Media Tries To Influence SPFL Vote

With the SPFL AGM looming, the Scottish press is busy trying to swing the vote for members of the Executive Committee.

In an article for The Daily Record today, Michael Gannon has said that it is time that three of Scotland’s “top five clubs” were represented at the table.

Two of those “top five clubs” are from Edinburgh.

One has just been promoted to the SPL.

The other still languishes in the Championship.

The other club, of course, is Sevco.

He makes no bones about which of these three clubs he believes to be most important.

As ever with hacks in this country, he hides behind all this “for the good of the game” nonsense.

But the inference in the article is clear.

Sevco must have a role in running the game.

The whole article is laughably weak, but this assertion is mind-numbing.

Let’s take it one piece at a time.

The initial assertion in this piece, that these are three of the top five clubs in Scotland – along with Celtic and Aberdeen – may appear sound if what we’re looking at are average attendances, but if we’re going with honours won that makes Queens Park, not Hibs, the fifth biggest club in the country.

Splitting hairs?

Of course it is, but this kind of drivel inspires such contempt.

How do we judge who Scotland’s biggest clubs are?

I’d say a place in the top flight would have to count for something, which neither Hibs no Sevco can boast.

Hearts have only just won promotion and by the admission of Ann Budge herself they have a long way to go.

Besides, in case it has escaped his attention (it obviously has), Hibs position in the leagues has not prevented them from playing a full and active role in Scottish football these past years.

Rob Petrie has held positions at the SPL and holds the Vice President’s spot at the SFA.

Petrie will go head to head with the Sevco managing director, Stewart Robinson, for one of the two “Championship places” on the board.

Also in the running is the respected Eric Drysdale of Raith Rovers, a man of probity and integrity from a well-run club.

For the record; I’d like to see Ann Budge get a seat at the table.

She deserves it, because she has good ideas and has brought some passion to the game.

Have I agreed with everything she’s done?

Hell no, I haven’t, but I respect the way she’s gone about rebuilding Hearts and if she can bring a fraction of that good sense to governing the game I want her in.

The patronising tone of Gannon’s piece reaches its zenith when he suggest that the “big five” (as he views them) should have their places on the board “nailed down.”

He’s suggesting, or appears to be suggesting, that we don’t need elections.

That reps from these five clubs have permanent seats; that we can do away with such frivolous nonsense as finding the correct calibre of individuals.

Only the clubs matter.

This is indicative of a contemptuous attitude for our lower league clubs that I’ve noticed elsewhere and which has been steadily creeping across the game.

Some of these clubs have been around for a hundred years or more.

To claim they are less important to Scottish football than a 4 year old Newco is outrageous.

The men in charge of these clubs aren’t in it for the money or the glory … they are in it because they love the game.

That makes them more qualified than some of their “professional” predecessors.

This arrogance some people have about part-time sides is atrocious.

When it comes to this election, Rob Petrie should get a seat because he is respected and experienced and is a known quality.

Budge should get one because she has ideas and comes across like a reformer.

Her own club runs like a Swiss Watch now, and that counts heavily in her favour.

She’s proved that she’s got the stuff.

I don’t know much about Stewart Robinson but the article doesn’t help there, because it’s not so much focussed on the man as it is on where he works, and the long and short of it is that the writer, and evidently the newspaper, think he’s got some kind of entitlement to a seat because of that.

Yet this is a club which has no auditor, no Nominated Advisor, no Stock Exchange listing.

They have no scouting network.

They have cut back their medical and training staff to the bone.

They have no long term business plan than anyone has seen.

Their stated objective, of reaching the SPL and “challenging Celtic” is based on spending more than they earn, the kind of suicidal logic which causes our game untold problems.

Oh yes … and they are getting the cash from God knows where.

They are, and have been since their conception, a thoroughly shambolic institution which is so behind the rest that it has yet to play an actual pre-season match in front of football fans … with a competitive game looming in just over a week.

For the record, they are still so fragmented and unprofessional that they would not be eligible for an SPL license if they were in the top flight today.

Gannon and his paper are doing what they always do; promoting the Ibrox operation in whichever way they can.

He’s offered not one single reason why Stewart Robinson should win a seat on the SPFL board except for the club he represents.

As per usual it’s that sense of entitlement that shines through most.

If Robinson goes into that meeting with that attitude (and nothing is surer) he will lose heavily, and deserve to.

Football in Scotland should be past this.

I’ll be watching that election with great interest.