CONTRASTING FORTUNES

THERE was a time when the names went together like car and crash.

Regan and Doncaster. It even sounded like a firm of funeral directors, which is somewhat ironic now one of them has been buried by his own ineptitude.

Killed stone dead by the gathering SFA crisis he did so much to create and which may yet lead to more bodies being carried out the front door.

If it brings about the demise of oafish president Alan McRae and his bungling sidekick Rod Petrie maybe Regan will have served some purpose after all.

What a double act this pair have become. Fighting to within an inch of their blazers to keep Regan in the job one week then making Walter Smith rush back into his retirement home the next.

But perhaps from all this mayhem they have unleashed, a new slick and streamlined body will emerge. One that is truly fit to govern.

But the fear is there will be others within the organisation – some solid, competent operators – who are made to pay the price for the failings of their superiors.

The threat of widescale job losses or redundancies cannot be ruled out because Regan has run the business into the ground.

And when he left the building he did so with what was left in the piggy bank stuffed into his pockets as a golden goodbye.

He’d have been as well leaving a note in his office drawer for the next guy to find along the lines of the infamous letter Labour left for the Tories after Gordon Brown’s government collapsed – “I’m afraid there is no money.”

With no sponsors in place for next season’s Scottish Cup or for the national team and no broadcast deal, Regan has left the cupboards completely bare.

Which is why it was truly incredible that, in his parting shot, he claimed to be leaving the SFA in a far better state than he had found it. In the statement confirming his departure there was a reference to the fine job Regan had done. “He leaves the association in good financial health, having recorded its highest ever profit in 2017” was how it was worded.

Which may very well be correct. But it’s also completely disingenuous given the gigantic s***storm Regan knows is lurking just around the corner.

In contrast, along the corridor, Neil Doncaster is now 18 months away from an unlikely testimonial and the numbers over which he’s now presiding as he approaches a 10th year in office make for a great deal better reading than anything Regan had managed.

When the SPL and the SFL merged in 2013, Doncaster’s first target was to break through £20million – the amount