THE OTHER CHEEK

Season's Cheatings!

Yesterday we had one cheek and today we have the other cheek of the arse that is Scottish football administration. Behind Door 22 is Yin to Doncaster's Yang, Pinky to his Perky, Bill to his Ben. Presenting the Chief Executive of the SFA, Stewart Regan.

Regan came to the SFA from Yorkshire County Cricket Club but he also has a background in football, having worked for the English Football League, promoting the Championship. Doncaster was then the Chief Executive of Norwich City, so the pair of them have known each other for quite a while. Not surprisingly, they both spout the same stuff about looking to the future, forgetting about the past etc. etc. That was in the beginning. Like Doncaster, however, it didn't take Regan long to discover, and immerse himself in, what Scottish football is really all about.

When it came to going along with the Scottish-football-needs-Rangers myth, Regan brought his own, peculiar arrogance into the mix. He was at the forefront of the efforts to get Green's new club put straight into the First Division and seemed to think the rest of the SFL was just going to go along with it. He sent an infamous e-mail to Rod Petrie, in which his main concern seemed to be keeping Charlie Boy sweet. There were to be secret meetings with Charlie to keep him up to speed with developments and Regan appeared to see the only stumbling block being Green's willingness to accept a few sanctions. The rest of the SFL was to be left in the dark, expected to just go along with whatever deal was reached with Sevco. To add insult to injury, the e-mail was sent en route to the airport; Regan was buggering off on holiday.

Of course, the SFL clubs were having none of it and Sevco was lucky to be allowed into Division 3. Even then Regan's arrogance knew no bounds. The Vanguard Bears, that bastion of fairness and integrity, were up in arms when it was discovered that Regan left the discussions about the 'Five-Way Agreement' to attend a dinner engagement. (http://www.vanguardbears.co.uk/stewart-regans-succulent-lamb.html). Regan signed the agreement before leaving, apparently, even though there was no agreement reached yet. Effectively, he just signed a blank paper. The VBs, in their usual, paranoid fashion, see this as showing that he cared nothing for 'Rangers'. But, then, their article is full of inaccuracies, such as the 'Five-Way Agreement' being some kind of punishment for using EBTs, when it was nothing of the sort. In reality, Regan was just displaying his usual arrogance in expecting any decision to just go along with what he wanted. His main concern was getting Sevco to agree and he could be sure that the others at the meeting felt the same. He was right. They bent over backwards to suit Sevco and the fact that the agreement is still a closely-guarded secret shows how abject and craven it was.

Regan outdid everyone when it came to prophecies of 'Armageddon'. Huge pressure was brought to bear on the SFL clubs to shoehorn Sevco straight into Division 1. If this didn't happen, then other clubs would go to the wall and Scottish football would be finished. Regan came out with the breathtaking statement that "We can’t punish 41 clubs for the mismanagement of one." This, of course, was looking at Scottish football from a purely financial standpoint. As it turned out, Regan was wrong about financial meltdown, but the message he was giving out was clear: football in Scotland wasn't a sport, it was purely a business. Sporting rules were to be thrown out the window for the sake of financial considerations. Then again, this might well have been just a cover story for trying to help Sevco.

And, according to Regan, Sevco certainly needed to be treated as a special case. He said:

"They (Sevco) have a huge fan base and to contemplate the situation where those fans don’t have a team to support or a game to follow could lead to all sorts of problems for the game."

And not only just for the game:

"Fans are probably not au fait with the implications of Rangers in Division Three: we have a duty to share the facts because without Rangers, there is social unrest, there is a big problem for Scottish society. There has to be an understanding of how serious this is."

So, essentially, what he was saying is that The Peeppul would run riot in the streets if they didn't get things their own way. We had already seen how they could act in 2010 over a television screen breaking down, so how would they react to their new club not getting into the First Division? This was a disgraceful ploy by Regan. Basically, he was threatening Scottish football with violent repercussions if it didn't bend over backwards to accommodate Sevco. The implication was that The Peeppul would not be blamed for any violent actions; it would be the fault of the clubs in the SFL for not fast-tracking Sevco into the First Division. Despite this shameful strategy, the SFL clubs acted with integrity and treated Regan's demands in the way they deserved.

We all know that Regan and Doncaster's projected Armageddon never even came close to happening. The top tier of Scottish football has done well enough without a Rangers or a Sevco there to sully it. And yet, the bending over backwards to please Sevco still goes on. Regan is all for league reconstruction; part of his 'forward-looking' strategy, apparently. He's also a two-faced shit when it comes to Sevco. At the end of August there was a criticism of referees by some managers. Regan came out immediately to condemn these 'attacks'. Last Saturday Mark Warburton was incensed at his team being beaten by Falkirk and directed his ire at the referee. Strangely, Stewart Regan has had nothing at all to say about this. It seems that 'attacks' on referees are fine when certain Peeppul are involved. No doubt he's already invited 'Warbs' to Hampden to apologise on behalf of the SFA!

"There's still time to get one of Pat Anderson's books in time for Christmas and we're only talking a teensy bit of money here. If you don't get one of his books, then many authors are going to go to the wall. There's going to be a literary Armageddon. And it'll be your fault!"