WATCH OUT!
Peat worried by power grab and says SFA just needs people that can be trusted at top of the tree
FORMER SFA president George Peat last night warned Scottish football to be wary of a power grab led by the country’s top clubs. As exclusively revealed by
Sportsmail yesterday, a secret document has been drawn up proposing a radical revamp of the SFA by 2020-21.
The plans under discussion include streamlining or even sidelining the national body altogether, with the patience of clubs stretched to breaking point following the turmoil that culminated in the recent departure of Hampden chief executive Stewart Regan.
Yet, citing the broken promises made when the SPL broke away from the rest of the Scottish Football League in 1998, Peat (below) fears a fresh club-led Scottish football revolution in 2018 would be similarly fuelled by damaging self-interest. Peat told Sportsmail: ‘I would be very wary of any power grab. Call it what you want, but the big boys will be looking for most of the benefits. Without a doubt, everything would be done for their benefit. ‘When the SPL broke away, the promise back then was they would distribute money further down the scale. They said the whole of Scottish football would benefit and that the game would be more competitive as a result. ‘I said at the time that would never happen and sure enough they kept all the money for themselves. It was just a case of people looking after themselves.
‘There’s a good argument against just having one organisation running Scottish football. That one organisation would be all for the big clubs.
‘You have to remember, it’s not just the Scottish Premiership clubs that the SFA looks after. They are actually a minority in the total of the SFA membership.
‘The SFA looks after 90-odd clubs — the juniors, the amateurs, the youths, the schools — not just the 42 league clubs. And out of those 42 league clubs, most already think that it’s only the big 12 that matter.’
Peat was left aghast at the SFA’s botched, protracted attempt to land Michael O’Neill from Northern Ireland and its failed approach for Walter Smith before Alex McLeish was finally unveiled last week as Gordon Strachan’s successor.
The man who stepped down as president in 2011 remains convinced the current SFA structure is fine but he concedes the much-criticised individuals at the top of the troubled organisation, such as current president Alan McRae and vicepresident Rod Petrie, need to be replaced by more trusted figureheads.
‘In my opinion, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the SFA set-up the way it is,’ said Peat.
‘The criticism is of the individuals running the SFA. The individuals running the SFA need to have the respect of all the members. Otherwise, it will never work properly — and, right now, they don’t have that respect.
‘I felt the way the new manager situation was handled was embarrassing, to put it mildly.
‘You need people at the top who can be trusted and they are obviously not trusted. What should happen now? The clubs need to make their minds up (whether to call for their resignations).’
Peat also warned that scrapping the SFA altogether would have disastrous ramifications for the national team.
‘There’s been talk of doing away with the SFA but you can’t do away with the SFA or you won’t be able to compete in world football,’ he added.
‘A country’s Football Association is the member of FIFA. So there’s got to be a Scottish Football Association in existence to be recognised by FIFA. If you don’t have that, then Scotland couldn’t play in the European Championship or in the World Cup.’