Guys, look, let’s not start out on the wrong foot here, but certain things are better said before we get underway.
I know you don’t like me.
Nothing I write here will make you like me more.
I don’t intend to be particularly gentle, because if the shock treatment hasn’t worked the lovin’ touch ain’t gonna.
This is me asking you for help but we don’t have to like each other or even respect each other for that.
To be fair, you don’t like many of the bloggers; we are, to you, somewhere between graffiti “artists” and Twitter trolls. I understand that, and believe me when I say the feeling is entirely mutual because I can’t stand the vast majority of you.
But I respect the profession you’re in.
In fact, I revere it, and its ability to make big things happen.
I would have liked, once, to have been a mainstream journalist, but I know too much about the business.
I have a media degree but I never wanted to work in a place where they had to sacrifice doing the news for what people deem entertainment. I could never have worked for a tabloid, with an “editorial agenda” which often got in the way of the truth.
I make a living doing this, writing what I want, and it lets me pursue my other goals – fiction writing and stuff – in my spare time.
I say that to dissuade any of you of the notion that anything I write or have written is the result of professional jealousy or any of that other nonsense; I know a lot of you hold that impression of myself and other bloggers. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
I do what I love and get paid for it.
It’s pretty nice.
So, with that out of the way, let me say this; even a broken clock is right twice a day, and you guys don’t always get it wrong. When you get on something you have the resources and the backup and the connections to do it better than we bloggers ever will.
It’s no exaggeration to say that if you did your jobs some of us might not have jobs to do.
Yet I am less than grateful for that. I want you guys to be good,
I want all journalism to be good, to be brave, to go after the truth, to find out what those “in power” don’t want the rest of us to know.
That’s what your profession is supposed to be for.
What’s that?
Seriously, some of you … did nobody tell you that?
Honestly?
What did you think, that it was all about free tickets for stuff and getting to meet famous people?
Getting your name in print? Over what? PR dreck?
You do realise that when you are standing in front of a “celebrity” with your tongue hanging out that destroys objectivity, right? I mean, completely. You might as well be in the front row throwing your knickers at the stage.
I know there are some of you who get it.
Who genuinely understand what the job is supposed to entail.
I know some of you have a sense of responsibility and a desire to see Scottish football improve.
I also know some of you work for people who don’t care about any of that and who would rather not rock the boat.
Well you know what, if you’re not rocking the boat you’re going down with it.
Because what’s happening right now, and in particular the events of yesterday, is of monumental importance to the game here.
This is your “daddy, what did you do in the war?” moment.
You can either say you played a part in forcing the game towards a resolution of these issues – and these issues could not be bigger – or you can say you did nothing and you left it to amateurs like me. Hey, you get paid either way … I’m talking about your professional integrity.
Do you have any at all?
Scottish football is in the grip of a corruption scandal here.
You might have missed that; for sure, I haven’t read a single word about it in any of the media’s publications.
The guys in charge are running scared of opening the books and having their conduct of the past few years looked at, in detail, by an outside agency. The clubs themselves have requested this; the governing bodies are trying to brush it under the carpet.
We’ve been writing about this for the past five years, some of us, myself included, for even longer than that.
What have you been doing in the meantime?
Ask yourselves, honestly, what in God’s name you were doing when Whyte waltzed into Ibrox and we were screaming that he was a crook? What did you do when Green bought the lot in the dodgiest deal ever done in the game here, and then hived off every bit worth flogging to his mates, just as we said he would? What were you doing when King was driving down the share price? When bloggers were asking if he violated concert party rules with his takeover? If he’s broken other stock market laws? Who’s asking about the most bent testimony ever offered in an open inquiry, that of Sandy Bryson, which writes a Cheats Charter into Scottish football law? Who’s asking about the TV deal of 2012 and what really went on there?
I could go on and on and on … you lot have either been asleep at the wheel or you have been sitting in the back seat get pissed as our national sport sped towards impact.
The SFA has had its last chance to do the right thing; they’d rather dance around it, play games, try to obfuscate, muddy the waters … and as per usual the more they wriggle on the hook the more trapped they actually are. They are beyond reach in terms of the rights and wrongs of this; they’ve retreated into full-scale “cover our backsides” mode and when an organisation does that they cease behaving rationally far less reasonably.
But what about you lot?
Are you content to sit this one out?
Are you really going to hold to this position of saying nothing, of doing nothing, or painting this as a “Celtic only” issue when even a blind person can see that this is about how our game is run? The issues here are bigger than any one club, or any supposed rivalry between two … this is about fundamentals.
Our game is rotting from the inside here; you surely know these issues aren’t going away?
You surely know that this is too big to cover up, too full of holes to just gloss over?
You know how this will end, you can see it through to the other side … so I repeat, what are you going to do?
Start with Andrew Dickson …
Ask yourselves, is the guy who set the EBT scheme up, as the guy who covered it up from the governing body he now sits on, who has contradicted himself on this matter in so many forums he must have been in danger of perjuring himself in front of the tax inquiries … should he really be at the heart of our game?
This guy withheld information from the SFA whilst at Ibrox, he is one of the architects of this scandal, and, as it so happens, he was one of the SFA board members who yesterday decided there was to be no investigation into any of it.
This is foxes taking a vote over who runs the hen-house.
Are you really going to ignore this?
You wanna know how to begin? Start there, with that, with his “fit and proper person” status, and ask yourselves; can we trust a single thing any of these people do?
File some opinion pieces asking where all this is headed, asking who really believes it can all just be set aside.
Support the inquiry call, and demand that Scottish football gets to the bottom of all of this.
Or not.
Instead, forever file desperate, barrel scraping pieces on whether Patrick Roberts lacks ambition by coming back to Scotland or how everything bad in Scottish football is Neil Lennon’s fault.
When someone asks in years to come, “what did you do when Scottish football badly needed reform?” you can say, with pride, that you were licking Dave King’s balls or you can say that you grew a set of them, and, with the understatement common to those who’ve served on the front lines, you can tell them “I did my bit, son. I was there.”
We are here, in the mud, with our shovels and you are more than welcome to join us.
The help would be appreciated.
We need it.
If we’re going to get to the bottom of all this, Hell, we goddamned well need each other.
We’re all supposed to love the game here, and to want to see it better itself … do you really think we can go on like this?
We don’t either.
So how about we bury the animosity, and get this job done, for the good of the sport we all care about?