WE NEED TO END THE BLOODLUST
Conspiracy theories abound, trust between senior figures has broken down and clubs are mired in civil war. The game teeters on brink of financial disaster but the message is clear...
AQUESTION for the angry agitators who believe that yesterday’s ‘show of strength’ by 30.9 per cent of the SPFL membership must be only phase one of a swift and brutal revolution.
A query for those still demanding an immediate putsch of the league executive, its elected board — and, of course, the invisible ‘guiding hand’ pulling every string.
Have you lost your damned minds? Sorry, that’s rude. Tone matters. So let’s put this another way. Would you mind terribly if the intended purge was postponed for a few months?
Just until the various working parties can cobble together a plan to prevent Scottish football from dying on its increasingly threadbare backside. That would be super.
Sadly, in an environment so remote from reality that the average anti-vaxxing flat-earther would take flight before you could say: ‘David Icke makes some good points …’, the chances of a lasting peace rank alongside those of a 5G mast actually giving someone coronavirus. Without licking being involved.
For some of the game’s most fervent followers, indeed, news that Peter Lawwell made an impassioned speech at the SPFL’s virtual EGM was all they needed to hear. Oh aye, the mask slips…
Among the permanently peeved and perpetually piqued, the Celtic chief executive has provided another piece of proof for the conspiracy files. Almost enough for a full dossier, you might say.
The bloodlust is upon the angry masses. And it’s just exhausting.
The time has come, surely, for a pause. Everyone involved in this unedifying spectacle, please just retreat to your happy place — without breaking lockdown — and come back when you’re prepared to treat each other with respect.
It won’t be easy. For starters, SPFL chairman Murdoch MacLennan, a man who would probably take a jerrycan of petrol to a bonfire, has a cheek urging unity and calm. In time, few would be surprised if the temperamental MacLennan was quietly stood down from his position as the Scottish professional game’s unofficial head of state.
Nor would anyone be shocked if, at some point, Neil Doncaster simply walked away from his extremely well-rewarded role at such a dysfunctional company.
As for the voting structure, the composition of the board, the way clubs communicate with the centre… all of these things can be changed at any time, provided there’s enough support.
So why has there been this almighty rush? Did those demanding this ‘fully independent investigation’ really see it as a vehicle for lasting change, or merely a way of messing with the formula used to end the season?
Maybe they believed that inviting a QC to rake through text messages would fundamentally alter Premiership opposition to reconstruction.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, so urgent that it cannot wait until we’ve dealt with the extinction-level event pressing down upon the Scottish game.
Let’s remind ourselves, because it’s so easily forgotten, precisely why yesterday’s ballot of all 42 clubs took place.
The argument centres on a vote to decide how best to end this season. A season, remember, that cannot possibly be played to a finish.
Do you think the Chancellor of the Exchequer has extended the furlough scheme until October because he thinks half of the nation’s workforce deserve a wee break? Whatever confusion may be sown by politicians of various hues, the man writing the cheques has given the clearest indication yet of just how long lockdown will last.
In this context, the very notion of fulfilling the outstanding Scottish Premiership fixtures is utterly preposterous.
The campaign of 2019-20 is an ex-season. It is not resting. It has ceased to be. Expired. Shuffled from this mortal coil.
Every single club — well, almost — in Scotland accepts this to be the case. And it is no one’s fault. No one in football, anyway.
If everyone knows that it will have to be wrapped up based on standings, points-per-game or some other results-based formula likely to satisfy UEFA edicts on ‘sporting merit’, what’s the motivation for the scorched earth policy adopted by Rangers and Hearts, in particular? Okay, the Jambos don’t want to get relegated. But Rangers have been the prime movers in this attempt at boardroom bloodletting. What’s in it for them? Spare us this idea that they’re only interested in fair play and sporting integrity. Yeah, sure. It’s just that you were waiting until now — in the middle of an existential crisis — to speak up on behalf of the little guy being so cruelly pushed around by, erm, the Dunfermline chairman.
The various people put forward to represent the Ibrox outfit in public can’t even keep their story straight. One day it’s about bullying. Then they deny ever mentioning the B-word.
Quite clearly, this is less about improving governance than it is about settling old scores.
As for why Doncaster should be their prime target? Simple. Too close to Lawwell, obviously. Too willing to entertain ‘suggestions’ by the all-powerful Oz.
This would be the same Neil Doncaster, of course, who bent himself into all sorts of unnatural shapes in support of Rangers back in 2012.
Lobbying like a representative of big oil in a Commons tearoom packed with pliant MPs, he did his best to get the ‘newco’ club into the second tier — rather than the fourth — of the old Scottish Football League. Don’t you remember the anger among rival supporters when he predicted ‘Armageddon’ if the Ibrox side were to spend more than a single season out of the top flight?
But, of course, that doesn’t fit the narrative. Rangers were punished, remember. Sent to the fourth tier. SPL bad. SPFL worse.
All of which leaves us here. In a mess that defies any number of pithy attempts to find a humorous historical analogy.
Rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic? If only. As the HMS SPFL slips under the waves, some of this lot are busy stealing oars from the lifeboats — and using them as weapons to settle scores.
Never mind the poor souls already being plunged into the icy blackness without a paddle. Collateral damage. If the bloody infighting persuades the Scottish Government to ignore that desperate SOS sent just last week, so be it. The most important thing, it seems, is to ensure that the ‘other lot’ are thrown overboard first. If time can be found to hoist the captain from the yardarm, all the better.
Allegations of coercion have prompted accusations of defamation. Denial follows denial. Insults have been exchanged in public as well as in private.
One member of the SPFL board has been happy to see his fellow directors branded either weak, incompetent… or something much, much worse.
Relationships at the very top end of the game have been damaged beyond repair. Trust between supposed partners has been shattered. It’s going to take two things we don’t have — breathing room and a little space — for even the most basic repairs to be effected.
In the interim, faced with the very real threat of clubs going to the wall, we’ll have to rely on the main players showing some solid common sense. Now there’s an idea. A slogan, even. What could possibly go wrong?