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Alloa Rile Sevco With Pitch Size Change & A Dig At Past Practices At Ibrox

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Alloa’s chairman Mike Mulraney has Sevco in a spin ahead of the club’s game at the weekend with a decision to alter the size of their pitch.

STV interviewed him in wake of the decision, and asked a number of increasingly desperate questions about it, some of them right from the Blue Room itself.

Sadly, for Sevco, but to the delight of everyone else, not only is the eloquent Mulraney “comfortable” with the decision, but he’s defended the “sporting integrity” of it (he actually used that phrase haha) because they waited until a point in the season where they had already played every club at home.

“We’ve gone from having the widest pitch in Scotland to the narrowest that the rules allow, and we’re pretty happy with that,” he said with a grin.

As if this wasn’t enough to make us laugh, he went on to remind people that this is something other Scottish clubs have done before, including Rangers, under Graham Souness.

He then dropped into the mix a comment about how some clubs are able to spend money in January whilst others aren’t.

Not only did this appear to annoy STV, with their questions appearing to become more leading as the interview went on, but it really got up the nose of Mark Warburton too.

Speaking at his club’s own press conference at Murray Park, he suggested that he was “bemused” by what Alloa had done, and offered the view that other managers would be just as annoyed. He then, ridiculously, said it was akin to changing the width of the goals.

Mulraney treated that with contempt, and poo-pooed the suggestion that other clubs were annoyed, saying a few had already been in touch to request information on which part of the rules allows for a change such as this.

He went on; “If Mark wants to play in five-a-side goals we could consider that if the rules allowed it, but they don’t. We acted wholly within the rules and what we believe to be in the best interests of Alloa Athletic.”

Anyone arguing the toss for Sevco being unfairly treated here ought to go and have a lie down.

Not only was the Ibrox able to outspend the other clubs in the league, but they did it on a mix of soft loans and internal debt that would be deemed contrary to financial fair play regulations if Scottish football were actually to have those.

In the absence of that, they played by the rules, and one of Mulraney’s most convincing arguments came when he pointed out that his club has too.

“If people want to change that,” he said, “then that’s understandable but it’s for the future.”

What I think we’d all like to see in the future is more straight talking like this.

Well in there, The Wasps!

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