THE SELF INTEREST RATES ARE GOING UP
Gers not the only ones in Scottish football making decisions on what’s the best scenario for their club
WERE Rangers acting in self-interest by refusing to push for the winter break to be brought forward?
You bet your life they were and why shouldn’t they?
Any wailing and gnashing of teeth over their unwillingness to add their voice to the chorus of 10 other top-flight clubs is a tad hypocritical.
Let’s go back to April 2020 for a reminder – the vote to call the 2019-20 season early. The day sporting integrity in Scottish football was tossed in the bin.
Dundee’s missing email. The one sent on a Friday at 4.30pm voting against the proposal to end the Championship, League One and League Two as they stood and would have kiboshed it because Partick Thistle and Inverness also voted against it.
The one that mysteriously didn’t reach the SPFL offices. And rather than simply re-send it, Dundee changed their mind a couple of days later.
That decision not only consigned Partick Thistle and Stranraer to relegation when an escape was entirely possible – the Jags were two points behind Queen of the South with a game in hand – but it also gave the SPFL board the power to end the Premiership.
If Rangers had won their game in hand they’d have been 10 points behind with eight games left – two of them Old Firm clashes. Celtic still would have won the league in all probability but we’ll never know.
Hearts, four behind Hamilton with eight games to play, were jettisoned without a second thought, particularly from the four above them who could have been caught. So let’s not get too hung up on self-interest.
The decision to end the league season immediately was driven by panic-stricken clubs wanting to get their hands on payments from the SPFL for their finishing positions.
Cash they claimed was needed to keep the lights on at most of them, even if the consequences for a few were dire. So they acted in selfinterest. The same self-interest Rangers now show.
Look, there are men in the Ibrox boardroom that would cause a fight in an empty stadium but in this case they’ve got a point. With the break brought forward, and football now possibly restarting earlier than originally scheduled, they would lose Nigerian duo Joe
Aribo and Leon Balogun – and possibly Calvin Bassey – for longer than first thought due to their participation in the Africa Cup of Nations.
Is it in their interest for that to happen? Not a chance.
Would it have helped them to play Celtic in front of 500 rather than 60,000 home fans at Parkhead on January 2? Of course it would.
But let’s flip that. Celtic wanted that game put back until full houses are reinstated to give them a better chance of winning it. They also wanted to have top men like Jota, James Forrest, David Turnbull and Kyogo fully fit for that one, so having January 2 postponed was in their best interests.
It’s why Celtic weren’t siding with Covid-ravaged St Mirren to have last night’s Premiership clash in Paisley cancelled, yet they want the league shut down from Boxing Day.
Rangers looked at a fixture list that showed they had to go Aberdeen and Parkhead before the scheduled winter break.
It most certainly would have suited them to play those tricky away games with almost no fans. And Holyrood’s decision to limit crowds to 500 – a figure that looks to have been plucked out of thin air – is deserving of scrutiny.
John Swinney’s comments on the Premier Sports Cup Final being a potential superspreader are nonsensical.
This was a sporting event held in the open air with every spectator having to show proof of negative lateral flow test and double vaccination before gaining entry. Same thing at Ibrox a day earlier.
But now, and after matches went ahead last night (did Omicron take the night off?), the period after Boxing Day has been deemed an appropriate time from which to operate the winter shutdown.
The decision will have farreaching consequences for clubs who will lose huge amounts of income.
But most of them wanted to shut down until they can get far more fans through the gates.
That’s self-interest and that’s OK. Just as it’s OK for Rangers to put their self-interest first.
Then again, maybe they’ve emailed the SPFL telling them they are in favour of a shutdown and it didn’t arrive.
Nah, that’s too ridiculous for words.
Maybe Rangers emailed SPFL telling them they are in favour of a shutdown and it didn’t arrive