Buckie Thistle are set to be disciplined by the Scottish Highland League over the fielding of an ineligible player in a game. The match should have seen them take a major step towards securing the Highland League title, and giving them an opportunity to get promoted into Scottish Division 2. That looks to be on hold now, as the league prepares to deduct them three points for what the club are calling a misunderstanding of the rules.
They can call it what they like.
This is what happens when you don’t dot the I’s and cross the T’s, and especially if you dare do it in Scotland whilst wearing the famous green and white Hoops.
As today’s screaming headlines ought to prove, if you pull those colours on you aren’t even wholly allowed to do everything within the rules without being subject to a campaign of vitriol.
I mean, what did they expect?
Had they changed their names to Buckie Rangers, adopted a blue shirt and bought some off-the-shelf history they might have been safe. They could have had the SFA registrations officer run to the hearing to tell the committee how because the “mistake” was only discovered later (after the game) that there was nothing to worry about, as “that’s the rule.”
It was the one that saved Rangers tainted titles anyway.
For a while, at least.
But this case will be watched, carefully, and saved alongside the one I mentioned here last week, that of Legia Warsaw, who’s moaning about their own exit from the Champions League three years back was helpfully highlighted by The Record.
The Highland League, which is not under the official aegis of the SFA or the SPFL takes this stuff way more seriously than the governing bodies of the senior game do; think on that for a minute.
They are an amateur league, and they have very clear rules governing this stuff.
And they do title stripping for it too, as they proved in 1992-93 when they over-turned Elgin City’s championship win for the same offence.
Buckie should not expect any mercy.
It should shame the senior game here that it has allowed the EBT titles to stand – thus far – in spite of over a dozen ineligible players and a trail of games going back years. The excuses of the SFA look all the more lame in light of the surety and swiftness of the Highland League’s actions previously, and which we expect here.
They are showing the big boys exactly how it should be done.
It is an embarrassment, to be frank. Not that Regan or Doncaster or any of their acolytes is actually embarrassed, you understand … which makes it all the worse.
Seriously, on a day when Celtic’s integrity is being questioned by some on the media and elsewhere because we dared to take advantage of the rulebook … the hypocrisy makes me want to vomit.