The Ex-Refs Are Right To Call Out Ibrox And The SFA In Row Over Assault On Celtic Coach.

It was a matter of time, I guess, before ex-refs had their own podcast. Everyone else is doing it so why not these guys? Des Roache and Steve Conroy have been doing so for a while and making headlines, and whilst I think they have talked a ridiculous amount of nonsense at times they aren’t always wrong and today they were absolutely spot on.

They are both stunned by the leniency of the SFA sanction against the Ibrox women’s assistant coach who attacked Fran Alonso completely unprovoked at the end of the recent game where we scored a late equaliser. Both have cited cases where the charge was far less extreme and the punishment meted out was far harsher.

I could not have agreed more. I thought it was an appallingly lax sentence, a six match ban for something that could easily have seen him sitting in the stand for games well into double figures.

I’ll tell you what else they had right; Ibrox’ reaction.

“(They) should have dismissed him,” Conroy said, echoing what many of us said at the time. “That’s gross misconduct. You can’t have that from a senior part of the organisation. If I was running an organisation, I would have sacked him.”

He then focussed on the SFA’s failure. “Without a shadow of a doubt, the ban is too lenient. You can’t say it was a rush of blood or adrenalin. He deliberately and with fore-thought sought the guy out and deliberately stuck the head on him. It’s criminal.”

Roache accused the SFA of “playing hide and seek.” That’s another on the nose assessment. To me that’s all the SFA is ever doing these days, and they certainly did it here. I thought it odd that McPherson was only being charged under one SFA code of conduct when that charge is usually only used in conjunction with others; in effect, he was charged with conduct which brings the game into disrepute instead of something relating to violent conduct.

Quite who made that decision, and why, is only one of the questions the governing bodies should be forced to answer. It was clear-cut violent conduct, so why wasn’t that listed as the main charge? Because he was sorry? Because he apologised?

Big deal. So what? As I said at the time, people do that in courtrooms every single day … which is where this piece of thuggery might well end up.

An apology isn’t good enough. Even if you think in the old code that “justice should be tempered with mercy” and agree he’s a victim too – a preposterous notion in this case – disciplinary proceedings aren’t just about meting out punishment but about providing an effective deterrent and in this the SFA has shockingly, lamentably failed.

The standard, and the precedent, has been set. That’s the thing now. The next person to do this can point to the six match ban and expect that to be as far as it goes. The SFA never thinks further than not wanting to upset Ibrox … and the club itself hasn’t subjected him to any kind of public disciplining for the action either, so we know where they stand.

But the governing body has a responsibility to more than one club and they blew it here big time. The sentence is a joke. Ibrox’s silence on it and failure to impose their own punishment – a public sacking would have sent a very clear message indeed – is a flat-out disgrace that keeps the temperature dangerously high ahead of Hampden.

It should not have taken two former officials with a podcast and a handful of bloggers to point this out. The mainstream media, too, has a far more forgiving attitude to this than they would have if this was a fan sticking the nut on somebody.

Their hypocrisy and cowardice continues to appal me.