The SFA has been handed the Hearts and Thistle case. A court has told those two clubs what was absolutely obvious to every sentient person; that they had no right to take their case outside of football itself. It has been returned to where it’s meant to be.
The SFA will now set up an independent arbitration panel, who will adjudicate this.
The SFA must punish both clubs for ever having pursued that route in the first place.
That action comes with a sanction that is as near to automatic as you can get.
An appropriate penalty would be to ban both clubs from the Scottish Cup.
This website and others will be watching carefully if the clubs receive a transfer ban.
When Sevco was given one of those it had more loopholes than a Hollywood pre-nuptial agreement. Sevco’s behaviour rendered that a toothless punishment, and if it now proves to be capable of biting down hard on the clubs a lot of us will wonder why the Ibrox club’s was different.
I’ll give you the answer; the Five Way Agreement.
The second thing that should happen is that the arbitration panel dismiss the very notion that these clubs have any claim, either to compensation or for re-instatement in their respective leagues. Neither has been unjustly treated, no matter what their directors allege or the media thinks. Both clubs were bottom of the league when the campaign ended … that comes with relegation. Both are going down on merit, and arguing anything else is ridiculous.
Over in Sevconia they are alternating between fury and hope; it was ever thus.
Some of them do believe this is a corrupt stitch-up. Others believe that arbitration means that the courts get it back if the two clubs disagree with the outcome that is proposed; what nonsense these Peepul talk and believe.
The court has given this back to football because they accept they have no jurisdiction to hear it.
It is not going to boomerang back to the courts.
I suspect that this decision will end in what’s known as binding arbitration.
In other words, the SFA will put forward an independent panel and that panel will decide what happens next, and one of the conditions all parties will have to agree to is to abide by whatever that is. Hearts and Thistle may not like that, but the judge has left them nowhere else to go.
The independent panel will decide what happens next and that will be the final outcome.
Sevconia, as usual, refuses to accept this reality … they really do think this will end in Doncaster and others in court, swearing on bibles and risking perjury … they are completely out of their minds. This whole thing will simply re-inforce their view that this is all a conspiracy.
I’ll do something later on Sevconia’s reaction to this … but for now, those who hoped to see the SPFL board in leg-irons and cuffs are sorely disappointed.
Just as we all pretty much knew that they would be.
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