turn to UEFA and tell them that it is just some disgruntled fans acting out a long time feud with their historical rivals.
Res 12 IS a valid approach but it needs to be presented without being weakened by being tied to anything that smacks of inter club animosity.
I don’t know if that makes my position any clearer but if it doesn’t then I apologise again. I want us to succeed in this as a movement for the future not for righting old wrongs.
https://www.change.org/p/scottish-football-association-return-integrity-to-football-administration-in-scotland-94421b40-2d6b-4d4b-9cff-912c9849478f
A sensible suggestion, which could maybe be argued as to the final drafting, but it is getting closer to a situation I would be happy with. Equally, I am sure it would be vigorously opposed if suggested to the new board old board, “It wisnae us” thingmy.
Basically, the article is suggesting an amnesty.. Full article link below.
“The ‘The Rangers’ Statement.
We recognise that those responsible for running Rangers currently undergoing liquidation did so in an unfair fashion be that DOS, EBT or unsustainable debt. We therefore give up all claim to trophies won under that regime since 2000 when the DOS scheme was started and in return look for clemency on the question of compensation for the financial losses other clubs suffered as a result.
The SFA Statement.
We recognise that we failed Scottish football by not only failing to apply due rigor when accepting what we were told during annual club licensing, but in our mistaken attempts to keep a failed club, working to a failed business model, alive contributing to significant loss to the UK tax payer..
The parties in position of authority in situ at the SFA and still employed there (insert names) take responsibility for the impact our misgovernanace has had on Scottish football and have therefore resigned and the SFA have called in (insert business consultants) to examine the processes that failed and asked them to come up with recommendations that will not only prevent a repeat, but will help restore trust in the way in which Scottish Football will be run in the future.”
https://ntvceltic.wordpress.com/2016/03/14/still-not-moving-on/
Corrupt official 14th March 2016 at 10:43 am #
Sounds too much like common sense for those individuals responsible to comprehend. However, until some statements approaching those are made the Scottish game will never move on.
Bile and hatred will continue to grow – guess that sells tickets, but you can wave bye bye to families and young kids going to games around the country that feature TRFC. A very sad regression to poisonous atmospheres once again at these games. Compare and contrast to yesterdays cup final which I assume was yet another in a run of joyous family cup finals? Feel for Hibs fans yet again – maybe not joyous result, but the occasion was hopefully one you enjoyed.