The SFA’s latest shot at Ibrox was not serious. It plays the rest of us for fools.

There are times when the governing body of Scottish football seems determined to insult our intelligence. Yesterday was one of those times.

The SFA released a statement that was clearly meant to put the Ibrox club in their place over the John Brown disciplinary outcome—talking tough, standing firm, sticking to their interpretation of the rules. It was supposed to make them look authoritative. Strong. Decisive. Instead, it did the opposite.

It made them look small, reactive, and afraid. And worse than that, it confirmed something that many of us have come to suspect over years of watching these clowns flail their way through one crisis after another: they are not interested in delivering genuine justice. They are interested in looking like they’re doing something.

There’s a difference. There’s always been a difference. And this whole sorry episode lays it bare for everyone to see.

I’ve covered this in detail. I thought the story had run its course. Right from the start, I’ve said that it smells contrived. Yesterday’s statement out of Hampden was pitiful because it escalated a situation which doesn’t need the oxygen or another round of tit-for-tat back and forth between the national body and the club.

This is a lot of sound and fury over not very much at all. That’s what makes it suspicious. Because all this anger, all this noise, is in stark contrast to the void of silence at the heart of much bigger issues. It is a con-job. It’s a squirrel.

John Brown accused Scottish referees of corruption. Not incompetence. Outright corruption. That is a serious allegation to make, and Brown made it in the tone of a man who thought he was bulletproof. The SFA slapped him with a £3,000 fine and a warning to the club. It was a slap on the wrist disguised as a stern telling off. The club responded with a frothing, foaming-at-the-mouth statement that was so unhinged it read like it had been dictated by a drunk guy on Twitter.

Their reaction was over-the-top even by their standards. This was a perfectly straightforward crisis to navigate. Apologise in private, slap him on the wrist, and pay the fine without rancour. Instead they came out shooting. Who does that over something this small? This unimportant?

They accused the SFA of double standards. Of targeting them unfairly. They demanded answers. They hinted at dark conspiracies. It was all the usual hysteria, all the usual victim routine, wrapped up in the familiar guff about transparency and accountability from the same people who still won’t explain how their last club got themselves a Champions League licence in 2011.

If this isn’t contrived then you know what it is? It’s a warning to the SFA not to take them on over bigger matters, the ones that are of greater concern, the ones which could result in our players or officials or fans getting hurt.

The SFA wants to look tough. They want to be seen as the grown-ups in the room. They’re desperate to project strength. So, they’ve picked a fight they think they can win—a soft target, John Brown mouthing off, a silly comment on club TV. The club has responded with full aggression; it’s either a smokescreen or its a warning. “Don’t mess with us.” Not that they had to worry about that, because where it matters the SFA never has and I don’t think they ever will.

Because where is this energy when it matters? Where is it when players are struck by objects thrown from the crowd? Where is it when supporter behaviour crosses the line into dangerous, criminal conduct? Where has been all through this years of Peepul up to their knees in fenian blood? Where is the iron fist then?

As all of this was playing out yesterday—this phoney spat over a fine that means next to nothing in real terms—an actual, serious football-related offence was in the news. An Ibrox fan was jailed for throwing a Buckfast bottle at Celtic keeper Viljami Sinisalo during the derby match in May. Jailed. Not fined. Not warned. Not cautioned. Sent to prison. Eight months inside and banned from matches for six years.

The courts had their say. The legal system acted.

A sheriff described the man as a “vicious drunken hooligan” and said the offence could have seriously injured the player or anyone else nearby. It was violent. It was reckless. It was dangerous.

And the SFA said not a word far less issued a sanction.

They didn’t fine the club. They didn’t even launch an investigation. They didn’t say that clubs must be responsible for what happens inside their stadiums. They didn’t cite duty of care. They didn’t invoke any of the rules they love to quote when they think they’ve got a soft target in front of them.

They buried it. Just like they always do.

And that silence tells you everything you need to know. This isn’t about justice. It’s not about protecting the integrity of the game. It’s not even about consistency. It’s about choosing your battles. The SFA has made a big show of holding the club to account over John Brown because it costs them nothing. It lets them posture without confronting anything real. But when the issue is serious—when it’s about violence, about safety, about a club with a long history of fan misconduct—they vanish.

That’s why a lot of people think Scottish football is corrupt. Not because they believe in secret lodges or grand conspiracies, but because they can see, clearly, that the people in charge will run a mile from any confrontation that might require them to take real action or run any sort of real risk.

They will never, ever get tough with the Ibrox club when it counts.

They’ll punish a player for celebrating. They’ll suspend someone for showing a t-shirt. They will police club media channels. They will posture on flares and smoke bombs. But a bottle thrown from the stands in a high-stakes derby match that could have ended in tragedy? That’s just the price of doing business.

We’re supposed to believe they care about standards. We’re supposed to believe they care about upholding the laws of the game. But they’ll wag a finger at John Brown for a daft comment and then pretend not to notice when one of their own member clubs is associated with dangerous criminality.

We’ve seen it all before. This isn’t new. We’ve had players assaulted by projectiles. We’ve had pitch invasions. We’ve had sectarian singing. We’ve had banners that violate every rule in the book. And every single time, the SFA and the SPFL shuffle their feet, mumble some nonsense about police investigations, and then hope it all just goes away. They don’t want to take on Ibrox. They never have. They never will.

That’s what makes this row over Brown so ridiculous.

It’s performative nonsense. A choreographed dance between two institutions who are as bad as each other, both pretending to be locked in combat while quietly agreeing to keep the real issues off the table.

Yes, the Ibrox statement was absurd. It was paranoid, hysterical, and beneath contempt. And yes, some will applaud the SFA for standing up for itself and contradicting what they’ve pretty much said is a disinformation campaign.

But to me the whole thing is a disinformation campaign. Because the real story yesterday wasn’t in Hampden’s press release. It was in a courtroom, where justice was actually being done in a case where the governing body of Scottish football wasn’t even in the building and has been conspicuous by its silence.

They are cowards. And the whole country can see it.