Look Back to Look Forward

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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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1,978 thoughts on “Look Back to Look Forward


  1. WOODSTEINMARCH 25, 2016 at 14:16 
    Hope this doesn’t spoil the party
    http://www.philmacgiollabhain.ie/the-long-road-from-resolution-12/
    ==================================

    It’s all speculation but imagine Celtic really do see the return of the ‘O*d F*rm as something to end Resolution 12. In my view that attitude would cost them, but I can’t understand why a group of intelligent and successful men would want a strong Rangers anywhere near their club. Only one team can win the league and the Champions league qualification chance that goes with it. History over the past two decades shows when Celtic and the old Rangers were nip and tuck at the business end of the season an amazing amount of breaks went the way of Rangers. In my view Celtic tend to have to be much better than Rangers to win the league. Why would any Celtic board member want a return to that? It is not beyond the realms of possibility that when Celtic play Aberdeen post-split the game could have a huge bearing on the destination of the title. Both teams are more than capable of dropping points before then. The game could attract upwards of 55,000 to Celtic Park and the intensity would be incredible. Who needs a Rangers just to get exciting games?

    I’m willing to give the Celtic Board the benefit of the doubt. No-one really knows what they’re saying, but if they see the new Rangers ascent to the top league as the answer to everything they should be very careful what they wish for. The new Rangers exist only because the old Rangers cheated the taxpayer, the full extent of which is yet to be fully confirmed. Yet the new Rangers think all the good the things the old Rangers did belong to them, while the bad things don’t. Celtic fans are not willing to stand the unblemished name of their club beside such nonsense while wiping the slate clean. I do hope the board realise that.


  2. UPTHEHOOPSMARCH 25, 2016 at 16:21It’s all speculation but imagine Celtic really do see the return of the ‘O*d F*rm as something to end Resolution 12. In my view that attitude would cost them, but I can’t understand why a group of intelligent and successful men would want a strong Rangers anywhere near their club.
    ============================
    They don’t want a strong Rangers.  They want a Rangers that are constantly struggling to keep the lights on like Celtic were in the early nineties.  That way its a best of both for the Board.  The bank the Rangers money from TV rights and ‘big games’.  They get the European money every year.  Best of all given the SFA and SPFL handing the new club all the old companies trophy awards  for no explainable reason (not even attempted) – they’ve also got THE CHASE to cash in on.  Celtic Board can now wet their pants with excitement at how the rabble get stirred up by beating a down and out Rangers with a stick while they lie in the foetal position, all the while clocking up titles that will eventually go on to sell stage 2.
    With all that excitement who can care about things like sporting integrity, everyone playing by Association (don’t laugh) rules and the law of the land being applied.  Personally I like to see things won on sporting merit by being the best at what you do rather than the sort of mismatch that would never be allowed in a genuine sporting contest.  Without fairness and sporting behaviour the game is nothing but entertainment.  Warbo would be as well to sign up Hulk Hogan on a bosman.


  3. I have been on this earth for 672 months and God forbid I reach the 1000 mark but however long I have left I think I’m done with football.This year I won’t watch as the teams in green and white get pumped 3-0 by the teams in orange and blue,I’m fed up watching a rigged game so I intend to take up watching the world paint drying championships instead now that’s a real mans sport.


  4. upthehoopsMarch 25, 2016 at 16:21
    ‘……I’m willing to give the Celtic Board the benefit of the doubt. No-one really knows what they’re saying,..’
    ________
    I can truthfully say that I was in the van of those who argued that it was not up to Celtic to lead the charge against the perverted nonsense of the 5-Way agreement, and the la-la-land nonsense of Bryson and the LNS enquiry, and the criminal readiness to endorse DK as ‘fit and proper.’
    But the Res 12 matter is a free-standing act of cheating, albeit it foreshadowed   the readiness of the Football Authorities to accept cheating and aid and abet it, long before the death of RFC(IL) was even remotely contemplated.
    We do not know whether or to what extent any club knew about RFC’s tax indebtedness before RTC got on the case. The Celtic Board took some convincing (we are told) that there was at least a prima facie case that UEFA had been bounced into believing that RFC were merely ‘in negotiation’ with HMRC, and were not at the material time actually in debt, so there is  a fair chance that other clubs were pretty much in the dark.
    But now that Celtic know, and have known for some years,  what the true position was, now that I know what the SFA’s CEO’s attitude is , I’m damn well not going to let them off their responsibility to their shareholders, to Scottish Football, and to Financial Fair Play.
    PMcG’s piece ( thanks, Woodstein, for providing the link) re-inforces me in that attitude.
    To allow a club to descend to the unparalled level of sporting cheating we have seen perpetrated by SDM, supported by the Football Authorities in flagrant breach of their duty to UEFA and the rest of us, would be to turn ourselves into the despicable kind of cheat that certain knights of the realm seem naturally to be.


  5. shugMarch 25, 2016 at 19:43
    ‘…on this earth for 672 months and God forbid I reach the 1000 mark ‘
    _______
    On the 876 mark, I rather hope I might see the 1000. Gie’s a brek, shug!02


  6. Sorry John, whilst you hold hero status in my mind, I think you are far too forgiving of the Celtic board.
    It seems clear to me that none of the shenanigans embarked upon by the SFA to resurrect Rangers, invent whole new statuses of clubs, invent whole new criteria for registrations, and gift the Rangers history and titles to the new club, declare the new club to be seen as the old when it suits, and to sweep away any investigation, would have been possible without, at the very least, a tacit understanding that. Celtic would offer no opposition to any action that the SFA saw fit to ensure Rangers return.
    If one posits that the rebirth of the Old Firm was a key Celtic objective from 2012 onwards, then it explains the active, and calculated feints, and hints of action from Celtic couched in elaborate excuses and spurious explanations as to why no meaningful action could be taken. The facts certainly chime with this narrative. Celtic wanted Rangers back, regardless, but the board knew that to admit this openly would be suicide, and so a very clever sequence of kicking stuff into the long grass, expressions if disapproval, silence on the status if the new club was put in place publicly, whilst time was allowed to pass, and the return of Rangers and the Old Firm paradigm could be achieved.
    It may well be that this initial decision , taken in the he’s of crisis in 2012, to ensure the Old Firm survived, despite the death of one half of it, is one which all at Celtic have subsequently regretted, but it is an effective Rubicon which cannot be uncrossed


  7. JOHN CLARKMARCH 25, 2016 at 19:54 
    upthehoopsMarch 25, 2016 at 16:21‘……I’m willing to give the Celtic Board the benefit of the doubt. No-one really knows what they’re saying,..’________I can truthfully say that I was in the van of those who argued that it was not up to Celtic to lead the charge against the perverted nonsense of the 5-Way agreement, 
    ———————————————————————-
      JC, I was sitting beside you in that van, but now I have given them the benefit on more occasions than I care to remember and am embarrassed at being so gullible.  
       Well the time is now upon us. Scottish fitba fans easily have the power to kick everyone of the vile creatures who inhabit our game, out of it. We can destroy each and every one of them. 
       It doesn’t need organising. It just needs each of us, as individuals,  to do the right thing and invoke our right to spend our money as we see fit. 
       Our tangerine pounds, blue pounds, red pounds green pounds, maroon pounds, and claret pounds 
      In my best Rab C voice, “Armageddon? Armageddon is it?…Ah’ll gi’e ye Armageddon Boay!” 


  8. CORRUPT OFFICIAL
    i’m already at the “my money goes elsewhere” stage,and probably never to return unless this mess gets sorted,which could be a long way to go


  9. TONYMARCH 25, 2016 at 22:37 
    CORRUPT OFFICIALi’m already at the “my money goes elsewhere” stage,and probably never to return unless this mess gets sorted,which could be a long way to go. 
       ———————————————————————————-
      ST for my daughter and I, but I don’t live in Scotland and my cousin and his wean use it mainly. Unless Celtic announce something positive, my cousin will miss it more than me. I’m a bit gutted about that as they will lose out. 


  10. Not sure if it’s true for certain but the time limit to appeal against Rangers licence awarded for UEFA competition 2011/12 has nearly lapsed.   5 days to go.
     Does anyone believe an appeal will be forthcoming? 

    I think the way the Res.12 guys have been treated is shameful. 

    Auldheid mentioned on here a few days ago that seeds have been planted in England with a chance that the sorry saga could become newsworthy in the English press.  But with the greatest respect, it’s not the same as Peter Lawwell speaking to UEFA.  I hope their wishes come true and it becomes a talking point.  Certainly worth a try. But the solution was in Peter Lawwell’s hands and any other club in Scotland.  No one took up the cause.  Other than social media folk. 

    It might get interesting when Res. 12 is effectively kicked out of play by Celtic.  If I were those folk I would be raging.  I couldn’t second guess what there next move might be.  They are not hot heads I think but I suspect they might have a plan B.  Certainly hope so.


  11. Not been on for a few days. With regard to previous posters idea of distributing leaflets/ cards etc, I’d certainly be up for that. It astonishes me how few supporters that I know are completely oblivious to the issues surrounding Res 12,LNS,etc.A leaflet with the timeline would be good.It may be too late for the UEFA cut off but it would open a few eyes I’m sure.


  12. How is this for a League ladder. This is what proper competition looks like.


  13. I think and believe that Political Peter and therefore the club he works for were a major part of the creation and the selling to the other clubs of the 5 way fix created in late 2011 and into 2012.
    We don’t know if then there were negotiated “packages” for his and the other cheated clubs as recompense (which I think were likely by the way) or if it was just a mad dash with an invented 5 way scheme to protect the status quo of the duopolistic TV deal that all the chairmen feared losing and wanted to preserve.

    Peter was never working alone and everything done would have been in conjunction with the club chairmen in the  SFA’s “inner sanctum” and various advisers. 

    Fast forward to today in the count down to the UEFA deadline over the fornicated licence application and Resolution 12.

    Why would Mr Lawwell want anything or indeed allow anything to revisit and examine his and other linked footsteps in this historical pragmatic fix?

    He just wants to move on and fill Fergus’s stadium at least twice a year.

    That’s why I think he welcomes the return of the “Old Firm” even though he is politically savvy enough to avoid those two words for a while, and deep down think he knows Mr King’s 55/45 version share of future spoils might be the best financial model for his business.


  14. I see that the Daily Record this morning  are running with the story that TRFC have lost their appeal against the £250k fine for EBT’s . 
    Thats another £400k the Co Investors will have to find.
    Club1872 anyone……..? 


  15. The interesting bit to me is that they are furious that it has been leaked mmm guess they figured it could be kept underwraps,still they can appeal at court of arbitration for sport might cost a bit though go sevco spend spend spend.


  16. I thought Club1872 was a club for people with the same PIN number.


  17. EDDIEGOLDTOPMARCH 26, 2016 at 08:09 6 0  Rate This 
    Attachment
     I see that the Daily Record this morning  are running with the story that TRFC have lost their appeal against the £250k fine for EBT’s . Thats another £400k the Co Investors will have to find.Club1872 anyone……..? 
    _____________

    I do hope the tribunal hasn’t given the SPL/SPFLany discressionary powers that might enable them to refuse payment of the fine 14


  18. HOMUNCULUSMARCH 25, 2016 at 14:51
    Can’t argue with any of that !
    But !  I only support one Club and they are pissing me off on so many fronts at the minute.


  19. The thing I find most strange is that it would appear that the new club will be by far the best supported club in Scotland next season.

    I know this is quite a limited “straw poll” but going by what is being posted here a lot of Celtic supporters will simply be giving up on Scottish football. I know there is no way of confirming how many actually are Celtic supporters and how many are supporters of other clubs perhaps trying to influence but either way it does seem to be the trend. There will possibly be supporters of other clubs doing the same but that does not seem as much to be the case (again based on posts here).

    The strange thing is that it is Rangers (the former club) who used DOS and EBT to avoid paying tax and who failed to declare the side contracts to the authorities. They are guilty of all of that. It is Rangers (the old club) who got a licence to play in Europe when they had outstanding tax bills. There is no doubt about that. The authorities not caring does not change it being true.

    However it is the victims of that cheating, the other clubs, who will suffer through it by losing their support.


  20. sevco have every right to refuse payment as they are a new club,this fine has absolutely nothing to do with them, if it gets payed it will be a victory for the tribute act claiming to be the old club. 


  21. It may be that the statutes of limitation is something that can be got around but the fact is that it excludes action from UEFA. If we want UEFA to act then we cannot get them to respond to breach of their rules by breaching another one. I have been working on the assumption, guessing really, that we still have six months in which to act. If I am wrong and it is a matter of days then we have lost another tool from our box and it looks now like it belongs to old Mother Hubbard.
    We do not have access to the press, we do not have support from the clubs, the Sports Integrity Initiative doesn’t look like stepping up to the plate, The Scottish government will be in limbo till after the elections, the Westminster sports minister is on maternity leave, all reporters blank me on twitter(someone else may have better luck), Ladbrokes have not responded, the Spanish and Turkish FAs have not responded and cannot be chased up by me because I don’t speak the language, the same for CF Malaga and Galatasary, Supporters clubs in Scotland have also failed to respond.
    The only tool, and potentially the right tool for the job, left in the box are the supporters themselves. Our problem is using them to the best effect. Rallying them without access to the press or the supporters clubs, is extremely difficult. I have said previously that those who discuss it on this and other blogs are few in number, probably no more than a couple of thousand. It is easy to post on here and believe that the happenings of the last five years is common knowledge, it isn’t. So how do we do it? I like the suggestion put up by other posters of handing out small cards at games. Designing and printing the cards is the easy part but who distributes them and how?
    Whatever happens it has to be done soon. UEFA is the ideal route but we need a club to front it. After that, or at the same time, mobilisation of the fans is what is needed but we only have about 8 weeks where that will be possible.
    Whatever happens the talking needs to stop and the action taken. Posters here need to look to themselves and work out what THEY can do. If you come up with the answer “I am not prepared to” then do us a favour and stop bitchin’ on the blogs. You have relinquished your rights.

    https://www.change.org/p/scottish-football-association-return-integrity-to-football-administration-in-scotland-94421b40-2d6b-4d4b-9cff-912c9849478f


  22. MOTOR RED
    MARCH 26, 2016 at 10:20
    2 1 Rate This

    sevco have every right to refuse payment as they are a new club,this fine has absolutely nothing to do with them, if it gets payed it will be a victory for the tribute act claiming to be the old club.
    ==================================================================

    Sorry but I disagree with all of that.

    They entered into an agreement to take on the footballing debts of the old club, in order to corruptly get a place in Scottish football for the new club.

    If anything this debt, and the agreement which gave rise to it, goes to prove it is a different club. The “5-way agreement” would not even have existed if it was the same club, there would have been no need for it. The same club would not have been applying to join a league.


  23. AllyjamboMarch 26, 2016 at 08:40
    ‘…I do hope the tribunal hasn’t given the SPL/SPFLany discressionary powers that might enable them to refuse payment of the fine ‘
    ______
    I feel sure any half-decent advocate could demonstrate that the new club could not possibly have a liability for the ‘football debt’ of a liquidated club any more than for the debts of that liquidated club to other creditors, no matter what bit of paper a charlatan had signed.

    In   simultaneously asserting ‘same club’ when it comes to them, but different club as far as social taxes and other creditors are concerned, the SFA are betraying a lying, deceitful, self-serving attitude which is worse by far than the attempted conmanship of CG and the present RIFC/TRFC boards.
    We would expect nothing in the way of truth from the  new club.  We should be able to expect some kind of truth from our Football authorities. But we  not only have not had truth, but have been explicitly told that , at least in one particular matter, all the evidence in the world would not convince them to adopt truth, so hard set are they on pursuing what is an essentially futile contradictory idea: that football can be helped by the destruction of Sporting Integrity.
    Hell mend them when they reap what they sow. Perhaps not not, but, like Karadzic perhaps, in some years’ time.


  24. JOHN CLARK
    MARCH 26, 2016 at 10:44
    0 0 Rate This

    I feel sure any half-decent advocate could demonstrate that the new club could not possibly have a liability for the ‘football debt’ of a liquidated club any more than for the debts of that liquidated club to other creditors, no matter what bit of paper a charlatan had signed.

    ==================================================

    It would appear that three High Court judges disagree with you.


  25. HomunculusMarch 26, 2016 at 10:49 —————— 
    JOHN CLARK MARCH 26, 2016 at 10:44 0 0 Rate This
    I feel sure any half-decent advocate could demonstrate that the new club could not possibly have a liability for the ‘football debt’ of a liquidated club any more than for the debts of that liquidated club to other creditors, no matter what bit of paper a charlatan had signed.
    ==================================================
    It would appear that three High Court judges disagree with you.
    ============================
    The High Court judges weren’t acting as a court of law. They were acting as an appeal tribunal of an earlier SPL Commission decision.

    The “High Court” element may give the tribunal gravitas, but it is not a legal decision as such.


  26. EASYJAMBO
    MARCH 26, 2016 at 10:58

    ================================

    I wasn’t suggesting it was a “legal decision”, I was responding to what had been posted.

    They are three High Court judges and I would suggest that would make them at the least the equal of a “half-decent advocate”. They have ruled on TRFC’s appeal and found against them.


  27. HOMUNCULUSMARCH 26, 2016 at 10:09

        However it is the victims of that cheating, the other clubs, who will suffer through it by losing their support
        ———————————————————————————————————————–
       That is just one of life’s little ironies Homunculus. Yes Rangers(I.L.) did do all that, and the clubs were victims of cheating, but that is not why they will lose support. It will be over their failure to act on it, that causes the loss. 
       On the flip side, if they were to stand up for themselves the opposite would happen, and their support would increase while the faux Rangers (I.L.)  support dwindles. 
       I don’t hear anybody saying they will withdraw support if they act with integrity, so the ba’ is at their own feet on this matter. I will continue to support my club if they do not take me for a mug with a fetish for being mugged.
       The decision is now theirs to make, as are the consequences to take. 
       They can choose the system they want to play under, and we are free to choose to pay to endorse it or not. Believe me, continued attendance will be the only endorsement they need to keep us in servitude and touching our toes.
       Alex Thomson didn’t even know half of it when he called it “potentially” the biggest corruption scandal in British sport. 
      It is not “potentially” now, is it Mr Regan?…It is not jumping to conclusions now Mr Regan. …..Is it?
      Tommo is correct. We need an outside body to look at this. Taking Res 12 to UEFA will be our last opportunity to do this.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxPZ5ExeAqY
        
       


  28. Like many here I despair at the inaction from Celtic AND every other club’s tacit acceptance of the arrival of Rangers into the Premiership as if it were a “return”.How can it possibly be so? They died and a form of Rangers were allowed to queue jump their way into senior football in Scotland.I read John Clark’s amazing article re his meeting with Reagan and, for me, that was it. I was completely sickened and so wrote to Celtic in my strongest possible way – admittedly not the most articulate way but the best I can do.
    I can’t make up my mind whether to be happy or not with their response to meet PL to discuss; this simply by me being now cynical enough to believe that the four dates offered to me all happened to be after the alleged “time-out” period for any appeal by then having passed.
    On the other hand is PL really stupid enough to believe that Celtic fans en masse will buy into the return of Rangers and a full acceptance of prior years’ cheating escaping totally Scot free?
    If he thinks the latter he and the Celtic board will be looking at many more unoccupied plastic seats next season from their comfy seats in the South stand. Next season many will simply not buy so seats will be empty. Speaking for myself and two sons we are three such fans who will be out. Ironically , Ibrox will be packed to bursting.
    Who says cheating doesn’t win?
    Will be interested in other views as to whether to accept my invite for an audience with Peter…..———————-
    On 18 Mar 2016, at 14:43, John Paul Taylor <JPTaylor@celticfc.co.uk> wrote:
    Hi Jim
    Many thanks for your email, we are of course naturally concerned and would like to offer you the opportunity to come into Celtic Park to meet with Peter Lawwell and myself to discuss.
    Can you advise if any of the following dates and times would be suitable.
    Monday 4 April – 1400-1600hrsTuesday 5 April – 1300-1500hrsFriday 8 April – 1130-1500hrsMonday 11 April – 0900-1100hrs or 1500-1700hrs
    I look forward to hearing from you.
    John Paul
    John Paul TaylorSupporter Liaison OfficerCeltic FCCeltic Park, Glasgow, G40 3REDirect Tel: +44 (0)141 551 4209Direct Fax: +44 (0)141 550 2356—–Original Message—–From: Jim [Sent: 18 March 2016 13:02To: John Paul TaylorSubject: Resolution 12 inaction from Board
    Hi, John-Paul,
    There are times I feel your job must be a nightmare sitting between an angry and disillusioned fan base while reporting to your employers. Today might be just such a time.
    I am a shareholder and over the past fifty years have spent a fortune – financial and emotional – supporting Celtic at the gate, in the stores and of course when buying my shares.
    I am now though at the stage where I think I may have spent my last penny on all things Celtic.
    The reasons I am outlining below will be familiar to you as I think many fans – and a huge number in the Gxxxx CSC feel as I do – are of a similar mind.
    This Board of Directors have let the fans down in a number of ways.
    1) Continually not supporting the fans and allowing us to be treated as criminals. Why PL ever attended the Government summit in 2011 will forever be a mystery to me.2) Our inaction over a hostile media – indeed, it’s worse as we allow these media outlets access to the players, managers and stadium, accept advertising hoardings for such as Radio Clyde and the Daily Record and advertise in these outlets.3) Transfer policy over the last few years as we accelerate into the slow lane is appalling.4) Our inaction and acceptance, without comment, on some of the strangest refereeing decisions you’ll ever see.
    However for me the dam has now burst with the news that the Board have passed the buck to shareholder re Resolution 12. I simply don’t know where to begin with this. I sat at the AGM where a number of fans proposing the resolution in 2013 agreed to take the motion off-line since they were assured that the Board, with new information available to them, were now minded to challenge the SFA over granting of licenses to play in the UEFA competitions. Clearly we were either being cynically strung along by a deceitful Board or something has changed which the Board have not clarified in any way, shape or form.
    I have now read a comment on the Scottish Football Monitor from a regular contributor, and I believe, fellow shareholder, John Clark, where he challenged Stewart Reagan over SFA inaction on this matter. When asked if he knew information had been wilfully been withheld and the action he would take against a member club – The Rangers – what he would do his answer was a staggering NOTHING.
    Dear Lord, how far are we willing to allow our game to be rigged? We now know it has been for at least 20 years – without Celtic publicly challenging the SFA?
    I know you will tell me the Club will no doubt note my comments and consider them but I’m afraid I’m out. There will be more and more pieces of empty plastics green or white seats at the stadium in the seasons ahead. I’m now so disillusioned with the way we have been treated by our Board – custodians of the club – that I think I will never attend another match at Celtic Park. That, for me, is a matter of terrible sadness given the many wonderful times I have had watching Celtic play these past 50+ years.
    Best regards, Jim
    Sent from my iPad
    This e-mail, and any attachment, is confidential. If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system, do not use or disclose the information in any way, and notify me immediately. The contents of this message may contain personal views which are not the views of Celtic Football Club, unless specifically stated.
    This email message has been validated and archived by Mimecast Managed Email Security and is free from all known viruses.
    Celtic F.C. Limited is a subsidiary of Celtic Plc. Registered Office: Celtic Park, Glasgow G40 3RE. Registered Number 223604 Scotland.


  29. HomunculusMarch 26, 2016 at 11:06 ————————– 
    EASYJAMBO MARCH 26, 2016 at 10:58
    ================================
    I wasn’t suggesting it was a “legal decision”, I was responding to what had been posted.
    They are three High Court judges and I would suggest that would make them at the least the equal of a “half-decent advocate”. They have ruled on TRFC’s appeal and found against them.
    ==========================
    That’s fair comment.

    I suspect that the decision will have come from the judges interpretation of the then SPL rules and whether or not they were entitled to ask the newco to meet the footballing liabilities (creditors and fines) of the oldco.  The newco accepted the creditors element as part of the 5-way agreement, so it was always likely that liability for the fines would follow the same course.

    The strongest argument against paying the fine would be to separate the old club and new club, but that may have been a step too far for TRFC to take. Hence their arguments were based more on documentation and actions taken by the SPFL in the interim.  


  30. From the Daily Beano today
    Nimmo Smith’s commission, established by the SPL after the financial collapse of Rangers four years ago, found them guilty of a failure to declare EBT side letters during the reign of Sir David Murray.
    However, Nimmo Smith also ruled Rangers gained no sporting advantage from the contentious tax avoidance scheme and he did not strip any titles won during the decade in question from 2000.
    ——————————————————————————-
    Side letters not declared and no sporting advantage. Hard to believe how blatant cheating was accepted.  There must be one journalist who has no allegience to the Govan club, past and present who could ask about the side letters.  Things like were the players with these letters registered correctly at the SFA?  How difficult is this to do?  It is easy to do if you want to.   All things concerning the Govan club IMO have  to be reported correctly would have to be addressed outside my country.  How sad is that?


  31. I appreciate it would create some work for BP and the team but would the quickest way to get the message out there about Res 12 and everything else would be a Facebook page. A good posting could go viral quite quickly and reach a Worldwide audience within 24 hrs if the post is shared. Some could lose a few FB friends if they liked it, but hey maybe they shouldn’t have these friends.
    I commented on a new Rangers fans FB post the other day which basically referred to Celtic fans as soap dodgers and Hibs fans as trophy dodgers. When I asked what about the old Rangers being tax, contract and debt dodgers and the new rangers people being dodgey b’s the response I got from one new Rangers fan I found hilarious. It was abusive lol


  32. The suggestion that handouts be distributed at matches has been mooted on a few occasions and, while the logistics of doing it has still to be clarified, can post here an example that I feel may be appropriate. The text is up for discussion so what I have produced is for example only.


  33. Will payment of this fine mean that no titles can be stripped? Is that the “official” penalty now for a decade of improperly registered players, about a pound per player per game?……Seems like a bargain tae me. Lets get some make-up artists onto Ronaldo and Messi and play them in the semi-final.  We can let the SFA know after the game it wasn’t really Griffiths and Mulgrew, and give them their 2 quid.


  34. The previous club has not being liquidated, it is being liquidated. However it still exists.

    It is not “suffering” liquidation, it is going through the liquidation process. “Suffering” makes it sound like a punishment, rather than a simple consequence of failing to obtain a CVA after having placing itself into administration being unable to pay tens of millions in debt.


  35. I can’t imagine for a moment that anyone at Ibrox or Hampden would want to see an appeal on the £250k fine going anywhere near the Court of Arbitration for Sport.  Imagine independent people – not from Scotland – looking into LNS commission, secret 5 way agreements, imperfect registrations,  punishment fitting the crime etc. etc.

    No best leave it at that, too big a can of worms will be their thinking.


  36. HomunculusMarch 26, 2016 at 12:51
    ‘..The previous club has not being liquidated, it is being liquidated. However it still exists.’
    ______
    And, of course, that fact means that the new team cannot , except by flat denial of  Truth , be the Rangers of old.
    Which is, of course, why I would be intellectually satisfied if, no matter how much I would like to see DK’s mob lose a few bob, they made the legal argument that  as not being in existence to incur the debt, they are not legally obliged to meet it: the corollary being, of course, that they would have to renounce the spurious claim claim to even the ‘legitimate’ titles and honours of the old Rangers.
    Of course, I accept that if CG thought ( correctly, in the event) that by signing acceptance of another club’s debt, he could buy the integrity of the Football Authorities and get his own way regardless of truth and fair dealing , legal minds might hold his successors to that acceptance. But he lost his legal expenses claim presumably because he was not covered as acing as a director of the new club. I think it would be entirely possible for the new club also to renounce his action in signing acceptance of the ‘fine’, and win in a proper court of law.
    No point in wanting fair-mindedness in one direction only. That would make me as bad as the Football Authorities.


  37. Yes they are all between a rock and a hard place.  It brings into sharp relief the continuity argument.  Would they risk laying this all out to bare?


  38. JIMMCIMARCH 26, 2016 at 11:45   
          “I can’t make up my mind whether to be happy or not with their response to meet PL to discuss; this simply by me being now cynical enough to believe that the four dates offered to me all happened to be after the alleged “time-out” period for any appeal by then having passed.”   
       ————————————————————————————-
       Jim, (Or anybody) Do you know when the shut off date is? I understand the end of March+5 years, but is there a later shut off for the 2nd stage of the license application of June+ 5 years?.  It is the 2nd stage that is in dispute. 
       Aside from that, I don’t imagine you wish to be a can kicked down the road. Stand tall mate in what may be unfamiliar territory for you.    Although I think PL will be more concerned about putting his own views across. remember it is his job to listen to yours. Go armed with the facts and questions written down if need be, and I can do no better than advise you to follow JC’s excellent Q to SR. 
        “Do you believe Rangers (I.L.) had overdue payables as of May 2011?”
    p.s. Don’t punch him !     21
        


  39. CO, I think it is 31 March.  This is when the licences are issued.  The 30 June deadline is like a safety valve so that if anything material happens after the licence issue and before the competitions begin then it has to be reported to UEFA.  Which is what happened with Rangers.  The Tax man issued his demand 20 May (I think) they had 30 days to appeal.  They didn’t.  So by about 20 June they were in default and it should have been dealt with by Rangers, SFA and UEFA.  Of course it wasn’t.

    But that is why I think the issue of the licence 31 March would be the relevant day. 5 years to 31 March.  I think!

    Happy to be corrected. 


  40. JIMMCI
    MARCH 26, 2016 at 11:45 25 0 Rate This
    Hi Jimmci – I too requested action on Res.12 but did not receive an invitation for an audience with the man who we are told runs Scottish Football – so can i suggest that if you feel in any way intimidated to attend that you ask J.C. to accompany you and you could make a joint approach in the matter.
                   I don’t think Mr Lawell will meet you alone so it’s only fair that you too have assistance.I know this is putting Mr Clark to a bit of inconvenience but he is our most successful warrior to date and I believe he enjoys the occasional jaunt to the big city.
                  Maybe Celtic would stand the pair of you a lunch?


  41. Just a mention for Hugh Macdonald’s article in the National today discussing Rangers and why the death issue is so important.

    he makes a number of good points.  To be clear he sets out by saying that he doesn’t actually answer the question, rather, he points out the polarity of the positions taken and the populace involved, good and bad, in seeking the answer.

    if I was to make one criticism it would be in the playing down of the debt (mentioned once and as a throwaway £20m) and the improper registration issues, both fundamental tenets of the No arguement.  


  42. JIMBOMARCH 26, 2016 at 14:59
    CO, I think it is 31 March. 
        ——————————————
       That is kind of in line with how I read it, but was just seeking some sort of clarification so that I know the exact date on which to sink into a deep depression and become seriously p*ssed off. 
       In the words of the late Turnbull Hutton. “It’s not football as I know it. What kind of game are we running here?”
       FREE THE RESOLUTION 12 !


  43. GerryBhoy

    Beat me to it. I think Jimmci should ask JC to accompany him. A first hand account of the Edinburgh conversation would preclude any accusation of hearsay.

    An interesting sidenote; given the opportunity to speak to a club CEO (and this goes for all clubs here), I would seek to ask three questions;

    1. Is it contrary to shareholders’ interests to pursue SFA malfeasance (such as issuing licences inappropriately)?

    2. If so why, and if not why no pursuit?

    3. Why did you support TRFC being shoe-horned into Scottish Football in Division 1?


  44. CO,  BRTH gave some good explanations, corrections and updates on RES.12 this morning on CQN.  From page 17 at 8.56 am.  (on the latest lead article).

    He mentioned that they have sent of their stuff via a solicitors firm to UEFA.  He seems to be as puzzled as the rest of us why the Club are not doing it themselves.  He has heard speculation but as you would expect he is not prepared to divulge it. 

    I fear RED.12 might have hit a brick wall, I hope not but I’m not hopeful that UEFA will start an investigation at fans, even shareholders, request.  We live in hope.

    A few posts ago I wondered if they had a plan B.  A poster on jj site has suggested he has it on good authority that they have.  Apparently they are very wealthy and would take SFA & CFC to court.  Sounds outrageous but hey ho.

    Doesn’t really chime with Auldheid’s comments recently.  More to do with getting widespread media attention in England.  Might just work, not that there is too much interest in our football up here, but everybody likes a good old story about corruption.  Except in the Scottish media of course. But then again the rumours about some of our hacks, deary me! Living in fear of exposure.


  45. Anyone remember Mark Daly’s excellent documentary from 2011. In it he listed the recipients of EBT’s including David Murray, Graeme Souness (!) etc, etc but he stated that about 15 recipients could not be named/identified.

    I’ve always wondered about the identity of these tax dodgers and why they were essentially protected.

    Has anyone ever enquired of whether Dave King or Paul Murray were extended such benefits. I’m sure some employees, past or present, at the SFA would know the answer to that one! But maybe that’s why certain recipients are protected ……

    Wouldn’t it be awkward if Paul or Dave received large wedges via EBT …..


  46. Jimbo

    I do hope that interest can achieved in the UK press but I have been totally blanked in my attempts. Not even a “I’m sorry but…”. Nothing, and that includes Alex Thomson. I have even had posts on the Guardian sports threads removed. No bad language, no slagging off anyone but removed just the same. The irony was that one of the threads was an article about German football supports protesting injustices at their stadium.


  47. With all the current talk of some supporters withdrawing their guaranteed financial support via season books, I hope all clubs have done their homework on this.
    Personally I withdrew this financial backing in 2011, and I have only been to 2 matches in the period since. The decision was not taken lightly and I had been in possession of a season book continually from 1989, when the in-situ guardians of the club I support did not do much to encourage season book’s for 1 reason or another. 
    At this juncture I simply cannot foresee me returning. Incidentally, my financial support for the SMSM and sky broadcasting have been curtailed also and I do not miss any of it. I think it is harder to entice people back than it is to keep the supporters/ customers you have. Peter Lawwell et al take note! 


  48. Reiver, here is Aulheid’s post:
    ============================
    AuldheidMarch 22, 2016 at 12:52 71 0 i Rate This 
    Folks I see a couple of comments about contacting supporter associations and the English media. It is being or has been done, There is a professional organisation based in England with a sound reputation for justice on tax matters and some media influence who have been following the story with interest. Seeds have been planted. No need to over water them.  
    =============================

    So it’s about getting the press interested through an influential intermediary.  Probably a stronger chance than a lone voice like your good self. Don’t want to discourage you though! You keep doing as you see fit.


  49. Just spat out my early evening glass of vino as I heard Graham Spiers on OTB extra say that sports journalists do a great job and aren’t just the watch dogs of democracy and right or wrong!
    Where do you start with that one??


  50. JIMBOMARCH 26, 2016 at 16:38 
    CO,  BRTH gave some good explanations, corrections and updates on RES.12 this morning on CQN.  From page 17 at 8.56 am.  (on the latest lead article).
       ——————————————————————————————-
      Cheers Jimbo. 
         Just had a wee read, and it seems clear that nothing is clear, about why CFC are not promoting this issue to UEFA. It may be another Q for Jimmci, as BP suggests. 
       CFC must know how feeble this is making them look,……or in some way complicit.  Not a lot else makes sense.
      With an army of lawyers at their disposal, it beggars belief that they cannot come up with a statement that does not breech any confidentiality,(or whatever) requirements, but at the same time provide comfort to the fans.
       Trying so hard to keep the faith mate, but faith was never a gift I was blessed with.  Bad results, team selection, performance, tactics or personnel, even dodgy decisions I can live with, but denying what is visible isn’t my forte……..Give us a feckin sign FFS! 11


  51. mungoboyMarch 26, 2016 at 19:03
    ‘… I heard Graham Spiers on OTB extra say that sports journalists do a great job and aren’t just the watch dogs of democracy and right or wrong!’
    __________
    Well, I mentioned the other day Macintyre’s assertion that Traynor openly agreed that  he had given the knighted Sporting cheat an easy ride, so as not to be cut off from  ‘journalistic exclusives.’ So, that’s one sports journalist who, self-confessedly, is by no means doing anything like a ‘great job’ as a journalist.
    Yesterday, in the ‘Scotsman’, Stephen Halliday came away with this:
    ” Uefa will consider plans by so-called ‘major’ clubs to revamp the Champions League, leaving the Scottish champions facing ten games to reach a new-style group stage.'”
    No chapter and verse. No mention of when exactly it was that  the UEFA Club Competitions Committee announced that such a topic was on the agenda for any of their meetings.
    Instead, what he wrote was just a rehash of reports about the Sillitano meeting with some EPL club people, which we all read at the time, with a yawn.
    No news, no hard information about UEFA’s supposed intentions: just a few more quid-per-column-inch for regurgitated material that some other guy had already been paid for.
    “Great journalistic” job?
    Or just a nice little earner  with minimal journalistic effort?
    Jacko himself will be kicking himself for missing the chance to recycle the same stale material for a few bob.
    Or, perhaps, there’s a fraternal agreement about whose turn it is screw their various newspapers’ proprietors, with minimal effort?
    I am not man of the world enough even to attempt to fathom the turgid depths to which we have to descend in order to accept Speirs’ assessment that ‘sports journalists’ [ and I refer only to the Scotland scene] do a ‘a great job’
    But my gut feeling is that in those depths, doing a ‘great job’  has nothing to do with ‘truth’.
    But let me not to be too hasty.
    Halliday might confound me by providing a copy of the agenda for the next ( or whenever)meeting of the UEFA Club Competitions Committee .
    And, as we all accept, pigs might fly.


  52. Urgent:my post of 23.51: NOT Stephen Halliday, EUAN ROBERTSON!
    I had to look in my ‘sent’ box at how emails to Scotsman people had to be addressed, and the first ‘sent’ email to the Scotsman had been to Halliday. I had that name in my mind as I emailed  Robertson. (and it was him I emailed!)
    My apologies to Halliday.


  53. Any Jambos on here know what’s going on here ? Looks like some sort of litigation against what looks like an Insurance company ?


  54. Also found this whilst browsing . Is this the judicial review of Kings fit and proper status ? 


  55. Jimbo March 26, 2016 at 17:25

    My problem is that I was brought up to believe that “It is the squeaky wheel that gets the grease” and have not had that disproved since.
    I fully respect the work the Res12 guys have done but believe that after years of polite negotiation it is time to learn and react. The current training in dealing with problem staff and customers in business is to deflect. To turn questions back on them to have them spend time doing what they asked of you. The situation defuses and the complainers, in most cases, get fed up and go away. Now I know the the Res12 guys have not gone away and are still working hard on this but, personally, I think they need to change tack on this. Kid gloves off and start making things uncomfortable. I don’t think they realise the strength they have. More fans know the term “Resolution 12” than know what it is about but those that only know the name still have respect for it. This puts the res12 group in a strong position to be a rallying point in the same way that GASL was when calling for boycotting ST purchase. Now I am not party to the detail of their discussions with Celtics but if they haven’t made CFC of their strong position then they are missing a trick. Let us be clear on this, time IS running out. Sure, there may still be possibilities for action later but what will be achieved will be much diluted by waiting.
    Your point Jimbo was regarding the media and groups down south but that is very similar, though for different reasons, to what I have just said. Take one example, Alex Thomson. Do you really think that our issue is more important than what he has been covering of late? The crisis in Syria or the refugee camps in northern France? We are on the back burner for them if on the burner at all. Constant reminding may just be more effective.
    Let me repeat the respect I have for the Res 12 group but I think that after three years the message is clear. They are being fobbed off. For me the letters and phone calls will continue without concern for stepping on toes.

    https://www.change.org/p/scottish-football-association-return-integrity-to-football-administration-in-scotland-94421b40-2d6b-4d4b-9cff-912c9849478f

    https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B_X7aVh2s6qcS1hhamJ0czlkdVU


  56. bordersdonMarch 25, 2016 at 12:53
    “Is there anybody out there today???”
    I happened by but didn’t have anything to say for myself. However you did get me thinking.
    What would justice look like?
    To answer that question I think you’d need to weigh up the cost against the reparation.
    I’d like to consider the costs one by one. Rather than write an enormous post I’ll expand on each of them one at a time.
    I’d summarise the issues that give rise to costs as follows:
    Lord Nimmo Smith enuiry
    Facilitation of the ‘New’ Rangers
    Uefa Licensing in 2011.
    What the ‘Rangers saga’ tells us about other things.
    Scapaflow’s (?) headline post provides a more extensive list but I’ll try and summarise in fewer categories to keep it snappy.
    Of course this is a ‘Rangers saga’. In different times or circumstances it might have been a ‘Celtic saga’ or a ‘Dundee United saga’. We are where we are however and I think we need to learn the lessons if any good is to come of all this.
    Football clubs did not set out to be global media brands when they were set up a hundred or so years ago. Most had humble origins as works teams and area clubs and offered amenity to ordinary folk. These organisations never geared themselves for the possibility of the prominence they currently enjoy; they were the preserves of the working class, a working class that lived through two World Wars and which in their communal sport saw embodied their ethos and aspirations.
    Now this ethos and these aspirations appear to be being eroded. The colonisation of what are ostensibly social activities by corporate interests may be venturing onto political considerations; however I think it is not unreasonable to draw a line beyond which corporate considerations would not encroach.
    It may be that the emergence of this particular ‘fifth estate’ will act to balance corporate and sporting interests. If, as has been suggested, a ‘Wiki’ repository of our combined understanding were established then it would provide the footballing community with a trove of precedent that would allow them to navigate future turbulence.
    Lord Nimmo Smith enquiry
    LNS was set up to rule on mis-registration issues concerning a large number of players over an extensive period of time. Despite finding that registration rules had been breached it then went on to say that this did not make said players ineligible to play. It may be that a construence of the wording of the pertinent regulation might indeed yield this conclusion but in doing so it discards the premise of natural justice. 
    The £250,000 fine levied (but never paid and finally arrested) seemed out of all proportion with the punishments suffered by other clubs for not dissimilar but unquestionably more minor, offences. In these circumstances the deterrent effect of the governing rules appears to have been eroded in the face of; well what exactly?
    The understandable wish not to re-write history. The urge to ensure that their record books would remain pristine and trusted?
    Whatever the motivations the outcome felt highly unsatisfactory. I’m not sure what punishment was equitable for such rule breaches but that arrived at appeared paltry.
    The unique nature of the enquiry means that there is no precedent for how you might re-examine its findings. There is no rule for this. What must be employed is common sense with due regard to the sporting environment within which decisions are being framed. Who will deploy that common sense, if indeed anyone, remains to be seen. However I cannot see how a ‘no sporting advantage’ admonishment can be applied to a rule breach.


  57. Eddiegoldtop March 27, 2016 at 10:21
    “Insure the box” is a car insurance company that uses a device within your car to track your driving style and the premium is set accordingly.

    I don’t think that Hearts supply too many company cars these days, so it may be a legacy claim from the previous regime.
    ================================
    Eddiegoldtop March 27, 2016 at 10:31

    I seem to recall that the date for the FPP hearing was set as 28 April some time ago, so I’d expect that your reading of the Court Roll is correct. 


  58. @Easy Jambo and EddieGoldtop Regarding Court Rolls for 8th April.

    Tweeted by James Doleman on the 22nd March;

    Mar 22 @BelfastBhoyBobo Mike Ashley seeking judicial review over SFA decision to give Dave King “fit and proper status”

     


  59. I’ve just read Phil Mac’s latest piece on Resolution 12 and my heart sank . Celtic , by their inaction are now complicit .
                  I have made my mind up that when my Season Book renewal comes in I’m going to refuse it . I do so with a heavy heart because I’m going to miss it so much . I was born in Parkhead and have came back to the area to live . I love the Match Day experience . Walking to the ground , meeting up with old pals, listening to the patter . The pre- match build up , teams announced – the arguments , the analysis and ,of course, the beautiful game itself . Sitting in my house while there is a game on at Celtic Park will be torture for me .
                               Cutting off my nose to spite my face ? Well maybe , but I can console myself that I’ve only got one face . How many involved in this sorry saga can say the same ?


  60. Paradisebhoy.

    No need to miss the experience just pay by the game. The ST money being held back will be just as effective.


  61. Happy Easter to one and all.  Nothing much to say football wise.  Had a great afternoon in my local, a band who played loads of Beatles songs but were not a tribute band.  They were very good. 

    Last episode of ‘Night Manager’ tonight.  Looking forward to it.

    Cheers.


  62. Very quiet tonight,everyone must be on holiday. So here goes.
    We now know the old club from ibrox has been found guilty of wrongdoing by improper registration of players and deliberately withholding information from the SFA.The result of which is the new club has to pay a £250k fine, and they agreed to do so.
    My question is this,or questions rather.
    1. How long do the new club have to settle fine?
    2. Has there been a statement from the SFA as such as to say “Yes the old club from ibrox did deliberately withhold information from us and their player registrations were improper and the new ibrox entity will pay the fine.And they have so many days to pay the fine”
    (as i must have missed it)
    3.Any statement from the SPFL
    4. Any statement from the SMSM condeming the old club for their actions over years of deliberately withholding information.
    5.Any statement from Mr king as he was on the old board that deliberately withheld information.
    (maybe even a sorry)


  63. To late to edit
    6. Any statement from David Murray about his club he ran being found guilty?


  64. Cluster OneMarch 27, 2016 at 20:58
    ‘..6. Any statement from David Murray about his club he ran being found guilty?’
    ______
    Oh, stop it, Cluster One, my sides are aching!02
    When thinking of sports cheats like a certain titled former owner of a football club, I tend not to see him as having anything but scorn for the Board of Arsenal ( kind of sister-club?) which was in control of that club in 1999:
    “..In 1999, Arsenal beat Sheffield United in an FA Cup match thanks to a goal scored when an opposing player was injured, and some of the Arsenal players were unaware of this. It was perfectly legal but it looked and felt rather unsporting. So Arsenal offered a replay and were accepted.” [from Simon Barnes,December 2014, at http://www.thecricketmonthly.com/story/805287/more-moral-than-thou%5D
    The psychology and mental health of those who sportsmen and women who can get satisfaction by winning ‘glory’ by cheating in a sporting contest must be dangerously close to abnormal.
    Those who can orchestrate mass cheating by a whole club over many years must, I think, be over the line into a form of madness.
    Such types do not acknowledge their cheating, and certainly do not apologise for it.


  65. Such types do not acknowledge their cheating, and certainly do not apologise for it.
    And such types of SMSM journalists seem to not acknowledge the cheating and certainly don’t look to seek any apologise from anyone for that cheating05


  66. I watched the final episode of ‘The Night Manager’.
    Very grippingly entertaining. And, I think, believable, except  in one respect: there was no Cabinet ( or other, lower ranking) Minister  involved.’Baddies’ in the UK Civil Service ( if, God forbid,  there be any such creatures) really have to have a government minister or two on their side if they are to get away with any significant scam.
    But that’s by-the-by.
    I had fun, as I watched the brilliant performance of Hugh Laurie as Roper(could hardly believe he had been Lt George in ‘Blackadder goes forth’) , in casting him variously as, say, the CEO of a national football association or of a football league, or as purveyor of ‘news’, in a plot to destroy the concept of football integrity.
    I feel a mini-series coming on!02


  67. Sometimes I think I have examined, read and heard everything about Scottish football governance and practices from every angle.  Then you get a post from John Clark to give you more food for thought.

    The psychosis of the actors in this drama.

    Now I’m no saint.  I have made mistakes & sinned in my life.  As far as I know I recognise this and regretted it.  I heard in King of Kings yesterday ‘judge not or be judged’  so I’m on dangerous territory here.

    But how do Regan, Doncaster, Ogilvie, Bryson, SDM et al sleep at night?  With a good conscience?  It is one thing to do wrong at a moment in time maybe even thinking you were doing ‘good’.  In retrospect however when a lot of people point out your mistakes en masse would it not give you pause for thought?  Can all these people be wrong?  Am I just misunderstood?  Could I be in the wrong?

    Surely I wont have to admit I was in error and apologise?

    And yet that is where we are.  Of course an independent and justice led mentality from the media would help.  The scepticism of social media doesn’t help, we are all ‘bampots’ apparently.

    It says a lot about the players in this cabal.  When Regan gets to Heaven’s gates and St. Peter asks what about your sins regarding the SFA 2011 onwards?’

    His reply might be ‘nothing’.


  68. And another thing,  when everyone in the press is talking about this £250k fine (punishment 21 ) what about the £140k + costs?  Why does no one mention that?  Do Rangers* not get penalties?. Have a look at which team got the most. Why is that?


  69. The Court of Session case on Thuesday 28th April, between Mash Holdings Ltd and the SFA Into considering Mr KING a fit and proper chairman of RIFC.
    Now will Mash Holdings Ltd simply point to the latest guilty verdict and fine of £250,000, with costs of £150,000 towards the old club (but the new club will pay) The old club has been found guilty of wrongdoing by improper registration of players and deliberately withholding information from the SFA.
    1. Mr king was on that board that has been found guilty
    2. Will The SFA have to make a case that Mr king who was on the old board knew nothing of the improper registration of players and deliberately withholding information. And if the (A BIG IF ) SFA can prove Mr king knew nothing? 
    3. Will the SFA then be pointing the finger of blame to Mr D Murray as the main person who was in charge of the club which has been found GUILTY of wrongdoing by improper registration of players and deliberately withholding information, and fined £250,000,
    4.Will the SFA then seek to ban Mr D Murray and expell him for life from “any participation in Association Football in Scotland.”
    The way they expelled Mr Whyte http://www.itv.com/news/2012-04-24/rangers-owner-banned-from-scottish-football-for-life/
    5.If the SFA don’t then release a statement to ban Mr D Murray.After the club he ran was found guilty, Has Mr Whyte then got a case to say, well you can’t ban me or fine me £200,000.And if(ANOTHER BIG IF ) SEVCO 5088 get the assets back in the up and coming court case? I’M BACK.

    hope the post is not to long and you get my points or am i away off left field 


  70. Just a wee thought /question.

    The SFA Tribunal of the three law lords has upheld the LNS punishment re the then SPL rules on players registration etc.

    However despite the ‘Bryson’ evidence I can’t recall if the same or similar principles apply to the registration of players for SFA competitions, i.e the Scottish Cup, playing for the national team and the conditions for gaining euro licenses and representing the country in euro competitions.

    Are there grounds for the SFA , if they so desired, to go after T’Rangers for the sins of Rangers in relation to non SPFL/SPL matters.?


  71. WOTTPIMARCH 28, 2016 at 10:58 Are there grounds for the SFA , if they so desired, to go after T’Rangers for the sins of Rangers in relation to non SPFL/SPL matters.?
    ===============================

    In my view there is a greater likelihood of a herd of pink elephants landing on the Hampden pitch than there is of the SFA going after Rangers for anything. It seems clear they believe there is no need for any further action and everyone should move on. There were less problems for the SFA to deal with when old Rangers won the league more often than not. They will be delighted if new Rangers can achieve the same sooner rather than later. In short their world will be at one, and the fact they waved convicted tax cheat Dave King through the door shows they couldn’t care less how it is achieved, or the type of person who is behind it. 


  72. CASTOFTHOUSANDSMARCH 27, 2016 at 12:27
    “I’d like to consider the costs one by one.”
    —————————–
    Facilitation of the ‘new’ Rangers
    Within an association of football clubs, the governing body will naturally be inclined to facilitate its membership. However, being within the orbit of a sporting organisation will likely place more emphasis on rules and standards of conduct than many other such undertakings. The governing body will necessary both facilitate and invigilate its member clubs. To do this efficiently it needs to adopt well recognised parameters.
    When RFC fell into administration and then liquidation there was an understandable wish on the behalf of the authorities to salvage one of its marquee brands. Attempts to reinstall the ‘new’ Rangers in the Premier league and the old Scottish First division were rejected by member clubs. This was the working through of processes within these organisations and in some ways there is nothing awry in the employment of such a process. What is at issue is whether such lengths would have been gone to for every other club within the association?
    Transfers of licences, player registrations, formulation of novel membership categories and rule changes that might have been enacted in the light of future events all gave rise to a suspicion that the facilitation offered by the governing bodies went beyond that which most clubs might have been expected to be in receipt of. 
    As a marquee brand it is obvious why the authorities might go to such great lengths but is another reason their own guilt in bringing about a set of circumstances that any decent governing body might act to fend off? The appearance of Campbell Ogilvie as Head of the SFA and also ex-company secretary to Rangers during the years when they became enmeshed in risky remuneration schemes, is an anomally that cannot be easily overlooked. I cannot call into question Mr. Ogilvie’s integrity as I have no direct evidence that it should be impugned. However the circumstantial evidence suggests the governing bodies may have lost their sense of direction and may have been steering by expediency rather than statute.
    If a governing body foregoes its own authority then it must necessarily accept the consequences of its own dereliction. Just as on the pitch if a referee should fail to act evenhandedly in a game, the match could easily descend into chaos, then similarly the inability of the governing authority to appear judicious is a gross error.
    The precise level to which the governing authorities have failed to live up to their handsome remuneration is not clear. However the pattern of events point to an organisation that was ill prepared for a crisis. It may be that any planning that went into predicting such an event was exhausted on its mitigation leaving nothing for the proponents of integrity.
    The loss here is largely the reputation of the governing body. In the end the supporters and the member clubs under their duress ensured that some form of equanimity was employed. The supporters were pitched against the governing authorities of the sport they themselves supported: Surely not a situation that can be sustained for any length of time.
    It may be that a changing in the guard will cause these historical anomalies to be addressed and worked through. Individuals who fell short of the high standards they would have expected of themselves may have been quietly shuffled sideways in a manner not too deleterious to their reputations. As a football fan I can only hope that this is so but for the supporters who maintain those in their positions of authority, I suspect they deserve a little more transparency concerning how their sport is being run.


  73. upthehoops March 28, 2016 at 11:57
    In my view there is a greater likelihood of a herd of pink elephants landing on the Hampden pitch than there is of the SFA going after Rangers for anything.

    Tickets for the 17th maybe? 08 

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