Let me tell you something about rowdy neighbours; when they have kept everyone in your house up to all hours in the morning playing loud music, fighting with one another, having parties, howling at the moon, banging on the walls or whatever it is, they have forfeited any right to pop in of an evening to borrow a cup of sugar.
“Oh you’ve run out of tea-bags and the shops are shut? Aww diddums. Car won’t start eah? That’s a bitch. You could try walking the two and a half miles to the 24-hour supermarket in this rain … hey, otherwise you can wait until morning. Bye bye.”
The SFA has some brass neck, they really do. They piss all over our club with the Christie verdict, they ignore Morelos and his gesture to our fans, they fail to dig up Kent over his own obscene noise up and then they chap on our door looking for a favour.
It has to be said that our rejection of any help for the Scottish national team was long decided.
We have enough games to cram into the space and time required without agreeing to voluntarily take a week out of the schedule to accommodate the association that, if we got to the latter stages in Europe, would not bother its backside accommodating us.
But I like to think that when the actual request arrives, or the call is made to Celtic Park, it will be greeting either with laughter or a long line of LOL’s.
These people just banned Ryan Christie and accused him of “an act of brutality” whilst point blank refusing to sanction Ibrox players for gestures which could have sparked crowd trouble … they ought not to waste their times expecting charity or understanding or assistance from us now.
The hacks will be assembled to tell us that we have to do what’s best for the game.
That should be greeted with laughter too. They never have. That argument is wholly self-serving and cynical. Their respect for the wellbeing of our sport is a cloak of convenience. They put it on when it suits them and for the rest of the time it hangs at the back of the cupboard.
I’ll tell you something else too; I am ambivalent about Scotland getting to the finals.
I literally do not care one way or another, and in part I’d be pretty happy to think that our players – including Ryan – would get a summer to relax instead of playing more football. Whilst I am sympathetic to the view that we should have given Callum and others more time out of the team the SFA has not helped us one iota with the ridiculous international fixture schedule.
Appeals to us on the grounds that Scotland should be at the finals and that it would be good to see them there fall on deaf ears, I’m afraid. I’d far rather our players got some rest, especially when we will still have eight European qualification ties to navigate.
Look, at this point we owe the SFA nothing. No fealty, certainly not loyalty. No respect at all.
They want something from us … yeah I am glad we’re telling them where to go.