The SFA Three

[GovanAllan 0]

This is the final straw for me, I don't buy into media conspiracies normally but it's abundantly clear that the SFA have been upset by the fans reaction to the sanctions (boycotting, contacting sponsors etc) and have decided to make it look like they are under threat. Straight out of the Peter Lawell handbook on how to influence opinion and gain and advantage for yourself.

 

The takeover is complete JC, SFA/CFC one and the same.

[ian1964 10,780]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/922...n-Rangers.html

 

As a matter of fact, they worked their socks off to get the job done.

 

At which point Gary Allan QC, Eric Drysdale of Raith Rovers and Alistair Murning, erstwhile football commentator, discovered that their best intentions had paved the highway to hell. If you are a Rangers supporter you might well want to read that a few times – and reflect upon how much good it did them.

 

After listening to four solid days of Lord Nimmo Smith’s summation of the evidence against Craig Whyte and Rangers, the three men sat down last Friday to consider the courses of action open to them. Had they been dealing with just about any other football club they would have been well within their rights to have told themselves: “Stuff this – we’ll start again Monday morning, OK?”

 

Instead, they convened until 10.45 on Friday night. On Monday they again worked long into the evening hours. And for whose benefit, exactly? For Rangers – whose administrators had conveyed that they needed a verdict delivered with absolute urgency.

 

As Eric Drysdale told this column: “The administrators were desperate for decisions in respect of prospective buyers and there was extreme keenness on the part of the panel members to deliver the judgments to them.

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“We had listened to all the evidence and you should have seen the size of the folders of documents – most of them financial. I have suggested to Stewart Regan that – if nothing else comes out of this – we should not rush a decision in such a contentious case and that 10.30 at night might not be the best time to release the findings.

 

“My own feeling is that it might be better not to announce the judgment until the note of explanation is ready, but, of course, hindsight is perfect vision.”

 

Equally, an original vision of the SFA’s wholesale reforms last year was to provide an arm’s-length body to consider football disciplinary matters. The member clubs agreed, as the SFA has pointed out this

 

week, to install a so-called ‘cab rank’ of legal, business and football experts to provide an on-demand adjudication service.

 

Transparency was the watchword. Trouble was – and how many saw it coming any more than they spied Whyte preparing to cast his spider’s silk around Ibrox? – someone thought it prudent to assure the Judicial Tribunal members that their identities would not be disclosed.

 

But, just as Macbeth murdered sleep, the internet has assassinated anonymity. Had this tribunal been assembled in the days before dotcom the three members just might have managed to stay below the radar until the storm blew through.

 

Some inside the SFA seem to believe that it was Rangers who leaked the members’ names to supporters’ websites. Perhaps it was – I have no evidence to support the contention and the SFA has not pushed the suggestion publicly – but I can testify that the information did not come to Telegraph Sport via the Ibrox club or from online sources.

 

Remember super-injunctions? They came and went in jig time because although force of law could restrain conventional media outlets it was powerless against social media sites. Now the SFA has been forced to deal with the awkward truth that the very notion of a covert process provides the fuel that rockets disclosure through cyberspace.

 

The speed of this reaction must compel others to consider their responses, too. Since Neil Lennon is in trouble for retweeting a fan’s comment that SFA officials are corrupt, Ally McCoist might consider himself lucky if he doesn’t face sanctions for his vehement demand to know the identities of the tribunal members.

 

One assumes Lennon does not actually believe that failure to give decisions that favour Celtic automatically renders referees rotten to the core. McCoist, after the benefit of a pause for reflection, yesterday declared himself “disgusted” by threats made to Drysdale as well as SFA functionaries, presumably by those whose supposed devotion to his club assumes warped forms.

 

Nevertheless, the force with which his demand was expressed is the sort of signal that can inflame the crazies out there.

 

Plus the fact, Rangers fans are accumulating form in intimidating people who cross them this season. The list of those who have been warned by the police to take precautions for the good of their health includes Whyte, the two administrators appointed by Duff and Phelps, the tribunal members and a number of SFA luminaries.

 

And the Rangers supporters’ organisations might want to consider that potential sponsors of the club are not being charmed by the frequency with which boycotts or protests are called for whenever some business or other is deemed to have committed an infraction.

 

As for Drysdale, the experience has seasoned, but – happily – not soured him. “I’ve changed my mind over the course of the day and I have a certain experience of football and finance to offer which can benefit the game,” he said.

 

“But I can imagine some of the other 90-odd panel members around Scotland saying, ‘I don’t want any part of this’.”

 

Alex Thomson clarification

 

On Thursday we reported that Strathclyde Police were not investigating a complaint from Alex Thomson in respect of a “direct physical threat” allegedly made by a Scottish journalist, to which the chief correspondent of Channel 4 News referred in his blog after he visited Glasgow to cover the story of Rangers’ financial plight.

 

Alex has, however, asked us to point out that Strathclyde Police are investigating a complaint in relation to an implied physical threat against him and three other journalists and that a dossier of evidence has been made available to the force.

 

Telegraph Sport understands that this relates to comments posted in a blog. The journalist against whom the allegations have been made remains unnamed.