Eye On The Ball

Here’s a link to a fine comment which was published on the Scottish Football Monitor* discussion forum this week.

Humble Pie’s post is a first class piece that highlights the cognitive dissonance in every department of our society.
The key recognition is that the bodies who take charge of almost every field – medicine, law, education, government, nutrition, banking, sport and many others – do the most damage to the supposed ends of these institutions.  They are an enemy within, exactly the opposite of what it says on the tin.  That is the context in which we must look at the running of the SFA and the major bodies which are affiliated to it.

It is not through accident or incompetence. Even when the general public is angry enough to mobilise itself into activism to demand change, the people in charge do not respond to the core demands for integrity and honour,  Instead, they concentrate their efforts on finding a way to carry on running their shop as before but with a slightly different window display. I blogged earlier this week about how the American people brought about the fall of Richard Nixon only to see his appointed successor, Gerald Ford, abuse his executive authority to thwart the ends of justice by unilaterally pardoning Nixon.  There are countless similar examples such as bankers who should be jailed for fraud being  given obscene bonuses for bankrupting entire nations.

I have no doubt that there are many people at the SFA who will not hesitate to do something similar with Rangers if they get half a chance. They have numerous allies in the SPL and SFL who will do their bit as well if they can.  That is why HP’s superb post should be circulated far and wide. The people running the game have done absolutely nothing to suggest for a moment that they can be trusted to do the right thing in this scandal. It is vital that they are not only kept under the closest scrutiny but also that the scrutiny is illuminated by the clear understanding of the dynamics at play.  In that regard, Humble Pie’s post is as good a source of illumination as any.  Please read it and share it as widely as possible.

The first thing we learn about playing football is that you have to keep your eye on the ball.
We have since learned that that applies equally to football administration and governance.

 

 

* The moderators of the Scottish Football Monitor have a tendency to delete posts which are not in tune with their site’s goals. This has an unfortunate consequence of rendering links to subsequent posts invalid. In case such a fate befalls Humble Pie’s post, I shall reproduce the full text of his comment here as a back up.

How Deep is the Rabbit Hole?
by Humble Pie

As we await the outcome of the Lord Nimmo Smith enquiry into breaches of SFA regulations on players registration by Rangers FC PLC (since renamed and placed into liquidation), I thought it worth taking time to consider the context in which this failure of governance has played out, or the ‘bigger picture’ if you will.

I don’t know about you but any childhood illusions that I may have had that ‘the authorities’ were there to ‘look after us’ has been well and truly shattered over the last two decades or more. In recent years almost all of our ‘most trusted’ institutions have been shown to wear no more than a wafer thin veneer of honesty and integrity. Break through that slim membrane of deceit and we are faced with the startling reality that self-serving corporate corruption is now absolutely endemic in our society.

The corporatisation of our civic life in particular has been imperceptibly slow and deliberate. While our little heads were filled with dreams of ‘change for the better’ with each new dawn and each new government, behind the scenes, men who care only for personal profit have been allowed to usurp our most coveted ideas of peace, justice, education, health, wealth and ultimately happiness. Almost all of the once venerated institutions that we entrusted with guardianship over our ‘public services’ have now been found to be morally bankrupt.

Successive governments have lied the people into wars of conquest, taking hundreds of thousands of innocent souls while our citizens slept on the streets and elected ministers claimed for second homes and £60 light bulbs.

The big banks gambled with our hard-earned money and lost the lot, then the government borrowed the same amount from the same banks (created out of thin air) and gave it back to them to gamble with some more.

The mainstream media continually distorts our view of the world and its people, distracts us with flashy advertising, sensationalist flannel, celebrity gossip and naked breasts, while fermenting discord and division among the citizenry and intruding on the lives of the innocent victims of crime.

The TV broadcasters have covered up the most heinous abuses against children perpetrated by their own staff, while we were busy being ‘programmed’ to become disengaged, disinterested and opinionated voyeurs of so called ‘reality shows’.

Hospitals now care more about bed space and cost benefit analyses than looking after the sick and the elderly, our nurses are overworked and undervalued while many doctors have become hopelessly corrupted by financial kickbacks from the pharmaceutical industry.

Education has again become more of a privilege than a right with the increased cost of hidden fees, accommodation, transport and the lack of any real, meaningful edification and purpose for our young people. Most of the good teachers have left what used to be a ‘vocation’, many of the rest are bored, disempowered and underpaid for the role with which we entrust them (developing the skills of our children).

The Police which used to provide the public with a ‘service’ has now become a ‘force’. No longer do we have policemen and policewomen, now we have ‘officers’. Each individual police force is now an separate corporate entity (look it up on Companies House) their officers obliged to generate income by issuing ever more fines and charges to balance their dwindling budgets.

So the question is, why should I expect football be any different?

Football is governed by a set of rules or customs, which serve to ensure fair competition, and allow consistent adjudication of the winner. These rules are encompassed by the principles of respect, fair play and sportsmanship and are agreed to by all participants….or so Sepp Blatter would have us believe.

During the last couple of years, particularly throughout the Rangers saga, I have become more and more disillusioned by the lack of morality and integrity that has been displayed by the Scottish football authorities. They have ignored their own rules when it suited them and applied them with full ferocity when it suited them. At times their obfuscation and outright hypocrisy has been breathtaking. Compare and contrast the SFA’s treatment of Spartans for accidently failing to put a date on a form twice, and the former Rangers, who deliberately withheld information from the SFA, failed to pay millions of pounds to their civic taxes nor their many creditors (football related and otherwise) and have brought the entire game into disrepute in this country on more than one occasion.

How can they possibly get away with it? I hear you ask.

That the SFA, the president of which is ‘heavily conflicted’ in the entire shenanigans, has fobbed this enquiry off to the SPL (who have no real jurisdiction over the breaking of SFA rules) who in turn fobbed it off the retired Lord Nimmo Smith’s ‘independent panel’ tell us what exactly? That they want justice to be done and to be seen to be done? Perhaps.

However, that the same SFA still fails to state categorically the status of the club called The Rangers currently plying their wares in SFL3, even though the answer to this simple question remains fundamental to the integrity of the sport and any hope of reconciliation among the now deeply divided supporters, doesn’t fill me with confidence in their governance of the game.

What do I expect to happen? Well my experience has taught me to expect the worst and to hope for the best. No doubt, whatever the outcome of this enquiry, that will not be the end of it. In my humble opinion, ‘interested parties’ will seek to make this a long drawn out affair (ain’t it always been so) with judgements and appeals, claim and counterclaim, appeals to the SPL, SFA, CoS, CAS, UEFA perhaps even finally ending up on Sepp Blatter’s Louis XIV style oak desk in Zurich. Where we can expect………………………..?

Michael Ellner noted, “Just look at us. Everything is backwards, everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, psychiatrists destroy minds, scientists destroy truth, major media destroys information, religions destroy spirituality and governments destroy freedom.”

Will we have to add ‘and the SFA destroyed Scottish football’?

I hope not but I am beginning to expect so.

That’s Yer Dinner Oot.

Last night, Alex Thomson published a transcript of a letter to the Boards of Directors of the Scottish Football League member clubs from David A. Longmuir, Chief Executive of the SFL.  Here is a link to the blog post.

The first part invites the member clubs to make themselves accessories to a fraud. They will be asked to give their consent to a proposal “that the Scottish Football League Members agree to admit Sevco Scotland Limited as an Associate Member and agrees to permit Rangers F.C. to play in the League during Season 2012/13.”
There’s a somewhat fraudulent aspect to this since the club called Rangers FC is insolvent and in the process of being liquidated.  The application for Associate Membership is being submitted by Sevco Scotland Limited.
In Section 1 of the Scottish Football League’s Constitution And Rules, we find that the Scottish Football League is defined as an “Association of football clubs” and that “Associate Member means a football club however constituted which is admitted to the League pursuant to the provisions of Section 2 of these Rules.”

Associate Members of the Scottish Football League are supposed to be football clubs.
But Sevco Scotland Limited is not a football club.
It never has been.
Look, here is its record:  P0 W0 D0 L0 F0 A0
See?
Sevco Scotland Limited doesn’t play football.  It’s not a football club.
So it cannot be admitted to an Association of football clubs such as the SFL.

In 1985, Sean Connery, Christopher Lambert and I made the movie “Highlander.” I noticed that in the released version of the film, Mr Connery and Mr Lambert had all the best lines and were very much the focus of the audience’s attention. This goes some way to explain why my own performance as the nose-picking peasant in the background of the 15th century McLeod village has been largely overlooked by the critics, even to this day.
Nonetheless, I have more right to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor than Sevco Scotland Ltd has to join a league of football clubs.

In December 1979, I was in the audience when Paul McCartney and Wings recorded a jaunty little ditty called “Coming Up” in the legendary Glasgow Apollo theatre. A few months later, I was working in the United States of the USA when the version of “Coming Up” which was recorded in Glasgow topped the US charts.  On discovering that I had notched up my first American Number One hit single, I was able, without a word of a lie, to impress my American colleagues with the revelation that I was on “Coming Up”. It is admittedly difficult to distinguish my applause from the thousands of other people’s but I care not a jot.
I’m closer to being a Beatle than Sevco Scotland Limited is to being a football club.

So this should be a very short meeting.
As soon as the first proposal is rejected, the rest becomes a dead letter.
Except for this bit:

“A buffet lunch will be served at the conclusion of the meeting.
Kind regards,
David A. Longmuir
Chief Executive, SFL.”

If the SFL club representatives treat themselves to an early lunch by handing the pseudo-Huns their dinner, they will do more than simply preserve the integrity of their own league. They will send a clear message to the frauds, the cheats, the bullies, the criminals, the hypocrites, the cowards and the cynics that they’ve had their day. They will demonstrate their recognition that Scottish football fans have opened their eyes to the corruption which has been covered up for so long. What has been seen can not now be unseen.
With one voice we have condemned those whose craven complicity has allowed that corruption to eat into the essence of our game. The root cause and source of that corruption is on a life-support system which the SFL representatives are perfectly entitled to switch off on Friday.  For the sake of the fans, for honesty, for football and for justice, there is only one correct choice to make.
Pull the plug.

Bon appetit!