Scottish Football's Shame

Taking a break from blogging specifically about Hibs, I wanted to put out my thoughts on the decision by the SFA to refuse to participate in an independent enquiry at the request of the SPFL, into the handling of the Rangers affair.

I have held the view for a long time that Rangers' behaviour was outright cheating. They deliberately and systematically concealed information (the infamous EBT side letters) from the governing bodies and HMRC. This was not an accidental piece of administrative carelessness, it was deliberate, institutional deception.

Rangers have been proven to have misled the authorities by claiming a known tax debt was in dispute (it wasn't) in order to gain a licence to play, and it's clear that the registration of players in the EBT years was not complete - the requirement was to declare all payment terms. Rangers, by concealing the side letters, did not comply with that requirement.

As time has passed, more and more evidence of nefariousness at Ibrox has emerged. Rangers were not simply chancing their arm during this time, they were blatantly flying in the face of the rules as they stood at that time.

There are, in my view, justifiable calls for title stripping. However, stepping back from what could be perceived to be a blood-lust driven call for revenge, the refusal to investigate what actually happened is a massive slap in the face to every single supporter of Scottish football that ploughed their hard-earned cash into watching a competition that was fundamentally skewed in one side's favour through rule-breaking.

It has not been a level playing field at the best of times for every team outside of the Old Firm. Their financial dominance has meant that every side for the last twenty-thirty years has simply had to hope that they could be the 'best of the rest' as some barometer of success.

That the massive financial advantage wasn't enough for Rangers will give you an indication of why Scottish football fans are so irate at the decision not to open an enquiry into what happened.

The assumption, rightly or wrongly, is that there are people in the corridors of power in the SFA who have blood on their hands. If they have nothing to hide, why not open the doors to an independent enquiry? If anything, you'd expect the SFA to welcome the opportunity to show the world that "Hey, we got shafted as much as you guys - how were we to know?".

Instead, we have officials who are happy to plug their fingers in their ears, shut their eyes, and hope that it all blows over. It leaves a monumentally bitter taste in the mouth and drains any confidence that lessons have been learned and that there will never be a repeat of the incident.

It is to the great detriment of Scottish football that an enquiry has been denied. I hope that there is enough will and resource to force the issue, otherwise it will forever be a black mark on the beautiful game in this country.