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The Resolution 12 issue continues to drive people nuts.
The SFA seems determined to ignore what it’s now apparent is clear-cut evidence of deceit and corruption on the part of the old Rangers board and others.
I wrote about this at length earlier, and you can read that article by clicking here. I don’t hold out a lot of hope for this issue as long as Celtic isn’t taking a clear stand on the matter and petitioning UEFA itself. I believe that the governing body will continue to side-step it and dance around the edges until it’s confronted properly.
Past history is pretty clear on this.
Here I’m going to look back at five examples – and four are shockingly recent – as to why Celtic fans do not trust the SFA to suddenly change course and do right by our club and by Scottish football itself. These people simply won’t budge unless forced by the threat of legal consequences and a full investigation into the stuff that’s been going on.
Until that happens, and until real reforms are made, issues like Resolution 12 will go unresolved, and the potential for fresh scandal will remain.
1) Ref Caught Lying To Our Club, Linesman Resigns, Officials Go On Strike And Celtic Get The Blame
The affair known as the Dougie Dougie scandal is one of the most outrageous in the history of British football, and if you believed the Scottish media and the “official line” put out by the SFA the whole thing was the fault of Celtic.
To understand how it happened you have to go back to the 2010 season, which, as we now know, was crucial to the financial future of what was then Rangers. Throughout that period, in which they were playing for a vital second title in a row (vital if they were to survive) Neil Lennon’s Celtic were on the end of some truly mind-boggling decisions.
We had, on two occasions, already asked the SFA to explain why certain calls were made in games and were supportive of the notion that refs should have to speak to the media in the aftermath of close, or disputed, calls.
Things came to a head on 17 October that year, when Dougie McDonald first gave a penalty, and then, after a brief confab with the linesman, changed his mind about it in the match at Tannadice against Dundee Utd. Celtic won that game, so Neil Lennon’s after match comments, where he called the decision “unacceptable” were not, by any stretch of the imagination, an attempt to deflect from a negative result.
In the days that followed, evidence of a cover-up emerged; Steven Craven, the linesman, resigned, stating that McDonald had run over to him and told him he’d made a mistake and asked Craven to lie in the official match report, by saying he’d over-ruled the decision himself. Craven went on to allege a “bullying culture”, prompted by the SFA’s head of refs, Hugh Dallas.
McDonald was censured by the SFA, who accepted that he’d lied (although Stewart Regan pointedly refused to use that word). He finally resigned as a Grade 1 official.
A week after the game, Neil Lennon was left even more incensed as a disgraceful series of decisions went against the team in the Celtic – Rangers match, in which Willie Collum gave the visitors a penalty kick for a non-existent foul he hadn’t even been looking in the direction of. (I covered that yesterday as the first of the Ten Shocking Honest Mistakes, which you can read by clicking here.)
Walter Smith accused Celtic of trying to pressurise refs, and some in the media agreed. This set the fuse for an explosive series of events which have been misrepresented ever since.
Two things happened which lit it all up; one the intervention of a politician, and the other the intervention of a former one.
The first was a proposal, from SNP MP Pete Wishart, a St Johnstone fan, who suggested that it was time Scottish football adopted a similar policy to that which works so well in England wherein refs have to declare their allegiances before getting games.
This common sense proposal had widespread support, but the refereeing community wasn’t in favour of it and were determined to resist come what may.
That was nothing compared to the outcry former Labour Home Secretary, and then Celtic chairman, John Reid, provoked when he told a meeting of Celtic supporters that from now on the club would fight bad decisions tooth and nail and that “we’re not asking for special treatment, but nor will we be treated as less than anyone else.” He closed off the comments with one of his most famous soundbites; “We will no longer sit at the back of the bus … those days are gone.”
That was the last straw for the SFA’s head of referees, who, along with his colleagues, decided to use the opportunity this afforded them to go on strike, with Celtic as a convenient scapegoat, in the full knowledge that the media would buy, wholly, into the concept that our club had somehow made their jobs unbearable and that our supporters were engaged in a campaign of intimidation (for which no arrests were ever made, nor the existence of which was ever proved).
The media happily ignored that refs had talked of striking twice in the 12 months before this, and that those issues had been over money and conditions. They also ignored the fact that amongst the ref’s demands – along with wanting more cash – was a virtual guarantee of being able to avoid proper scrutiny in the future.
Hearts were one of the few clubs to realise this and condemn the stated reasons for the strike as a “manufactured controversy” which could “be used as a cover for bias and match fixing.”
The strike came and went, with Celtic feeling the full heat of a media campaign which sought to equate the state of refereeing in Scotland with that of some banana republic where match officials were scared to leave the house in the morning. Amidst such press induced hysteria, Hugh Dallas was caught sending sectarian emails on his official account and, according to one national newspaper, offered to have the refs strike called off it he kept his job.
He didn’t, and was fired for cause.
We got the blame of that too.
2) The Game Of Shame Which Resulted In A Public Outcry, A Cross-Party Summit And A New Law … And For Which Only Neil Lennon Was Actually Found Guilty
This one stands tall as one of the most horrendous pieces of SFA skulduggery on record, a series of events so incredible, and blatantly biased, that Paul McBride QC actually went on a live STV interview and called the governing body “biased” and said that they’d made Scottish football “the laughing stock of world football.”
The game took place at Celtic Park on 2 March 2011, a Wednesday night, and it ended in Celtic securing a deserved 1-0 victory. The game itself was surprisingly dull, punctuated only by moments of sheer thuggery from the Rangers team. It was a wonder that the 90 minutes came and went with only Whittaker having been shown the red card. Amongst others, John Fleck was lucky he’d stayed on the park for starters.
The needle that had characterised some of the game erupted, full scale, in injury time, when Bougherra was red carded and decided to do a little man-handling of the referee. A full-on melee broke out on the pitch and then, on the final whistle, the mayhem was complete thanks to Rangers’ resident nut-job and all round arsehole, El Hadji Diouf who got another red, refused to walk off the pitch and then threw his jersey at a police officer.
Lennon was then blatantly provoked by McCoist, who cowered as the Celtic manager let loose his fury, and the two men were pulled apart. It was handbags stuff, but Lennon’s anger was what the press, who plainly hated him, chose to highlight next day.
The SFA got a statement out, making sure they apportioned much of the blame to us; Lennon was cited for disorderly conduct and the behaviour of our team was criticised heavily for the three yellow cards we’d received. The club’s official statement made clear our anger at the SFA’s line, which made it look like people at Hampden had already made their minds up about who was going to be thrown to the wolves over it all.
In the months that followed, the “sectarianism summits” were called, and a new law, The Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, was born as a consequence of it. Few football matches in history have had such a long-term impact on the game and surrounding society. Everything was on the table as a result, from extended banning orders to a tougher licensing crackdown.
Which makes what happened in the football context all the more absurd, I guess.
McCoist was handed a two match suspension for his antics; he appealed this and got off free and clear. Bougherra and Diouf were called up to answer charges in addition to their automatic one match ban for the red cards. Although TV footage had shown, clearly, how Bougherra had put his hands on the ref, whilst Rangers players surrounded him, he was cleared of “serious misconduct”, an absolutely barmy decision in light of the prior year’s refereeing strike and the odium which was poured on our club in the aftermath. Diouf too was cleared, although he’d been lucky his behaviour had resulted only in a red card and not arrest.
Neil Lennon, on the other hand, was given a four match ban. He didn’t even bother to appeal it because, as he told the press, he already knew the probable outcome. He told the media he wouldn’t comment further, to save himself from even more trouble. “You’ve got to see it for what it is,” he said to them. “If you have any media integrity at all you will call it as it is.”
The late Paul McBride QC, who had represented Lennon at a previous hearing and who would be sent a bomb in the post for his trouble, was nowhere near as restrained when he spoke to Scottish Television News on the day of the hearing.
“The decisions are incoherent,” he said. “They are, on the face of it, thoroughly dishonest. I never thought they were biased or prejudiced but now, hearing what they’ve done today, it’s very hard to escape that conclusion … We have a position whereby the person who was provoked gets a four-match ban and the person who does the provoking is let off. We have a Rangers player, Bougherra, manhandling a referee, not once but twice, and there is no ban. We have El-Hadji Diouf who is abusing the Celtic manager and throwing his top and refusing to leave the park and behaving badly – no ban. What does any sensible person think of that?”
What indeed?
3) The Josh Meekings Scandal And The Handball That Wasn’t Seen, Then Was, But Wasn’t A Handball At All
The Josh Meekings scandal of last season bore all the striking hallmarks of the Dougie McDonald affair, and should have ended the same way; with heads rolling in the dust and the SFA in full-scale retreat after being caught in an official cover-up.
In the aftermath of Dougie-Gate, the SFA had proposed bringing in microphones and headpieces for all its match officials in the top flight. The officials had them that day, and something was communicated between Alan Muir, the goal-line official, and the referee Steve McLean, but we’ve never found out exactly what that was.
The SFA’s official line, and which Celtic refused point blank to accept, is that “nobody saw anything.” There were no fewer than six designated SFA officers in the stadium that day, and by the official record they are the only people in Hampden who didn’t see the incident.
At the time, Celtic had a one goal lead. Had this incident been spotted the red card would have been shown to Meekings and, had we scored the penalty, we’d have been two in front against ten men; a scenario which would only have ended in our winning the tie. Instead, we lost Fraser Forster to a red card, Inverness scored from the resultant penalty and went on to win the tie.
Yet the incident itself would have been dismissed as one of those bad decisions, and allegations of cheating might never have arose, but for the SFA’s utterly incoherent, and at times blatantly contradictory, attempts to “explain it away” after the match.
Celtic’s request for an explanation was clearly motivated by more than just pique at the result; we had reasonable grounds to suspect that something had gone on that wasn’t quite right. What happened in the days afterwards confirmed that suspicion in spades.
The first version of events we got was that either the third official (behind the goal) or the ref had seen the incident and communicated to the other that it was either not a handball or that it was not a deliberate one. That we’re still unsure of which it was tells you a lot right away; the release of the audio discussion between the two of them has long been sought, but has never been made available to the public. This was never going to wash, as the TV footage made it abundantly clear that any look at the incident, from any angle, would have made a penalty the only logical outcome.
So the SFA clarified the position by coming up with this garbage about nobody seeing it. That this was contradicted by TV evidence making it clear that there had been some kind of communication between the third official and the ref was ignored.
The SFA were so determined, however, to make that explanation stick that they then tried to take it to it’s natural conclusion; if no-one actually did see the incident, and it had only been brought to their attention via TV evidence, they were quite entitled to ban the player on the basis of that evidence later on. And that’s just what they tried to do.
Yes, they would have deprived Meekings of a cup final place just to support the credibility of their own nonsensical and transparently fictitious tale.
Inverness reacted in fury, supported all the way by an announcement from Celtic that the decision was ridiculous. The Highland club then threatened to take legal action over the matter if the player’s ban was upheld. The SFA, realising they could no longer support the lie in that fashion, then over-turned the ban completely … using, as their cover, another transparent fiction; that after studying the TV evidence they couldn’t support a charge of intent.
As if all this wasn’t ridiculous enough, when details of the refs report, as given to Inverness’ lawyers became public (as was inevitable) what was in there confirmed all our worst fears about a cover-up and a tissue of lies on top of it.
The match report overturned the stonewalling strategy completely. Now, according to this official document, the incident had been seen after all … and the discussion we knew had taken place was explained away as Muir telling the ref the ball hit the player on the head.
In the aftermath to the game, John Fleming had briefed the press and told them none of the officials had seen the incident. He said that as the referee’s supervisor, at a time when he would have actually read or seen the match report as written by his refs. Yet that “same” match report, which was handed to Inverness’ legal team, told a completely different story to that, and one that would never have stood up to scrutiny in light of the TV footage.
The number of questions raised by that report could fill a book. Foremost amongst them was this; if the refs match report following the match actually said what they told Inverness it did, why in the Hell did the SFA think it had a case to charge him over the incident on the grounds that none of their officials had actually witnessed it?
The more you studied the affair, the clearer it became that someone had lied, they had tried to cover this with more lies and as the noose tightened they poured even more lies on top of that.
What makes this story unique, and more disquieting, is that at some point in the proceedings FIFA got involved in it, and it was that organisation that told the SFA it had no right to discipline Meekings. Jim Boyce, one of their Vice Presidents of Refereeing, told them the decision wouldn’t stand up and that it set a dangerous precedent. The SFA were asked to explain themselves over it. The Scottish media reacted to that in outrage, telling the world body to keep their noses out.
The upshot of it all was that Meekings was cleared to play in the final, and after a while the issue was allowed to die a death without blood spattering the walls.
As I said at the time, though, the scandal remains a major one and, aside from the consequences to Celtic, its worst victim almost ended up the player himself who the SFA were quite happy to make “the scapegoat for God knows what, to protect God knows who.”
We still don’t have those answers today.
4) Fergus Sings The Blues And Brings Down Farry Over Failure To Register Jorge Cadete
There can’t be many football associations in Europe who lost their titular head in a scandal over the deliberate failed registration of a player, following an initial attempt at stonewalling which resulted in a legal case being launched by a club.
Scotland has that distinction. The man was Jim Farry. The club was our own. The architect of the legal case was none other than Fergus McCann.
Oh to have his leadership and good sense today.
The background to this one will be as well known to every Celtic fan as any of the stories prior; way back February 1996, with a title race that was brewing as one of the most significant in Scottish football history still wide open, we bought the Portuguese striker Jorge Cadete. His signing gave the whole club a much needed shot in the arm.
To all intents and purposes, the deal was done by 26 February. Celtic submitted their paperwork to the SFA at that time, and only sought an international transfer clearance, which was the purview of our friends at Hampden, and Farry in particular.
Yet for an entire month, this was delayed and put off, and Celtic forced to jump through hoops, again and again and again before Farry finally registered him to play.
Cadete missed six games in that time; five in the league, including a 1-1 draw with Rangers and a 0-0 draw with Motherwell, as well as Rangers 2-1 win in the Scottish Cup. The potential for his having made a difference can be surmised by the stats; he scored 5 in 6 games in what remained of that season, and the following year hit over 30 goals.
Fergus was not satisfied with Farry’s “explanation” and told the SFA that a satisfactory one wasn’t provided he’d see them in court. The SFA petitioned FIFA for advice and were told they didn’t have a leg to stand on. Nevertheless, the governing body stood by its man right up until the day, three years later, when his own lawyer sat, stunned, in a court and heard Farry give a stumbling, mumbling, flatly contradictory version of events.
The SFA fired him for cause, after getting Celtic and McCann to drop the case lest it do them further, untold, damage. Farry was thrown on the pyre; others, like the Head of Registrations, Sandy Bryson, were allowed to keep their jobs and would be pivotal figures in later events.
This was one of those scandals you read about in other countries and which makes you shake your head in disbelief. That the head of the football agency responsible for ensuring a level playing field and sporting integrity could have, very deliberately, with-held the registration of a major player, with the specific intention of keeping him from having an influence on a tight title race, almost defies belief, but here in Scotland it actually happened.
But for the events of 2012-13, it would remain the greatest scandal in the history of Scottish sport, easily and with no clear competition.
That period, however, blew even that out of the water.
5) The Scandal Of Lord Nimmo Smith And The SFA’s “If A Crime Is Not Discovered It’s Not Actually A Crime At All” Explanation … Courtesy Of Sandy Bryson Himself
Aaaah 2012, and The Summer of Fun … what memories.
Those memories are all about SFA corruption, taken to its staggering height. I could have written about any one of them, from the temporary license, to what Turnbull Hutton called the “corrupt” attempt to bully clubs into accepting a NewCo in a higher league place than any other club would have been allowed to assume, to the Five Way Agreement and the threats of Armageddon which were swirling around, all originating from Hampden.
Yet it’s the Lord Nimmo Smith Inquiry, held in February the following year, which takes the cake, for all the wrong reasons, and is one of the most ghastly, and disgraceful, examples of corruption and the way it is glossed over here in Scotland as you will ever see.
The inquiry itself was the province of the SPL, who gave it over to an “independent board” for consideration and prosecution. Yet Lord Nimmo Smith was anything but independent, and the investigation itself was crucially restricted and hamstrung in advance of ever getting started. It was also prejudiced and pre-determined, as we known from the secret “no title stripping” memo which was given to Sevco as part of the Five Way Agreement.
And the SFA were not as “separate” from the inquiry as they’d said either.
In fact, the testimony of an SFA official, Sandy Bryson himself, a man who’s role in the Jim Farry scandal was never fully explored, as it ought to have been, as their Head of Registrations, proved crucial to the proceedings and to the eventual verdict.
His testimony was mind-blowing. It still is.
Disguised amidst a bunch of management speak, the man who’s job it was to make sure that all player registrations were above board, told Lord Nimmo Smith that yes, players had been improperly registered, thereby violating all manner or regulations. All the games in which those players played should have been declared void.
But at the same time, Bryson asserted that because those registrations had not been found to be invalid at the time the SFA had to consider those registrations valid after all, at least for the purposes of those games which had taken place.
The SFA sent Bryson to the LNS inquiry to tell him, in effect, that yes, a crime had been committed but that because no-one knew it was a crime at the time that we could not prosecute the guilty, even though we knew who they were, knew what they had done, knew that they had tried to conceal that fact and the means by which they’d done it.
They weren’t saying “no crime has taken place”, which would have been bad enough … they were saying that our failure to discover it at the time meant it wasn’t a crime at all.
In addition, we had to stomach the concept of “no sporting advantage” having been gained by a decade of financial doping at the tax payers expense, and further, by the notion that because we didn’t know other clubs weren’t breaking the rules that prosecuting Rangers for having done it would just be plain wrong.
There has never been a more corrupt verdict in the history of sport. It makes the sins of FIFA look positively tame by comparison.
Celtic fans don’t trust the SFA ….
These are just five of the many, many, many, many reasons why.