Keech Hits The Nail On The Head

Rocket · Mar 1, 2013

THE mess surrounding the SPL and SFA's handling of the Rangers crisis means the men in charge should fall on their swords.

THERE is no way back now. Stewart Regan and Neil Doncaster simply have to go.

Thatâs what happens in the real world when chief executives can no longer cope and if Scottish football still wishes to be taken even remotely seriously then it must be the case here too.

Nothing personal you understand. They are decent, well meaning men.

But, no matter how unwittingly, they helped create perhaps the single biggest catastrophe in the history of the Scottish game and now it has engulfed them.

Yesterday they became victims of a scandal that continues to unfold before our very eyes.

And only one reasonable conclusion can be drawn. That those who run the game in this country should hang their heads in shame. They are no longer fit for office.

Yesterday, when Lord Nimmo Smith ruled Rangers should not be stripped of titles, he was actually stripping Regan and Doncaster of their own credibility.

The findings from his investigation into alleged financial chicanery at Ibrox have left both men hopelessly exposed.

What was an alleged sustained catalogue of rule breaking and deceit stretching over an 11-year period, all the way from 2000 to 2011, has been dismissed as a figment of the imagination.

And now Rangers are not the despicable ogres they had been made out to be, so the time comes for others to look in the mirror and confront some ugly truths.

It was Doncaster who invited Lord Nimmo Smith to take control of this probe when he had the option to oversee it himself.

He passed it over like a live grenade, knowing his own legal team believed Rangers deserved to lose five of their 54 league titles. Ultimately, this abdication of responsibility has shown him to be a weak leader and one of flawed judgement. Never more so than yesterday, in fact, when Doncaster was high-tailing it over the border, evacuating the scene before the bombshell went off.

Potentially, the delivery of this judgment could have brought about the single most significant act in the history of football administration.

Had Rangers been hammered by the ultimate sporting sanction, the gameâs entire history would have had to be rewritten. But Doncaster would not have been present. Heâd already got the hell out of Dodge, leaving our crisis-ravaged game behind in a cloud of dust.

This surely amounts to one abdication too many. Iâm sorry, Neil, but please donât rush back. Our sport may be broken but it is better off without such lame leadership. Weâll fix it on our own.

And the same rule must apply to Regan who, at critical moments in this saga, has shown all the composure of a suburban fox at the moment it realises those onrushing headlights are just a yard or two away.

Time after time he has been frozen by his own panic. Now, in the cold light of day, some of the decisions he made in the heated frenzy of it all appear to be quite shameful. Like when he, as head of the big house, endorsed strong arm tactics in an attempt to force Rangers to accept the stripping of titles as part of a hamfisted five way agreement that would have seen Ally McCoistâs side shoehorned into the First Division.

Even at the time that reflected terribly on Regan.

But now? After yesterdayâs news? It seems even more appalling. In fact, it makes his position untenable because it illustrates perfectly the depth of his own confusion. At a crucial moment, he was caught wide eyed and thinking without clarity.

He allowed himself to be manipulated and suckered in by a baying mob who assumed Rangers were guilty just because they wished it so.

For the sake of our game, Regan had to be bigger than that. His role demanded it.

That he was unable to take full control of the situation or even separate the hard facts from the fog of hatred that surrounded it, makes him unworthy of his position. He too has to go.

Itâs not just the Rangers episode that undermines him. Those same flaws came to the surface during other times of crisis. Like when our referees went on strike and almost got the game stopped on his watch. Or when the SFA needed two months more than the rest of the country to realise Craig Levein was doing more harm than good to our national team.

But itâs his horrible mishandling of the Rangers episode that should finish him because as the dust settles it must surely become clear even to Regan the biggest victims in all of this were Rangers themselves.

They have been accused of doing just about everything over the last 13 years. Financial doping, cheating their rivals on an industrial scale, polluting the purity of our game with dual contracts, side letters and criminal tax evasion.

Had even a fraction of it been true then they would have deserved their current status as Scotlandâs pariah club. But Rangers have been found guilty of not much more than being Rangers. And of allowing Craig Whyte to take advantage of them at their weakest moment.

Regan was warned about the consequences as soon as Whyte crossed the front door but again did nothing until the damage had been done inside.

Then when this member club â having been ransacked by its bulging-eyed intruder
â needed his help and his courage, not only did he desert them, he attempted to coerce them and to turn them over. That must be his legacy. And it is one devoid of pride.

The truth is clear now, even if it is hard for some to take. Before Whyteâs intervention, Rangers were guilty only of relatively paltry offences. The Big Tax Case, supposed to bring Â£90million worth of apocalyptic ruination came and went with a whimper. A First Tier Tax tribunal ruled any misdemeanours were minimal and so the Â£5m spent by the taxpayer will result in a pittance of a return for technical breaches.

Now Lord Nimmo Smith has delivered a similar message. Yes, Rangers may have failed to fully declare every detail of the payments made to players but they were far from the devious, scheming, cheating, bogeymen they had been made out to be and worthy of only a Â£250,000 wooden dollar fine.

No, it was only when Whyte took control that the serious wrongdoing occurred.

Whyteâs tenure was a shameful chapter in the clubâs history. Rangers will continue to pay the price for many years to come because Whyte has reduced them to a pathetic state and one from which there is no quick way back.

In time, others who operated in the shadows of this carnage will be shown to have blood on their hands. Some may be proved to have acted with malicious intent.

But not Regan or Doncaster. They did not seek to bring Rangers down. They were simply the wrong men, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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Spot on !

Scottish football can never move forward until these two muppet's have been ousted.

rogueleader · Mar 1, 2013

The Keech hits the nail..............is that the same as when the **** hits the fan ?

AP: Password Mong · Mar 1, 2013

Jackson's a fud. And he's apparently forgotten about the "Small Tax Case" - which preceded Whyte's arrival by 10 years.

Regan and Doncaster are fuds too mind you.

Keech Hits The Nail On The Head

Rocket Well-Known Member

rogueleader suave gringo

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Keech Hits The Nail On The Head

Rocket Well-Known Member

rogueleader suave gringo

AP: Password Mong Well-Known Member

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