Secrets and lies not just the preserve of politics

WHO says our politicians don’t have their finger on the pulse?

Reacting to the revelation that the SPFL only provided the Scottish Government with recorded information on bigoted behaviour at football matches on the basis they kept it secret, Lib Dem MSP Liam McArthur stated: ‘If their response to sectarianism is dependent on secrecy and gagging orders, they don’t deserve to be running the game.’

Nail on head, old fruit.

Anyway, Britain’s bestpaid message boy, Neil Doncaster, aka SPFL chief executive, will surely sort it. He has promised to take the matter back to the likes of chairman Murdoch MacLennan, still alive (we think) and yet to mutter anything publicly to anyone nearly two years on from his appointment, and then say and do whatever he is told.

Doncaster has a rich history with Holyrood. In 2017, he was accused of misleading a public petitions committee after denying any knowledge that young players were being signed up on £1-a-week contracts by senior clubs.

Back then, children’s commissioner Tam Baillie expressed zero confidence in the SPFL and SFA to protect the rights of young people in football.

The longest-running petition in the Scottish Parliament, lodged in 2010, also called for a full audit on where the millions of pounds of public money received for youth development actually went — and has yet to deliver a result, last we checked.

Still, at least the new people at the SFA seem committed to greater openness. They did commission an independent review on historic sexual abuse in football and published an interim report on July 26 of last year.

Can’t be long until the final, unexpurgated version is with us. Can it?