The Resolution 12 campaign may well be the most important supporter led endeavour in the history of Scottish Football. That’s no exaggeration, it’s a stone cold fact. We owe everyone who was involved in it an enormous debt for what they tried to do here; had they succeeded there would have been a shakeup of epic proportions at the SFA. There would have been an independent investigation into the conduct of senior people there.
Stewart Regan would have been finished. Campbell Ogilvie would not be enjoying his SFA pension. Because the road through Resolution 12 heads in other directions, including all the way to the doors of the SPFL, and that of Neil Doncaster too.
How many people knew what Craig Whyte was up to at Ibrox? Plenty of them, including those men named, and others along with them, like Ralph Topping, who helped the SFA secure their deal with William Hill, to sponsor the Scottish Cup, and helped bring Ladbrokes to the table to sponsor the league itself. The silence over “who knew what and when” is deafening in the media; only the fans were every truly concerned with getting to the bottom of it.
The trouble is, we were never going to be able to do it alone, and certainly not when the fans involved were predominantly drawn from a single club, with very little support across the wide breadth of Scottish football as a whole.
Yes, it was Celtic shareholders who pushed with Resolution 12, but that scandal affected other clubs too.
It’s just that none of their supporters ever raised it.
As the investigation grew, it became clear that it was about more than just a European license; it went right to the heart of how football in this country is governed.
It cast a black cloud across the already derided Lord Nimmo Smith inquiry and actually suggested that a shady backroom deal had been done in relation to that, one of the most important investigations ever conducted in UK sport.
The SFA barely trembled although the Resolution 12 campaign was perilous to them, and to the man who sits in the CEO’s office.
They didn’t tremble because they had it sussed; this was a “Celtic supporter led campaign.”
The media wanted nothing to do with it, as they demonstrated time and time again, even when presented with the full story.
When an independent organisation of real repute published one of the most damning reports ever into football governance in Scotland the media attacked the writers of it on Twitter and refused to acknowledge its existence anywhere else.
Regan’s survivability was always predicated on one thing; the clubs themselves didn’t want to know.
Aberdeen, Hearts, Motherwell, St Johnstone and others didn’t care enough to get involved.
That didn’t matter.
Only one club could have moved the mountain anyway, and that was ours.
Celtic were the club with the juice, and had we wanted to we could have shaken the kaleidoscope and the whole picture would have been different.
But our club’s actual interest in getting to the bottom of this is zero, and that can be surmised from events peripheral to it, like the complete failure to put Financial Fair Play on the table, or to push for real reform in scrutinising clubs and their directors. The consequences of that are playing out across Glasgow right now, as Sevco burns through its season ticket money in record time, threatening to rack up huge deficits whilst other clubs play by the rules.
I’ll make a prediction right now; Aberdeen fans who’ve bought season tickets on the expectation of continuing to challenge in second place, you’ve wasted your money. The laxity of your board and others, and your own failure to hold them to account, has resulted in those running Sevco realising they can do whatever they please.
As it stands, Sevco will finish second next season, and if they survive long enough they will, eventually, cement that spot and Scottish football is back to the duopoly.
The Dons can build their new stadium and paint a bright picture for the future as they like … but they’ve already given up on it.
Because Sevco’s ruthless, criminal chairman and his board are prepared to do anything to succeed … and others aren’t.
In a well run game there would be restraints on them.
In one run like this, there are none.
The existing rules will not save Aberdeen or other clubs from the consequences of that, and even if Sevco collapses I see no reason to believe they won’t be resurrected to do it all again, and probably without having to start in the bottom tier this time.
The willingness to fight for fairness is simply not there and everyone involved knows it.
Yesterday was the SFA AGM.
No special regulations were passed.
Another opportunity for reform has gone.
Regan remains in his post. The ludicrous person at the helm of the association, Alan McRae, is a guy few of us could pick out of a police line-up, and he’s still there. Don’t listen to anyone at this point who says the clubs are committed to reform or serious about it.
They aren’t.
If they were, they’d push for it.
They haven’t.
Aberdeen and Hearts made sure that when they submitted their accounts last year they mentioned their compliance with Financial Fair Play; whoopee-do. Big deal.
They play by the rules, bravo, nice one, but the Tynecastle club has already lost on European football because they don’t want to rock the boat and right now Aberdeen’s second spot in under threat because another club doesn’t observe the same niceties.
We’re back where we were in 2011, with a club at Ibrox spending money they’ve not got.
They’ve been granted a European license in spite of a spectacular failure to comply with UEFA regulations, waived through by the SFA in the full knowledge that no-one will do a damn thing about it. It’s all well and good saying this will end in disaster – and it will – but the game suffers from this blatant financial doping in the meantime, and that means much of next season is a corrupt farce before it even gets started.
For this people buy season tickets.
And yes, Celtic is as guilty as any other club, perhaps more so because we have the weight to do something about all of this, and the imperative, because of what’s been uncovered over Resolution 12.
Calls by bloggers for the SFA to act and protect the integrity of the game now, at this late stage, are laudable but toothless.
Only the clubs could have moved this thing and they refuse to, ours included, and facing that fact has been hard but the time for doing it has come.
It’s only by facing the truth that we can start mentally preparing ourselves for what might be coming next.
The SFA will not reform on its own.
Yesterday in a breath-taking display of double standards and rank hypocrisy Craig Whyte, found not guilty of any offence by a court, was declared not to be a fit and proper person by the same man who waived Dave King, guilty of hundreds of tax evasion charges and who essentially plea-bargained his way out of a jail cell, through the process without a worry at all.
I no longer believe UEFA will help us either.
Because until the clubs start taking ownership of this, they’ll view Regan much more favourably than he deserves.
That was the one thing worth reporting on from yesterday’s SFA AGM.
Regan, supercilious, in love with himself, in complete self-congratulation, as incompetent and scandalously lax as any administrator in Scotland has ever been, announced to the media afterwards that he’s just been appointed to one UEFA’s professional boards.
The war’s over.
Because only one side was ever fighting it.
And that was us, the fans.