The SFA has decided that it will re-open the James Keatings case.
He will almost certainly be granted the ability to play in the Challenge Cup final now, after being sent off and having his ban initially upheld.
The decision is farcical.
Look, Keatings’ red card was a flat out disgrace. The decision to uphold his ban brought shame and embarrassment to the governing body. There was universal disbelief over the announcement. It made our governing body look like a joke.
But what exactly does this make them look like? A complete circus act. The SFA is saying that one panel member barely considered the evidence. But two of them voted to uphold the ban, so what’s the other person’s excuse?
How many panels have these people sat on though?
How many other decisions have these individuals had influence over?
The media is talking about how the SFA will want the reversal of their own decision iron-clad … but nothing at the SFA is iron-clad any longer.
The organisation is a laughing stock.
Everything about this stinks to high heaven. The entire system is teetering on the brink, and has been for months, and the decision to uphold the ban heaped ridicule on the whole organisation. To reverse itself under pressure like this … it suggests our game is lawless.
The people responsible for running the game in Scotland are taking the piss out of all of us.
We are here because authority in our game is passed up and down the ladder by an old pal’s network who are demonstrably useless when they are not outright corrupt. The people up at Hampden have zero credibility. If a decision like this can be over-turned, every club in the land will be wondering how they can use this to their advantage … and they should.
Everyone knows Keatings did not deserve to be banned for the game, but the process was followed and a decision was made.
It was done. It was final.
Until it wasn’t. Until the SFA found a way to re-open it.
You listen to people congratulating the governing body on this new decision and you wonder what planet they are living on.
This is total anarchy now. Every club has seen decisions go against them with these panels, every club has a horror story.
None of them ever saw the decision made and then reversed like this. Every club should be demanding scrutiny of every decision with which they disagreed, and the panel members grilled in case they were similarly lax in their approach.
That sounds ludicrous of course, but why shouldn’t clubs feel entitled to pile on here?
We don’t have football governance in Scotland, we have a free-for-all.