Doncaster Has Called The Ibrox Board Liars. Now He Must Take The Fight To Them.

Neil Doncaster knows now that he and his board are under siege by a ruthless foe that will stop at nothing to inflict humiliation on him and then, finally, when he can’t take it anymore, they intend to put his head on a pike.

This is the traditional fate of the beaten in a certain kind of war, and this is clearly a fight to the death as far as he’s concerned.

We’re watching history unfold right now in Ukraine, and whilst their nation cannot defeat Russia militarily by wiping out their army or marching to Moscow they will have won when only a token force from the aggressor nation remains on their lands, and enough blood is spilled that Putin and his beleaguered government sues for peace.

Such is the fate they deserve.

But Russia will remain no matter what Ukraine does because they lack the wherewithal to finish the job, and the West won’t because they know that Russia would take the whole world down with them if it came to that, as any country with a nuclear arsenal would. This offers us an interesting lesson in where Doncaster is right now.

Ibrox has gone on the offensive.

For him this is an existential battle, and that’s one of the things that has given them encouragement.

They probably don’t see a downside here.

As with Ukraine, the only power who can intervene won’t do it because a larger conflagration is not something we need in our lives, but we’ve given what aid to the SPFL board that we can.

No-one can doubt that Celtic was instrumental in helping this deal go through.

We have long been the club which most often finds itself in Doncaster’s corner.

There are Celtic fans who don’t like us propping that man up … Hell, folks, I don’t like it myself.

But when asked how he felt about siding with Soviet Communists after Hitler attacked Russia in 1941 Churchill famously said, “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.

We know who the real enemy is, and we know exactly what sort of damage their reckless behaviour can do. And so yes, we’ll keep Doncaster breathing without directly entering the conflict.

But that man has to do the heavy lifting on his own.

He cannot defeat Ibrox in the classical sense any more than Ukraine can defeat Russia, but he can make all this simply not worth their while, and we would recognise that as a win.

But he cannot do it from a prone position, and he cannot back away hoping that if he doesn’t put his hands up that might forestall another strike.

It will happen whether he’s on his feet or on his knees and when those are your choices the smart man gets up and starts throwing punches of his own, and Doncaster, now that he’s survived yet another assault and now appears to understand that this is a problem which isn’t going away is finally going to have to confront those options.

He should make sure that he stays on the front foot from here on in.

He should book himself on every sports desk show at the weekend and keep telling the facts over and over again until even our media is forced to write it the way it happened.

And then he should get busy scouring the rulebook for something that allows he and his governing body to do that club some harm. It will not drive them backwards in panic, but it will clue them into a new reality, one where they pay for every act of aggression.

That is what he should have done last year.

But even a late learner can still get the picture and draw the right conclusions.

I think he now understands what has to be done.