The Transparent Mr. Regan: The Game's Up.

08 December 2011 19:06
It can't be easy running a popular sport in a country where reasonable opinions and calm discussion aren't popular or common.

But I think today may be a big day: it's surely the day that the fans and the Club alike have to consider that Stewart M. Regan is unfit for purpose. There's a lot of emotive things to discuss - and indeed dismiss - but the reason for this lack of faith - were it ever fully present - should not be too difficult to follow, follow.

Stewart,

It’s not the blocking on Twitter of almost every Rangers fan who has, politely or otherwise, had the gall to ask difficult questions of you.

It’s not the way you facilitated the invitation of Peter Lawwell onto an SFA board as a reward for the way in which his Club guaranteed that your officials had to go on strike and accused you through their resident QC McBride of institutional bias.

It’s not the muddled and bizarre comments and statements attributed to you which suggest that you don’t understand the game and don’t even know why people are shaking their heads.

And it’s not even the fact that your new ‘transparent’ SFA regime seems to run in accordance with a definition and understanding of the term that is denied the rest of us mere mortals.

No, Stewart, it’s because you’re incompetent and now guilty of admitting you cannot offer clubs fair treatment.

In response to a comment regarding today’s Aluko ban and the similarities it may or may not have had with previous – we’ll call them O’Connoresque – incidents, the SFA Chief Executive had this to say:

"Separate panels sit for every case and consider the evidence. You cannot compare one case directly against another."

Defending the implementation of a two-match ban for simulation judged after the event he explains why this severe punishment is necessary:

"If a referee makes a decision that has an impact on a game, because of simulation, then that is why it is not just a yellow card."

He further clarified the reasoning behind the two-game suspension in the Aluko case thus:

“It changed the game.”

Where do you start with this?

Does the punishment not apply if the alleged incident occurs when the scoreline is seven-nil? If Jelavic had fallen on his Croatian coccyx and ballooned it over the bar it wouldn’t have mattered?

Given that – in this case – Aluko’s team were already one goal up what exactly does it mean to say “it changed the game.” It didn’t change the result and we certainly cannot presume that the final score would have been one-one had the penalty not been awarded and converted. Every decision taken changes the game. In this context it is a nonsensical, worthless phrase.

When fans see one player dive and go unpunished by a sitting panel and another panel agree in another case with the ref that there is contact yet upholds the decision to ban the player what conclusion, exactly, are we supposed to draw? There is nothing more certain in Scottish football this season than a future SFA panel clearing a player of simulation. All we need for this whole situation to get worse is for that player to be an unfortunate member of a Celtic team presently doing rather well in the discipline stakes.

The single biggest problem facing the SFA is the clear evidence that points towards the media – BBC production/editorial teams for Sportsound and Sportscene in particular – being the ones responsible for deciding what is and what is not worthy of being considered and acted upon by Vincent Lunny. That is something missing from today’s otherwise excellent response from an incandescent Rangers manager. Those questions – how an unaccountable person or persons can have so much influence on a procedure supposedly made less open to legal action – have to be answered and the Club has to do what the fans cannot accomplish.

And all the while SFA CEO Regan blocks fans asking questions and SFA communications chief Darryl Broadfoot gets into arguments with people about how much weight they can bench?

It would be funny were it not so sad.

 

 

Special Lenny was invited over for tea and biscuits with the blazers after last season’s difference of opinion between a member club and the association.

Rangers should decline the sugar (have you seen those teeth?) but they should be inviting themselves over ASAP: and next time they pop in for a cuppa at Hampden it must be while accompanied by a man familiar with a wig.

Source: FOOTYMAD