The SFA Needs To Explain How It Picks And Chooses Who It Decides To Discipline.

The SFA today handed down fines to the St Mirren chairman for remarks he made about the fans of the club across the city.

These remarks were made before he was on the board over there, when he was the SFA equivalent of a private citizen so I’m not sure where they have the brass neck to even charge him and the club with anything.

He broke three rules apparently.

For ancient tweets.

I get the feeling St Mirren only agreed to the process to get the issue out of the way.

Now that they have, and the fines have slapped their wrists a wee bit, everyone will hope the matter is behind them. But Ibrox has a long memory and will not forget.

Neither, though, will the rest of us.

Because the SFA needs to explain how it reaches decisions over who it disciplines. The charge sheet here was that they failed to “act in the best interests of Scottish football.”

Had he done it whilst in office I’d agree. But we know that there’s a lot that has been done by those who are in office which has not been deemed worthy of disciplinary action.

And that’s the problem some of us have with how this stuff is done.

Two summers ago, the Ibrox club made unfounded allegations about those running the governing bodies and were involved in a scheme with other likeminded individuals at other clubs to put pressure on the directors of Dundee.

Nobody was ever sanctioned over that, not even the Inverness official who either broke confidentiality rules by reading out private correspondence on the radio or made stuff up on the cuff so that he and Ibrox could continue their vendetta.

In years of covering the game here I cannot think of a more serious set of allegations to be lobbed by a club at those who run the game, and there was not a shred of truth to any of it.

The Ibrox club escaped any sanction whatsoever from the SFA.

The SPFL allows Robertson to sit on the board right now although he has openly accused them of bias and what amounts to corruption. If that doesn’t bring the game in this country into disrepute I don’t know what does. It is absurd, all of it.

In the meantime, the Ibrox club sneers at the SPFL’s commercial department even as it undermines the current sponsorship deal by refusing to take part in it. That clearly brings the sport into disrepute and does serious damage to its standing.

But the SFA offers to arbitrate instead and then gets itself into a mess trying to do it. These people are a joke, and the whole system they have built sometimes seems as if it is designed with one purpose; do not offend Ibrox in any way.

That’s what the St Mirren chairman’s crime was after all; he offended the delicate sensibilities of the Peepul.

They complained and the rest was inevitable.

It is high time the SFA and the SPFL explained how this stuff works to us.

Why are some officials allowed to discredit the league and threaten its commercial deals without sanction whilst others are being hauled over the coals for things they did before they were even involved in running clubs?

How do the rules really work?

And who exactly are the rules really for?

For everyone … or just for certain Peepul?