One day, books will be written which tell the full story of Scottish footballs current crisis. As non-fiction books go it will have the lot; scandal, intrigue, politics, violence, crime and a rags-to-riches tale to end all of them. It will also detail how a mighty empire teetered and fell.
At its heart it will be a football story, but it’s never just been one of those.
To understand it all, you need to look at the years before EBT’s themselves, to trace it all the way back to Murray and the reasons the bank put the squeeze on us in the 90’s even as they were allowing Murray to spend, spend, spend. One of the men at the heart of that period is Gavin Masterton.
The damage he did to Scottish football might never be properly known, but he will feature in those books nonetheless. Two clubs suffered directly as a result of his dealings; Dunfermline and Livingston. But others owe their own dark years to his dealings and can trace their own demise directly to his door.
The relationship between Masterton and Murray is a matter of record and an incontrovertible fact. The bank’s murky relationship with Rangers extended to them holding shares in the club in lieu of debts. The same bank had threatened Celtic’s existence for a mere £7 million.
Masterton went on to run Dunfermline, where he hired a notorious Rangers fan as manager, on the recommendation of Murray himself. This goes deep. It goes far.
On the day Rangers won the title against the Fife club, there was more than just the smell of sweaty celebration in the air.
The reek of something rotten clearly hung over that match.
Chris Sutton wasn’t the only person in the Celtic camp, who were at Rugby Park don’t forget, who knew something wasn’t right up the road. Sutton’s comments have become famous, but he was the first guy the press got to; I believe every other player would have said the same.
I know nothing of what’s in CQN’s developing story. I’ve heard the same rumours as everyone else, and a CQN insider told me some things recently, but this sounds bigger than anything I’m presently aware of.
Dunfermline’s reaction to it is pretty definitive; they’ve tried to kill some of the wilder theories.
But that those theories are out there, that even some in the media believe they are worth hassling the press office at East End Park over, that should be everything you need to know. The CQN boys may have something and they may not, but in terms of what this story has done to the debate that could hardly matter less.
The resurrection of this story is everything. It’s the clearest demonstration you will get as to why we need a full inquiry into all of this, why it needs the power to go everywhere and look into everything.
It needs to be a frank examination of what’s happened, who knew what, where and when. Anyone who thinks these matters are going to go away, that we’re moving on until all of this is settled, just isn’t paying attention in class.
Historical breaches of the rules have to be investigated and punished.
That’s just a fact, whether the governing bodies like it or not, but that will happen as a matter of course, the inevitable effect of an investigation.
The investigation itself is what matters; it’s big picture time. There can be no limits on its reach or the range of punishments it can recommend. It cannot be hamstrung before it starts. It cannot be established with pre-determinations made.
Everyone who cares about the game would rather we focussed on the sport itself. Those asking us to move on don’t want anything we don’t; to get back to the football, to the pure love of the game. But for over a decade we didn’t have a competitive game at all, we had a rigged one.
The stuff we know is only a fraction of the stuff that’s out there.
The CQN info, whatever it is, is only the tip of the iceberg. Just looking over the sheer scale of what we do know makes you wonder, automatically, what else there might be out there.
Other events, such as the refereeing strike, blamed on Celtic but which was actually the result of our club uncovering a scandal, pose unanswered questions such as whether or not Hugh Dallas offered to call it off to save his job, threatened by his sectarian email affair.
And there are loads of examples, including the five way agreement, the “4 Old Firm games” clause in the TV deals, who had foreknowledge of Whyte’s liquidation plan … the list goes on and on.
Dunfermline were one of the first clubs to answer the question as to whether or not they supported further action in the EBT affair. Their response to that was forthright and painfully honest; they have their own dark history and feel no desire to point fingers. We can applaud that, and understand it, without necessarily agreeing with it … it’s more honesty than we’re used to though.
But even with the best will in the world they’ve been caught in this nonetheless.
Other clubs will be too, as it rumbles on and that should convince even those with the most doubts that the prospect of all this going away is exactly zero. Until these issues are properly confronted, they will continue to haunt our sport, for years to come. That inquiry has to happen, and it has to be far-reaching. There is no escaping it.
We don’t move on without it, it’s as simple as that.