Today The Daily Record is helping to push a conspiracy theory.
That old one which we sometimes jokingly call The Unseen Hand.
Only this hand has an arm attached. And a body attached to that. And a name to attach to the lot of it. The hand belongs to Peter Lawwell and if you believe what you read and hear in certain places it is right up everyone in Scottish football’s backside.
The best conspiracy theories are those which have some grounding in reality.
That’s why they endure.
Peter Lawwell clearly does wield huge influence in Scottish football. That much is certain. But it would be unusual if he didn’t. He’s the chief executive of the biggest club in the country, after all, the current champions. What’s he supposed to do from that position? Take a backseat in the running of the game? It’s a daft idea.
Furthermore, when you look at the calibre of some of the people at some of the clubs it’s pretty clear that Peter Lawwell towers above them in terms of intellect and savvy. Again, it would be unusual to see such a person not in a position of responsibility.
I am not Peter Lawwell’s biggest fan, and everyone’s well aware of that, but the problem Scottish football has is not that Peter Lawwell has too much influence but that he clearly doesn’t have enough.
I know Celtic would welcome the adoption of financial fair play rules; why wouldn’t we? We follow them voluntarily. I know we would probably like to see a more robust wording of the rules governing clubs which fall into financial peril. Why wouldn’t we? The game here has too many people in it who spend recklessly. I know we’d like to see structural changes at the SFA, and why not? We’ve got enough cause to be suspicious of some of what’s happened up there over the years to want that.
Yet as I frequently have to remind people, we have a single vote at the table. Wanting those things is not enough. We have to be able to carry other clubs with us, and many of them aren’t interested in those things or in genuine reform.
Peter Lawwell goes into those meetings with the same power as every other side; those who want to push this nonsensical line that he “influences” other clubs and their votes ought to be called out on that and asked to produce evidence, because otherwise it’s innuendo of the worst, and most damaging, sort.
The origin of this latest garbage is Stewart Gilmour, the former chairman of St Mirren, whose thoughts on this were given to BBC Radio Scotland for their evening football show. They’ve been picked up and amplified by the Daily Record megaphone. Also on the panel was Les Gray of Hamilton, who talked sense when he reminded Gilmour of what I’ve written here; that our CEO and our club do not operate in a vacuum. More than one club attends those meetings.
Be under no illusions; this is another front in the war against our club, one that’s being ramped up by our current level of success, which has hacks and club officials alike falling all over themselves to find ways of spiking it.
Gilmour’s contribution to our sport was in that he almost sent St Mirren to the wall. The club is now bottom of the Championship, but is mostly run by the supporters who face a monumental task in turning them around after his years of neglect.
Gilmour himself gave the game away when he expanded on his statements at the behest of the BBC Sportsound panel. What the game needs, he said, is more input from Ibrox. “I think that’s one of the problems of having a weak Rangers …. I think it was healthier for the game when we had a strong Rangers so we had two particularly strong clubs.”
He apparently hasn’t noticed that Scottish football doesn’t have a “weak Rangers” at all, but that we have, in fact, got no Rangers to speak of. Even if we excuse that obvious nonsense this claptrap about how it was “healthier for the game” when we did is an example of the kind of thinking that drove the game to the brink.
For starters, he’s saying that it’s bad that Scottish football is dominated by one club but that he’d be perfectly fine (and that it would be “healthier”) if it was dominated by two. What kind of stupid logic is that? For years other chairman complained about a so-called Old Firm cartel; now that it’s gone, is he honestly saying clubs should want it back?
And the club he wishes were stronger, the one called Sevco, already has a representative on an SFA board.
Their efforts to get onto the SPL board were rebuffed because, frankly, nobody wants people like those near the governance of the leagues. The SFA are a different story, but the clubs themselves don’t trust those running the Ibrox operation and with good reason. They frequently behave as if the worst kind of mad-dog mentality holds sway there, and when you consider who its public relations arm are that’s not a criticism you would argue with.
I’ve described the Ibrox board as running a basket case institution in a manner not terribly different from that which would govern a crime syndicate. If there was a way to limit their authority further, by denying them the one vote they are due, I would not be against using it. Their public pronouncements and their stated club policies bring not one iota of positive thinking or direction to the sport. Their kind of ideas are what have held the game back.
Gilmour is at it here. His statements are moronic, and that’s if we’re being generous to him. They are, frankly, quite dangerous. They give fuel to this idea that Celtic’s dominance is unhealthy, somehow underhanded, and a new and deadly element in our game, something the sport hasn’t had to endure before.
Their problem isn’t that “one club” rules the game here … it’s that it’s not the one that did it once before.
And that eats away at their insides.
We know that similar things have happened in the past; there was a point during Rangers’ last years when every major position of importance in the game here was held by someone with links to their club, and at a time when they were dominating on the field due to the disgraceful behaviour of their board which was cheating the whole sport behind the scenes.
I know why our success sticks in the craws of some people; we all do. But they’re just going to have to swallow it because for the foreseeable future this is how it’s going to be, and as a club we’re not going to apologise for our success or feel bad about it in any way. We are dominant now because we did it right. We did it clean. We did it openly and honestly and without resorting to the underhanded tactics or intimidation we saw employed elsewhere.
We’ll be damned if we’re going to accept criticism for our well earned successes.
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