First up, the SPFL should rethink the cup semi-final decision, if for no other reason than to give all the many fans who want to attend those games the opportunity to do so. They screwed up colossally in deciding to play both on the same day, and they ought to be forced into a climb-down over that. Heads should roll, but of course they won’t.
But the utter humiliation if they are forced into retreat would be more than most “leaders” would be able to bear.
Theresa May would resign the same day if she was forced to eat the mountain of humble pie they will be made to swallow down. There will be eviscerated in the press. They will be pummelled by the fans, even those who welcome the restoration of sanity.
Today all the walls have come tumbling down.
Their claim to have the police onside was blown, completely, when a Fed spokesman scotched them in the media this morning. The compromise that “everyone was happy with” has now been torched by two of the clubs and the trade union for Police Scotland.
It’s been revealed to be nothing but a sham.
For lying to us all, that alone should carry a career death sentence for those who presided over this outrageous string of events. And they won’t satisfy everyone should they change their minds either; I can see at least one half of Glasgow being very pissed off about suddenly having to journey to Murrayfield.
And with the way this has been done, they’ll be right to be.
I am aware of a lot of fans who have already laid their plans – some of them quite complicated plans – based on the dates that are already “confirmed.” So for every supporter they satisfy with the change there will be others who will be disenfranchised all over again.
Everything the SPFL does is a joke. These people are just incapable of showing vision.
They have absolutely no backbone either.
There were two obvious solutions to this, and a number of compromises which would have worked out fine. To give you but one example of a less obvious option, but one that still would have worked, the Celtic – Hearts game could have been played a week down the line, and both clubs could have played away league fixtures at the weekend. A little reshuffling of the fixture list, it would have hurt nobody and been a simple fix.
The more obvious two would have been to move one of the games to Murrayfield in the first place, but the SPFL is hiding behind “contractual obligations” as a reason not to do that; it will be interesting to see how that particular excuse holds up under the current pressure. The other would have been to simply own the outcome they made not the slightest attempt to prepare for, and take the flak, which was making either Celtic or Sevco play on the Saturday.
That, too, would have come with criticism and the enmity of one of the clubs.
Too bad. These things happen in football, especially when you have an association as abject as this one.
It would perhaps have given someone a kick in the direction of straightening out, once and for all, the mess which passes for football governance here.
This shambles came about because the so-called administrators of Scottish football’s second most powerful body were too damned ignorant, stupid or lazy to look at a calendar and foresee an obvious problem far enough in advance.
And even when they did see it their only effort was to cover their eyes and hope that the luck of the draw saved them from it.
That is dire. People should have been booted into the Hampden car-park over this already.
If they now have to reverse their own bad decision then I trust nobody will be in the slightest doubt about what has to be done. I question whether any club has the balls to do it though. We have never been in greater need of real leaders than we are now.
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