Neil Doncaster is nobody’s idea of a genius. He is nobody’s idea of a leader.
Neil Doncaster couldn’t lead an Easter Egg hunt.
Last week he passed the buck for dealing with the footballing implications of the global health crisis to the government.
He failed to take ownership of the matter.
He then made things worse when he went in front of the press to talk about the bright and glorious future the game here will have when the current crisis passes. If it passes. He appears not to understand that we might be stuck here a while. Months. Maybe as much as a year. Still, he got on the telly and the radio, so that was alright.
Like other “great leaders” he thinks showing your face is enough to get the job done.
But when they speak, that’s when the wheels really come off the wagon, and his public insult to BT Sport, wherein he talked about how splitting the last TV contracts between two different vendors meant that neither had to show them the appropriate love was quickly condemned by the broadcaster and by many, many others.
“I think we will see the Scottish game given the profile and coverage it deserves next year by Sky Sports,” he said, in a sterling example of wishful thinking. “2009 was the last time we had an exclusive partner. Since then rights have been shared so it’s perhaps no surprise the broadcasters haven’t given it the love they show other leagues. I’m confident we will see a sea change in the approach with Sky taking up the reigns exclusively.”
Yet, in truth, it’s Sky most of us have a problem with anyway.
It’s Sky our club publicly took to task for their disgraceful spinning of the Morelos interview. It is Sky who employs Kris Boyd, who the club complained about earlier in the season.
Sky’s treatment of Scottish football is appalling, and arrogant. It has always been appalling, and arrogant, treating us like we were some backyard amateur league even when they were the sole broadcaster we had on the contract.
That Doncaster either does not know that or does not understand it is just another reason to doubt the sanity of keeping this guy around. He should have been gone in 2012; it is a disgrace that he has been protected by numerous clubs, amongst them Celtic, because he is, and he has been, since that time, a blight on our national game.
Doncaster is a rank failure and a blowhard in his post at a time when we critically need people of vision, who can deliver for the sport. His cack-handed remarks have insulted a business partner who is in a good position to sue Scottish football for monies already paid up, on the promise that this season would be completed.
Did that thought ever enter his empty head? No more, I daresay, than when in 2012 he and Regan led the chorus of “Armageddon”, effectively telling all of Scottish football’s commercial partners that the sport here would be worthless without “Rangers” in the top flight … a suicidal act of commercial self-harm which would have appalled Gerald Ratner.
What happened last week comes as no surprise. Doncaster does not understand the fans, nor his most basic responsibilities, which are to conduct himself as an ambassador for the game as a whole here and not just his own ego.
He damages our sport and its brand with every day he stays in post. Right now, with the game bleeding out, this geezer is a luxury our crisis hit game can’t afford.
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