Sevco’s Latest Act Of War Against The SPFL Shows Why Robertson Is Unfit For The Board.

Stewart Robertson remains on the SPFL board tonight in spite of his club’s latest act of aggression against the governing bodies. In a move as futile as it is bizarre, they have reported the SPFL to the SFA for breaching the rules.

This is about the SPFL’s attempt to have Parks of Hamilton excluded from the arbitration process.

To most of us, this is all quite ridiculous.

It’s another example of Ibrox only wanting to abide by the rules that suit them, as well as their lack of respect for commercial contracts. This argument has now dragged on for half a season; God knows what cinch think of it.

To the rest of us it is perfectly clear that the entire controversy has been confected. This is not about sponsorships or commercial deals at all; it’s Sevco opening up a new front in their ongoing war against the governing bodies.

If they were any other club I would believe that there might be an altruistic motive attached to some of this … but this is Ibrox pursuing its own ends and its own grievances and stoking the paranoia of its own fans.

Most observers do not believe they have a legitimate case.

I believe that will be fully borne out when the central issues are finally in front of an arbitrator.

The whole idea that Ibrox is bound by a contract signed between them and their own chairman is ludicrous.

They have numerous sponsorship deals with competing bookmakers.

They have deals with two different cryptocurrency firms.

God alone knows how many other similar conflicts there are amongst the more than 5000 deals that Bisgrove has signed.

This dispute is so obviously counterfeit.

But it raises, again, the issue of why the SPFL board allows Stewart Robertson to remain on it.

He was one of the handful who voted against the league bringing forward the winter’s break and as I said in a piece yesterday if they hadn’t been heading to Celtic Park and Pittodrie, for closed door matches, you suspect they’d have been the first club to call for an early shutdown as they need the match-day income more than any other side in the league.

It’s clear to all, then, that Robertson is not fulfilling the conditions on which he serves; which are to look after the best interests of the game.

He is on the board to look after the best interests only of his own club and last summer he spent the entirety of his time on the board publicly lashing the people he served with and the organisation itself.

If you have a board member who is there only to promote his own club’s interests, then there are grounds for removing him and putting on there someone who will look at the bigger picture.

Someone who cares about the rest of the sport.

Nobody can rightly argue that Stewart Robertson or his club give a damn about Scottish football as a whole.

One suspects that this is partly down to us.

The bi-annual “charade” whereby Celtic swaps places with them or vice versa reeks of a corrupt arrangement which the rest of the game is forced to accept, and if that’s true it’s an area which should be reformed immediately.

No club should be guaranteed a seat at the top table for this very reason; it is certainly patently unhealthy for two clubs to have a seat that they rotate between them.

If that’s all that’s preventing his removal then this is a matter that finally ought to come to a head, and whatever grubby deal exists to assure that outcome needs to be consigned to the bin.

The game deserves better leadership than that, and Robertson and his club has no intention of offering any.