SPFL Season declaration challenged legally (ongoing discussion)

[ian1964 10,724]

 

[der Berliner 3,747]

QUite hard to fathom the mantra about us giving the evidence to SPFL, public and whatnot ... when we clearly have stated about half a dozen times that we WILL hand the evidence to the right people as well as clubs in due course. This is much like transfer window rumours doing the rounds and ITKs are getting pestered time and again to release info that is still confidental (for a few hours / days).

[der Berliner 3,747]

Tom, English's comments

 

 

Quote

SPFL: Why does league seem so worried about independent inquiry?

 

Last Friday, through their non-executive director Karyn McCluskey, the SPFL issued a 700-word open letter basically saying 'there's nothing to see here' in terms of the questions being asked about its corporate governance.

On Tuesday, through its chairman Murdoch MacLennan, the body issued another open letter - 755 words - basically saying the same thing: nothing to see, please move along.

On Wednesday, a third open letter - 4,252 words now - landed, and once more the entire thing could be boiled down to the same line - nothing to see folks, please stop going on about this, nothing untoward happened.

Also on Wednesday, SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster finally stepped out of the shadows and went public for the first time since this saga erupted. From him, through a range of different interviews, there was a reinforcement of the same mantra.


The more the SPFL says that there's nothing to see, the more the interest is piqued, the more you wonder why it is going to such lengths to close down the possibility of an independent inquiry.

It has questioned the motives of those clubs that are calling for transparency (somewhat lacking in self-awareness, it has in the next breath called for reconciliation). It has talked about "distractions, scapegoating and sideshows".

It has effectively warned all clubs that if they vote for an inquiry, they will be spending vast amounts of their own money on an investigation that is "wholly unnecessary and inappropriate". How much money? The SPFL doesn't say.

It has also gone another route in an attempt to dissuade clubs from getting on board the inquiry train. "At a time when thousands of people in our communities are dying of Covid-19, Scottish football needs to reflect and consider how this looks to the outside world," the SPFL says.

What's being said there? That because of the continuing horror that is Covid-19, nobody should asking be questions of the way the SPFL is doing its business? That because of coronavirus, the SPFL should be spared scrutiny and allowed to carry on without full accountability to all of its members?

'Why not let this all play out?'

It's worth remembering how much work Rangers, Hearts and Stranraer have to do in order to secure the inquiry they're looking for. They need 75% of clubs in each division to sign up to it.

In the Premiership, that's nine out of 12 they must win over. Already we know that Motherwell and Hamilton are against it, given they have members on the very SPFL board that are fighting so hard to bring it down.

We can also bet the house on Celtic being against it. That means all of the other nine must back the inquiry or else it's dead in the water. If this was a football match, the SPFL board would be 5-0 up with time running out and yet its constant open letters and the sudden mobilisation of Doncaster suggests concern.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/52472024

[Uilleam 5,948]

In today's Hoots, mon (yes, it clings on, surreptitiously), Mr Andrew Smith, once editor of The View from the Separate Entity, goes some way towards upbraiding the reclusive Mr Murdoch MacLennan, a man who not only marks his own homework, but has the temerity to set his own questions, and congratulate himself on his answers. 

 

Mr Smith does passing well, I think, until the closing paragraph wherein he takes a gratuitous and incorrect swing, something seemingly obligatory for that type, at Rangers.

 

 

An open letter to SPFL chairman Murdoch MacLennan

Surely there was a better way, Murdoch

By Andrew Smith

Thursday, 30th April 2020, 7:30 am

 

https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/open-letter-spfl-chairman-murdoch-maclennan-2568175

 

Dear Murdoch,

It was with great interest that I read your latest open letter on the circumstances surrounding “the SPFL directors’ written resolution, concerning the completion of Season 2019/20” precipitated by the Covid-19 global health emergency. The format, while exhaustive, begged follow-up questions. Alas, as a consequence of your desire only to deliver such information in the form of tablets of stone from on high, it was not possible to obtain answers to the issues raised by your explanations. Perhaps you could provide clarity on the following.
You would appear to consider any questioning of the governance of the SPFL on recent matters to be “distractions, scapegoating and sideshows [that] are our enemy”.
The dictionary definition of governance is “the action or manner of governing an organisation.” Isn’t it right and proper that the actions and manner of the SPFL should be held up to such scrutiny? Aside from Rangers, those of us troubled by the cack-handedness betrayed by the SPFL over the manner in which the resolution – and the fall-out from it – was managed have not questioned the integrity of those involved, simply their competence. Do you suggest, Murdoch, that we have no right to do so?

 

Perception, it is said, is nine-tenth of reality. Do you believe that the perception surrounding the crafting of the resolution, and the failure of Dundee’s original rejection vote to land initially because it ended up in a quarantine folder, creates a good look for the governing body? Wouldn’t it actually be remiss of us to consider otherwise than all this was dealt with poorly? The inability to recognise this was the case in your latest open letter – in all but the most glib terms – can hardly reflect well on the SPFL board.

You say that you have been “provided with no evidence whatsoever that any club has been bullied or coerced” and that since 81 per cent of clubs “voted in favour of the directors’ written resolution, you [the clubs] have given a clear endorsement of the board’s position”.

Aren’t you entirely, and possibly deliberately, missing the point here, Murdoch? Many of us said on the Wednesday, 10 April, when details of the resolution to end the season for Championship, League One and League Two clubs were announced, as the only means to deliver prize money “to clubs that were literally on their knees” and to prevent “possibly dozens of them going to the wall,” that this, in itself, was tantamount to coercion?
However, much you may petition this was the case, the Hobson’s choice with which you presented clubs was not the only course of action available. You could have run reconstruction proposals in tandem with plans to abridge the season and so avoided a whole heap distractions and sideshows. You say it is “correct” “there was a link between fee payments being made and the League placings being finalised. That is because the basis for fee payments to clubs is set out in the SPFL’s Articles and is entirely based on League placings. To suggest that this was the SPFL Board creating “undue influence” is therefore entirely wide of the mark.
Is it “wide of the mark” to suggest that you could have altered those Articles? It states in the rules that the season requires a number of games to be played for league placings to be determined, but the resolution abrogated that requirement. You can’t pretend that certain rules could not be changed, Murdoch, when others were to serve the situation.
You describe the suggestion that clubs could have voted to receive their prize money as loans as “a red herring”. “It is difficult to see how the making of loans to multiple clubs could have been authorised legitimately by the Board while fulfilling simultaneously their duties as Directors to the Company. In the current, extremely challenging circumstances, with clubs facing huge financial difficulties, lending money to potentially every senior club in the country was never a realistic, or timely, solution. Each club seeking a loan would need to be subject to a due diligence examination of its ability to repay, the viability of whatever security was being offered, and what interest should be sought based on each club’s individual profile.”

You cite the case of Gretna. “[A] a loan had been made to Gretna (in administration), to enable it to complete its SPL fixtures at the end of a season [2007-08]. The club was ultimately liquidated; the loan was never fully repaid; and all of the other clubs lost fee payments as a result. This demonstrates the fundamental problems with loans to clubs.”
Again, either deliberately or otherwise, this obscures certain facts. The clubs who stated that paying prizemoney need not be contingent on terminating the season, petitioned for prizemoney simply to be advanced on the basis of potential league position. It was money they would be due simply being paid two months earlier; it wasn’t monies loaned that would ultimately require repayment. SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster, right, stated at the start of the coronavirus crisis that the organisation does not hold a reserve. Loans/advances did not require an SPFL reserve.
On the Gretna case, once more there is the sin of omission. The club were forwarded the £250,000 they would have been due for finishing the season in bottom place in order to complete their fixtures. They were also given the £150,000 parachute payment for the following season. This was not repaid because by then the club had gone out of business. However, there are no parachute payments in the Scottish lower tiers, so this was not an issue.
You make much of the Deloitte independent investigation into what happened on the evening of 10 April. The investigation centred around Dundee’s ‘reject’ ballot that would have caused the resolution to fail not being received when sent at 4.48pm and, by the time it was discovered in the SPFL’s e-mail quarantine system four hours later, the Dens Park club had by then decided not to cast it. Deloitte found “no evidence of any improper behaviour or impropriety”.

The pity is that it was not within Deloitte’s remit to investigate for incompetency because, surely, they would have unearthed that on a breathtaking scale. Why, as is standard in so many organisations, were clubs not provided an immediate acknowledgement of receipt on sending their vote. On the independent investigation itself, how was it that a process designed to demonstrate transparency was shrouded in secrecy with no club or stakeholder aware it was taking place until its findings were released?
You justify going public with the incomplete poll on 10 April shortly after the 5pm “requested” cut-off point for casting votes as follows. “Imagine the furore if we’d refused to give any update on how voting had gone. I know that the League’s PR team received numerous calls from journalists in the minutes after 5pm, desperate for an update on the voting. If we hadn’t published those numbers, we would have been accused of unwarranted secrecy. We were simply being open and transparent.”
This is truly rich from your goodself, Murdoch. How many request for interviews from journalists have you rejected since you took up the position of chairman of the SPFL in July 2017? Does failing to face up to the media – your domain of employment for 40 years – fit with this unbeknownst desire to be “open and transparent”. And, incidentally, I was told by a member of the league’s PR team on Thurday, 9 April, that the outcome of the vote would be released sometime the following midweek.
You say “in the weeks and months to come when all this is over, I’ve no doubt that people will see we did the right thing at the right time for the right reasons.” With precious little prospect of any football, even behind closed doors, before September, perhaps history will be a kind judge over the actions of the SPFL board. Placing to one side the dubious motives of Rangers in this entire scenario, though, do you seriously not believe there was a better way, or that what has unfolded in the past month does not call for an overhaul of the SPFL’s internal processes?

[Gaffer 1,665]

Isn't it utterly bizarre that so many clubs are saying they won't support the inquiry before they've seen what Rangers has to evidence the need for it?  I'd have thought there was enough already to warrant an investigation so I am even more suspicious when I read this.  In the case of Celtic, I wouldn't care how much I hated another company or club, I'd support an inquiry if corruption was evident.  If I didn't I'm risking prison.  The other SPFL board members are doing everything they can to end up with a criminal conviction.

 

Any organisation must investigate whistleblowing, so if Rangers do provide additional evidence it must be considered.  They have no choice!!!  If they choose to ignore it, I'll be calling the police myself.

 

If any other commercial organisation in the world was seen to be encouraging stakeholders to turn a blind eye to evidence they would be up on charges right away.  And let's be clear that the charges wouldn't be for the corruption, it would be for the culture of the board.  I work in a highly regulated business and I'd have received a fine and probably a prison sentence by now if I'd have said or done the things this SPFL board has.  The SFA is supposed to hold that role in Scotland so where are they?  We know the answer to that and that's why I hope this goes the whole way to court.  There will be many people who will find out the hard way just what their responsibilities were, and ignorance is no defence.

[Gaffer 1,665]

The big problem our game has is that of perception.  It now doesn't matter what the reality is because there's so much suspicion that no sponsor is going to touch our game without a full inquiry.  Again, if the board members can't see that they are not fit to hold their positions.

[CammyF 8,118]

I may be "niave" but if there is nothing to hide, then the SPFL needn't fear complete and comprehensive independent inquiry. Why are they so set against one? It's a simple question that remains unanswered 

[ian1964 10,724]

17 minutes ago, Gaffer said:

The big problem our game has is that of perception.  It now doesn't matter what the reality is because there's so much suspicion that no sponsor is going to touch our game without a full inquiry.  Again, if the board members can't see that they are not fit to hold their positions.

They have been getting their own way for years, making up rules as they go, persuading/bullying/threatening/coercing/lying and all other clubs to fall in line being led along for scraps from their table, they probably sincerely believe they have done nothing wrong.

[ian1964 10,724]

 

[the gunslinger 3,366]

Should have

2 hours ago, ian1964 said:

 

Hilarious nonsense