SFA member clubs Hearts and Partick Thistle are “incredulous” that the SFA charged them for breaking SFA member club rules. In a joint statement of 83 words, which surely indicates that Ann Budge has lost her ability to both type and dictate, the clubs do not dispute the clarity of the rules, or that they broke the rules, or that when they raised an action at the Court of Session, the Court affirmed the action was against the rules.
In going to the Court of Session, Hearts, claiming £8m and Thistle, claiming £2m, wanted next season stopped, holding the Sword of Damocles over the game, hoping to force the SPFL to cave into their demands or see a scorched earth landscape for Scottish football.
I can only assume the plan sounded plausible when it was hatched by Hearts chief exec Budge and Thistle’s Jacqui Low, but before embarking on any action, you should always run through all options available to the other side, not just the fanciful ones you hope will happen. Is a bit of Game Theory too much to ask?
The plan was brutally flawed from the off. Had they read the rules, they could have gone straight to SFA arbitration, instead of incurring an unnecessary threat of expulsion from the SFA on the road to SFA arbitration.
Today, they complain about “escalating legal costs”. If only they had spent money earlier on a lawyer, asking for advice on how to proceed within the rules. Hearts and Partick Thistle were relegated for two reasons: Covid-19 ended Scottish football early and both clubs were outclassed on the field by every other team in their division, many of whom did so on a fraction of their resources.
They are possibly the two worst run clubs in Scottish football, and given some of the competition, that’s an incredible achievement. This fiasco was an unnecessary self-inflicted wound. It shows a lack of insight, poor forward planning, insufficient experience of the industry and a failure to take appropriate advice; features that are common in failing organisations. All the polite media coverage of these two clubs has done them no good, it just emboldens them to ever-more dangerous positions. It is easy and the popular thing to sound like a fan and act without consideration of the consequences, but when you are in charge, if you don’t run every scenario before acting, I can guarantee you will lead your club into turmoil. The Budge and Low legacies will not be the fawning retrospectives you have heard until this point.
In taking their action, Hearts and Partick threatened the viability of the entire Scottish game. Sanctions should be appropriate: suspend them from the League for one season. I would let them continue in the Scottish Cup, four years on, Hibs fans deserve another fun day at Hampden.
And I’ve not even started on Jim Jefferies’ new position at Hearts, as they postpone the search for a sporting director. A recent heart attack survivor who was sacked by Hearts nine years ago and went on to manage Dunfermline to two consecutive relegations, clearly demonstrates Ann Budge knows what she is doing.
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Papajoe55
Laugh out loud moment. Very funny!🤣
The whole politicising of football concerns me.
Who decides what is permitted and what is ignored?
To see every sky commentator with the regulatory BLM and NHS badges, with both teams last night similarly adorned? It’s all very scripted.
Football was pretty silent on the #metoo movement, despite many footballers being alleged or convicted of sexual assaults. Much more could have been done here.
Similarly, sectarianism and white on white racism is all too problematic in Scottish football. Why the silence here.
I remain unconvinced. However, it’ll be interesting to see strips with BLM and NHS badges – with a poppy added to the mix. Soon wont be room for the badge!
Let’s see what Sky decides is the next thematic cause.
Greenpinata
Nobody compels players to “Take the knee”.
They are informed that some of their fellow players wish to do so because of the rampant racism that they face everyday.
They then have a choice to show support for their discriminated- against comrades or stand aside and not demonstrate this support.
We have seen most players in the NFL ignore, initiallly, the example set by Colin Kaepernick who lost his career to this stance,
We have seen some of the Formula One drivers take part and some choosing not to.
There was no compulsion involved,
However, many of those who chose not to join in, asked not to be judged by that action but they are pissing against the wind in doing so. Lewis Hamilton told them so in no uncertain manner and I am sure that Odsonne, Christopher, Jeremie, Karamoko, Olivier, Ismaili and Mohammed would lose some respect for a colleague who could not join in with their much-needed protest; they are not being asked to risk having their heads busted on a march; merely to show that they too disapprove of anti-black racism and are not afraid to say so. If Millwall and Burnley players can do so, then Celtic players certainly can.
If a colleague at work tells you that there is discrimination against their colour and you can see and hear that this is true, you had better have a good reason (and I have not heard one- a player who can’t physically kneel is not fit to play) for choosing not to support openly but seeking to be exempt from judgement as a result.
This reasoning that we need to deal with anti-Irish racism first because that is what we suffer just does not fly. You cannot wait for all discriminations to be tackled before you tackle the main issue. At the very least you can escape anti-Irish racism until people learn that you are Irish. You cannot escape anti-black, anti-brown or anti-yellow racism unless your life is surrounded by blind people.
As a spectator, if you cannot show a knee in solidarity, and cramped spaces are as much of a factor as bad knees, then you can join in the gesture in other ways.
There are admitted anomalies in the tolerance shown by football authorities to a Black Lives Matter open protest accompanieed by shirt slogans and the intolerance they showed towards pro-Palestine discrimination, for example. Whllst ackowledging that inconsistency I cannot reach out to a position that no political protest can be supported until all political protest is allowed.
Robert Kelly and our fans could never have protested being deprived of our right to fly the Irish flag if that were so.
P.S. For the avoidance of a needless red herring, I support Niall McGinn’s call for anti-Irish discrimination to be tackled but I am sure that Niall and NFL know that anti-Irish racism is a more localised occurence than the much more widespread anti-black sentiment and it does not nor should not take precedence.
Arsenal fans drooling over KT ….. future captain…masterclass against Salah…. Mr Consistency……way clear of Robertson…..potential to be Best left back in the world……
Who’d ah thunk it?
Tell us something we don’t know.
Uncle Jimmy
The BLM protest on sports fields started with the players. Initially with Colin Kaepernick in San Francisco, who was relatively unsupported, isolated, intimidated and lost his career to the festure. He follows in a long line from Muhammed Ali refusing the draft and Tommie Smith and John Carlos 1968 Olympics protest. All of them were punished by their Sport and their countries for their protest- they were not an easy gesture to be made by well paid athletes. Even the 3rd place runner, Peter Norman, of Australia suffered a racist backlash from his country and sporting authoriteis for recognising the legitimacy of Smith & Carlos’s cause.
It was not the TV companies that legitimised this protest; it was the people power who persuaded the TV companies, so far only in this case, to “decide the thematic cause” as you put it.
You and Grenpinata have a point about the inconsistency of it. It is unfair.
Your suggestion that the Me Too movement was overlooked in an industry with a bad record on this, is especially telling, and I would support you in any campaign to see Football contribute to this.
However this movement is a people led movement where sponsors and TV companies, like Sky, have been blown away and forced to take part. They are not and never will be the leaders on this. The whole Sky/Fox/Murdoch organisation is mired in sexist and racist practices and attitudes. They are not our leaders in anything
new article posted.
Scaniel
It would be interesting to know if Kieran is over his injury issues or whether he is finding a way to adapt to the life of constant nagging low level injury that is the lot of many professional overworked athletes (don’t get the violins out- I am commenting about the levels of fitness and running they have to do over 90 minutes these days- I am well aware that the guys in the 60s and 70s used to play 60 plus games a season too but, honestly, their training programmes were amateurish compared to present day and the pace is different too. Those guys had natural stamina and speed honed by 10,000 hours of street football before they were picked up as seniors.
SFTB,
If I may say so and with respect. Nonsense.
Of course players in England were / and are compelled to ” take the knee” . Any individual disagreeing would have quickly found that they had no future in the game. Do you really think they would jeopardise their privileged status ?
But now clubs like Spurs and Palace are distancing themselves. Why is that.
Nobody on here has preached equality more than myself. I still think that should the benchmark for all.
Cheers and HH.
Greenpinata
Has any player confirmed to you that they wished to opt out but was “compelled” to do so.
The guys at Formula one did it and they will take the consequences , not from their sponsors or TV companies but from their fellow drivers
Spurs and Palace players are fully supportive of the anti-discrimination ethos of BLM and have been very careful not to be seen as in disagreement.
Spurs are protesting about a “perceived” anti-semitic tweet from BLM ( have you read the tweet? It seems to confuse anti-Zionist land expansion with being anti-semitic) and Palce are expressing concern about the wider aims of BLM (de-funding police etc:)
It does not matter to me or many peole whether it is BLM that takes continued precedence or their own “Kick it Out” that takes a forefront it has never managed to yet establish.
The point is that they represent and will continue to do so.
The very fact that players from within Spurs and Palace can raise these concerns via their club spokespeople shows that there is no compulsion. It is ok to disagree with extraneous positions of BLM; it is not ok to say I will not support my black colleagues in protesting discrimination
SFTB,
your argument does not really hold up when you see the abuse James MAC Clean has had to endure because of his stance on the Poppy.How many players supported him,while he was being racially abused all over England.Any player not taking the knee before games,would have been vilified in England.Dubbed a racist.
Turkeybhoy
My argument would only be damaged if I had said that James McLean had not suffered abuse or that anti-Irish racism did not exist. As I said neither of these things , I think I still have a position that can hold.
James has quite rightly lamented the lack of support that he has received for being on the end of anti-Irish racism at grounds in England. I think Niall McGinn and Neil Lennon have a righteous similar complaint here.
But, unless we are saying that anti-Irish racism is more rampant than anti-black racism or that it should be tackled as the priority, then we are not in disagreement. I don’t think James McLean asked for either of those things so his words are welcome as an addition to the discrimination debate rather than a distraction from them.
I am merely distancing myself from those who argue we should not support BLM till we have resolved anti-Irish racism. We, the Celtic support, can walk and chew gum at the same time
For what it’s worth, my view is that ALL lives matter, be they human, animal, insect, reptile or fish.
To a wasp for example,to it anyway, it’s life certainly matter. Who are we to keep on killing, killing, killing.
KINGLubO
Forgot birds
KINGLUBO on 16TH JULY 2020 12:38 PM
For what it’s worth, my view is that ALL lives matter, be they human, animal, insect, reptile or fish (and birds)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For me, your view is very worthwhile ~ thanks for posting it.
HH
…..maybe “worthy” would have been better!