SFA should give Martindale green light at Livvy
WHEN it comes to granting a second chance to repenting sinners, the SFA have proven more obliging than most. The Professional Game Board overlooked Dave King’s tax convictions in South Africa — and their own standard protocols — to clear him as chairman of Rangers. When Malky Mackay needed an opportunity after those Cardiff City text messages, they offered him a gig as performance director. And when Declan Gallagher helped Scotland to their first major finals since France 1998, the governing body managed to overlook that unfortunate episode with a baseball bat in Blantyre. Now comes a hearing to rule on the fit-and-proper status of David Martindale as Livingston boss. And it might be the thorniest decision they’ve faced yet. In 2006, Martindale was jailed for six-and-a-half years when he was caught by an undercover police operation taking a hands-on role in one of Britain’s biggest-ever cocaine gangs. To some, he will always be the guy who drove around a council estate in a blacked-out Range Rover flogging drugs to the desperate. But in recent years he has sought to make amends for the crimes of the past. While on bail, he enrolled in a construction project management degree at Heriot-Watt University, emerging eight years later with a 2:1 with honours. He began helping out Livingston and, in the last five years, has emerged as a talented and influential coach. Listen, few crimes carry more social stigma than that of a convicted drug dealer. The SFA are entitled to seek assurances that Martindale really is a man they can trust to guide impressionable footballers at the helm of a Premiership club.
They’ll also want to know who, exactly, paid that crippling £141,215 proceeds-of-crime order issued by the Crown before last year’s deadline of December 23. But, when push comes to shove, the SFA either believe in the principle of rehabilitation or they don’t. They have overlooked serious transgressions from others in the past. And what fans crave most from a football governing body is consistency. If there is any consistency here, Martindale will be granted a green light to become the permanent manager of Livingston.