Yesterday, Ian Maxwell sat in front of the media for his very first conference as the latest chief executive of the SFA.
By God, he can only be better than the last incumbents. Look back through the list of them; Regan, Gordon Smith, David Taylor, Jim Farry, Ernie Walker and so on. Those are the five I remember. One had to resign in disgrace after depriving Celtic of Jorge Cadete’s registration as long as he could. One started his tenure with an essay about how the association hated Rangers and once defended The Billy Boys so vocally that even Jim Traynor was appalled.
And Stewart Regan goes without saying.
I don’t remember Walker or even all that much about Taylor. He seems a sensible enough guy whenever I’ve heard him speak. But the other three leave a very long and lasting impression. Farry was corrupt and paid for it with his job. Smith was a clown who saw things through the lens of one club and does to this day. That club wasn’t Celtic. And then there was Regan, who left a mess behind him that even Farry would have been ashamed by.
Regan and Smith will answer for what they allowed on their watch. One day. It might not be soon, but it will come. Neither man will escape it any more than Farry did.
And it has long been the thesis on this site and on others that none of what happened under those geezers would have been possible but for the cowardly media we have in this country. They still won’t ask the pertinent questions today.
It’s been proved that Farry acted directly against the interests of Celtic. It’s a fact that Smith was appointed by dubious means and carried with him a belief that the SFA had always been biased against Ibrox; what he knew and when is important, but no-one doubts he’d have looked the other way for his favourites. Regan was up to his neck in so many scandals and controversies that it staggers me that he was allowed to slink off with his pension. The people who protected his flank – and yeah, I mean Petrie and Milne – have a lot to answer for.
But the press has never wanted to dig too deep or ask too much. There was a time when nearly every single part of the SFA structure was run by someone from Ibrox, or with a connection to their club. The media dismissed all talk that it might be bad for the game as a series of conspiracy theories. But they weren’t theories. They were facts.
Yet the media does suddenly have an interest in the conspiracy theory.
Yesterday, when Maxwell sat in front of them, one of the first questions he was asked came right out of the darkest and most complex conspiracy theory of them all; the one about Peter Lawwell “controlling Scottish football.”
Maxwell was asked if because Peter Lawwell supported him, he feels “beholden” to him, and by extension, you would think, to our club.
This is it starting already, the nonsense that Maxwell is owned by Celtic, that the agenda of Scottish football is about to turn radically in our direction. As if our club has used what influence it has to pursue our own aggrandisement; quite the opposite.
You’d think it was our CEO who was a convicted crook to read the media at times.
You’d think it was him who a judge called a “glib and shameless liar.”
There are people who will never accept that Celtic having influence of any kind is good for the game here; they want a return to the old days, even if that means having people inside Hampden who are looking for another club more than the rest.
Our club has tried to do right by the rest of the game; I firmly believe that and would defy anyone to demonstrate otherwise. That we are pushing for reform scares some of these people stupid. That we have managed to secure the election of someone we believe supports that agenda makes them afraid that this guy might play with a straight bat.
Time will tell if he believes in reform and doing right or if he just talks a good game. Time will tell if we can rally support behind a change agenda with his name on it. But the media is already determined to spin that the way they want it; not an independent minded CEO but a sock puppet with Peter Lawwell’s hand up his arse.
It’s not that they have any problem with the sock puppet … their problem, as ever, is with the hand and who and what it attaches to. The Scottish media believes in conspiracies after all, just not the ones we’ve proven going back over the last twenty years.