Yesterday, Sevco’s new chairman Douglas Park gave a snarking, snide, petty, ranting interview to the club’s in-house TV channel.
The media has run it as if serious journalists had posed the questions for him.
The same outlets who slammed Murdoch MacLennan for picking which questions he choose to answer in his 4000-word release gave Park a pass.
One of the bizarre questions their media arm asked their own chairman sought to compare their current “campaign” to the one Fergus McCann oversaw to go after Jim Farry.
It is a ridiculous question for more than one reason; we had actual evidence, and it was good enough to stand up in court for a start. Sevco had waffle. They had fluff and speculation. Their dossier was a joke, intended to smear people without a shred of proof.
But it’s an insult to Fergus to compare him in any way to the Ibrox rabble. Sevco is eight years old. In that time, they’ve been unable to attract someone of McCann’s gravitas to the boardroom far less to find a leadership figure like him to run the club.
Fergus was a consummate businessman and a professional.
This was a man who never said a word unless he knew his footing and knew it could have maximum impact. Remember when he took UEFA to court over the exact status of Monaco within the EU? We didn’t win, but it was an example of the way his mind worked.
He saw an angle, he had a case, and he pursued it.
Then, as with Farry, he saw basic unfairness.
The man was never going to let anyone mess us about.
But Fergus was about more than just fighting our corner.
He came to Celtic with a plan, a Grand Plan, and he immediately set about putting it into effect.
He knew what he was doing.
He had it all costed and figured out.
He stuck to it throughout, never deviating from it.
He said he would stay for five years and leave at the end, and that’s exactly what he did.
Sevco’s leaders have run that club into the ground. Park claims they have filled the £10 million hole in the balance sheet … this is disingenious nonsense as it is now the least of their worries. They have bills piling up. They have three months of furloughed salaries to pay to their players in a few months. They have no season ticket base. All the little schemes they relied on for getting through the summer – including a share issue – are now dead in the water.
They have no idea over there how they are going to survive until matches are being played.
Their supporters are being spoon-fed the usual lies … and this is the very worst time to be inflating their expectations.
But this is what Sevco does.
An honest man like Fergus would dole out some home truths … they wouldn’t always like them, but they could trust them.
When we unfurl the tenth flag Fergus will be one of the guests of honour; the triumph is his as much as it belongs to anybody.
His probity, his integrity, his intelligence and his business acumen were obvious.
The legacy he left behind is not just the stadium which puts Ibrox in the shade but the model on which we operate … and which assures that we will survive this crisis.
At Ibrox they have gone through a real rogue’s gallery of owners and directors since that club crawled out of the grave which had held Rangers. Park is just the latest of them to be lauded by the media, but his interview the other day is not the sort the media would ever have praised.
Full of bitterness and obsessed with small matters, it speaks to the tone and the mood and the attitudes of the entire Ibrox club.
They are stuck in this mind-set.
Fergus would never have tolerated such weakness and disorganisation.
It was Tony Blair’s private boast that he could have “sorted out the Tory Party” in short order … God knows what Fergus would make of the Ibrox operation if he ever got to see it from the inside. Heads would have rolled, any number of incompetents would have been sacked, blood would have stained the walls … but that club would run better, and more professionally, and with a bit of class.
We can be grateful they have no-one like him, and never will.
As Scottish football goes through the current crisis it is important to keep up with developments and the key issues. We are determined to do so, and to keep you informed as well. Please subscribe to the blog.