Yesterday, an un-named board member of an SPFL club talked to The Daily Record to lay out the requirements Ibrox must satisfy before their stance on the sponsorship deal can be taken seriously.
That board member seemed concerned. You got the impression that there is real fear at other clubs that this mess will severely impact on the game here for years to come.
Those concerns are not in the least bit misplaced.
We look absolutely backward.
When, during the fan presser, I said to Dominic McKay that the game here was anarchic this is precisely what the word means; the only thing we can count on right now is the “leadership” running around like headless chickens.
There is a vacuum where the power should be.
Doncaster is part of the problem, of course, and so he can never be part of the solution. I would not mourn him if this was the battlefield on which he finally fell, although I believe this whole thing is a manufactured controversy.
He should never have lasted long; this man who Celtic has spent the last decade propping up.
He should have gone in 2012 for the way he tried to railroad the voting.
He and Stewart Regan.
The clubs who left those two jokers in place in spite of calling the whole thing corrupt deserve everything they get. It pains me to say that we were one of them.
Lawwell was interested only in the trappings of power, it seems to me.
Oh he did a lot of good for the game behind the scenes, but he was never interested – in spite of much media yammering to the contrary – in having the controls in his hands.
But that’s what power is for.
It’s for making a difference, for having an impact, for proposing and carrying out the process of change.
If it wasn’t obvious to McKay before he walked through the doors of Celtic Park that the game here needs better leadership then it surely is now.
Whether Doncaster has truly screwed this up or not, people find it easy to believe.
If corporate investors look at the game and they see it run by bumbling idiots never subject to accountability we will all suffer.
Ibrox is pursuing a selfish agenda, and that’s obvious to even the most blinkered person.
This crisis, like any crisis, nevertheless presents an opportunity, and we need to take that seriously and act in a resolute manner.
Celtic is the only club able to lead this game to a better place, and I know that McKay has a thousand other things on his mind but this, right here, is now critical because although our club is often accused of looking beyond this league most of those involved in it know we’re stuck in Scottish football and that there’s no way out.
It would be unconscionable for Celtic to stand on the side-lines and watch as this game slides into chaos because of bad leadership.
McKay gave Scottish Rugby the shake it needed and dragged it into the 21st century.
Dragging Scottish football into the 20th would see a quantum leap in improved standards right across the boards, and he has to make it a priority.
I recognise that this guy has a momentous task on his hands just modernising Celtic and that he wants his main focus to be on that.
I absolutely get that and I respect it and broadly agree that it’s as it should be.
But sometimes circumstances force you in another direction and we can’t pretend that things are other than they are.
Scottish football governance is a shambles and when any regulatory body is a mess that invites the vultures and the jackals and along comes this Ibrox board, smelling opportunity amidst the ashes.
We can no longer pretend that this system works.
It doesn’t. It’s been years since it did.
We either do something about it or suffer with the rest.