Of all the regrets shared down through the years, one must haunt a number of Americans, those who sat on the Warren Commission which investigated the assassination of John F Kennedy; that they didn’t have an SFA Disciplinary advisor on the team.
Had they been able to utilise those sort of skills the verdict might have been even more perverse than what they produced themselves, but it may have shut the debate down for all time. Had the SFA been involved they might have dismissed the idea that there was an assassination at all; Kennedy’s death might have wound up being nothing more than the result of a freak deer hunting accident a couple of miles away.
“Yes, we all saw the President get shot, but we can’t prove intent to kill.”
And so the world would have already forgotten Lee Harvey Oswald.
I am exaggerating, but not much.
So Rob Kiernan’s case for punching a St Johnstone player was “thrown out” today.
What kind of argument did Warburton and Kiernan make when they went up there that was so spectacular that it negated what we saw happen with our own eyes? Let’s be clear, it happened. We saw it happen, like Americans saw JFK’s brains get blown all over Jackie’s dress. The SFA doesn’t dispute that it happened. Sevco clearly don’t. Nobody dismissed this incident as having no merit; that wasn’t the decision.
This was Not Proven, like the one with the guy who attacked Neil Lennon live on the telly, a decision that ought to go down in the annals of history. Jack Ruby should have had his lawyer; he could have got off with killing Oswald by saying he was gunning for a fly on the wall and just had really shitty aim.
If he couldn’t afford him he could have hired the guy who got the Neil Lennon bomb sender off with “conspiracy to commit assault.”
We do live in a perverse little corner of the world, don’t we?
Is the argument that “we need him for the Motherwell game” really so strong that the actual principles enshrined in the rulebook ceased to matter?
Warburton had already gone squealing to the media about “conflicts of interest” and expanded the whole thing into a conspiracy theory before the hearing even took place.
Did he threaten to expose the Dark Secrets of the SFA when he was up there today?
Big deal.
Is there anything in that particular journal of depravity we don’t already know?
And whilst you ponder these questions, ask yourself this; how can intent be proven in some cases and not in others?
Did they strap this guy to a polygraph machine in there?
And how, even with TV evidence, can a case be dismissed whilst one such as that against Tonev can be found as proven when that amounted to one guy’s word against another? Because hearsay evidence wouldn’t be accepted in any court in the land as definitive proof of guilt, and yet an SFA panel was able to read the minds of both men that day and base a conclusion on it.
Isn’t having a “not proven” verdict available to a football disciplinary board an enormous act of wimping out and arse covering in the first place? And isn’t it also a recipe for corruption and scandal? Because that can be so easily manipulated to suit.
Apparently the needs of Sevco are greater than the requirements of just and honest decision making.
The importance of another home tie in the Scottish Cup is clearly a greater over-riding factor in how things are done than what’s in the rule book. So I have this suggestion to make; if the SFA is determined to throw an advantage to Ibrox, why is the game happening at all?
Give Sevco a bye. Let them take a place in the next round already.
Oh I know Motherwell won’t overly fear the “Champions League quality” player who gave away a goal at St Johnstone by virtue of just not being very good … but that’s beside the point. When the need arose for a wee favour from Hampden the SFA came through for the Ibrox operation as they’ve done time and time again.
And there’s a word for that; that word is cheating.
This verdict stinks the place out.