Media Defends Scandalous King Decision And Says “Let’s Move On”

The Scottish media has today taken up an unusual role, as cheerleaders for the discredited and disgraced SFA board who this week made the unpardonable decision to give Dave King the thumbs up as someone “fit and proper” to run a football club in this country.

Their response to the voluminous criticism – every bit of it fully justified – is to tell us all that now King has been cleared that it’s “time to move on” and let him get on with the job of rebuilding their favourite club.

What brass neck this takes.

What colossal ignorance, or wilful stupidity, it requires to actually suggest that the supporters – the most important people in the game – drop their very real concerns about the sheer lunacy of this decision, with all the dreadful implications contained within it.

Do you think for a minute they understand our concerns?

Well, honestly, I think some of them absolutely do.

They just choose not to acknowledge that fact.

Our concern for the sport itself is an inconvenient fact, because at times it seems to me that we’re the only people who do.

An entire industry – their industry – has never, and is never going to, hold the people running Scottish football to account and it burns some of them that we’re willing to go where they won’t.

Others, mired in their own bigotry and one-sidedness, actually believe we’re as motivated by hate as they are.

This is to be expected.

When everything around you is viewed through your own bitterness it’s easy to mistake other people as being motivated by something else.

Their casual dismissal of our concerns is only possible because they genuinely think they aren’t concerns at all; merely expressions of our bias.

What’s worse though are those who’ve somehow been able to suspend their critical faculties and convince themselves – and who are seeking to convince us – that the needs of the Ibrox club and the needs of Scottish football are one in the same thing.

I can’t put it more bluntly than to say that they are dangerous to the wellbeing of the game here.

They are pushing the hardest drug of all, the one the media and the governing bodies can’t seem to wean themselves off of, although we’ve all seen by now, clearly, the appalling consequences of it on every part of the national sport; this completely awful suggestion that Scottish football can be narrowed to the best interests of two clubs, and that it revolves around their rivalry, and that this rivalry is essential for the betterment of the game.

And nothing could be further from the truth.

This season’s title race was as exciting as anything that has come in years, and anyone who thinks this was simply about Celtic being sub-standard had better look closely at the league table, and our club’s points total which can still hit 90. Celtic have had, by any standards, a season of extraordinary consistency.

But Aberdeen has too.

Things have changed in Scottish football, and the only people who do seem to realise that, and to realise it’s for the better, are we, the supporters.

For what ought to be the last time (but won’t be) that I will write this;

This is not about the club calling itself Rangers.

This is about a complete, and indefensible abrogation of responsibility from our governing bodies, who’s role is to protect the sport above all else and who have left its integrity in the gutter this week with this decision.

The media voices who think we should just “move on” seem as if they’re perfectly content for us to leave it there, in shreds.

Not in this lifetime.

They, themselves, are complict in this outrage and their every written and spoken word in support of it devalues the game all the more.

We will not forget that the next time they try to pretend they give a toss about the sport.

What might instead happen, of course, is that some of us get to the end of the rope here, with a media that won’t do its job, with a governing body that isn’t interested in doing its and with clubs who don’t seem remotely interested in making them.

And then we might well move on, and find something better to do on a Saturday.

Maybe that’s what they want.

A game played in front of the cockroaches and empty stands.

They’re doing their damndest to get that very thing.