For reasons passing understanding, the BBC dug up an old fossil tonight and put him on the telly.
George Peat, out of nowhere, suddenly appears on our screens to sing a sob-story about how a “senior club” chairman called to ask him not to help Rangers during their Manchester escapade.
The inference in the interview is very clear that this club was Celtic.
And you know what? I hope that it was us.
The SFA didn’t offer us any help when we got to Seville; on the contrary.
And we’ve almost certainly gotten a very biased version of the call from Peat, a man who should have been hounded out of office at the SFA when he offered, on Rangers’ behalf, to postpone that year’s Scottish Cup Final without bothering to ask their opponents.
Doubtless Peat would have loved to do more for his Ibrox brethren, but then he didn’t really have to.
The SPL extended their season to help them.
They allowed Rangers to postpone a league game during their Champions League campaign. There were several anomalies in the scheduling of other fixtures that year; in spite of that cancelled match Rangers never had to play four games in ten days at a crucial phase in the season as we did.
Rangers’ fixture congestion that season was nobody’s fault but their own; they had to replay a number of cup games because they couldn’t close the deal at the first time of asking. They also decided not to play one of the replays on the first available date.
When Peat mourns that Scottish football did not do more to help the club win the UEFA Cup he omits the small fact that what he means is he didn’t do more to help them win the title. Because if the club had really wanted to prioritise winning the UEFA Cup they could simply have fielded weakened teams in the league race as other clubs have had to do.
This whining was old ten years ago.
It is pathetic that it’s still being brought up now, long after the club itself was in the grave.
Whatever the reasons are for Peat being wheeled out of the retirement home, his comments tonight are a joke and BBC are a joke for publicising them. And doubtless these will get plenty of coverage in the rest of the media, helping to fuel the Victim Myth, which really doesn’t need the help.
But some of us remember very well what went on at the time, and we know too that in the background to it all of it some at the SFA were keeping quiet about side contracts and actively assisting in a tax scam. Forgive me if I’m not crying the blues for George Peat and his favourite club.
The SFA helped Rangers enough.
Yes, I hope it was Celtic who made the call, although I don’t know why it’s such a secret.
We said at the time – very publicly – that extending the league season was a violation of sporting integrity, so he should man up and say that it was us.
I am proud of the fact we didn’t just roll over and accept such a blatant act of favouritism, not to say cheating.
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