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Date: 1st August 2026
Borrowed Frameworks and Missing Foundations: Unpacking the SFA’s Independent Review
As we pointed out last week, the publication of the SFA-commissioned review into the chaotic Scottish Cup Quarter-Final between Rangers and Celtic at Ibrox was meant to mark a decisive moment of reckoning. Led by external sports event consultant Mark Blackbourne, the report laid bare the operational failures, breakdown in risk assessments, and terrifying safety breaches that left police officers “petrified” and brought Scottish football dangerously close to disaster.
Yet, beneath its stark narrative of stadium management breakdowns lies a crucial question of governance: how independent is an investigation commissioned, framed, and paid for by the very governing body whose regulatory failures over decades created the conditions for the crisis?
One striking aspect of the Blackbourne report is not what it discovers, but where its core structural recommendations come from. Seven years ago, the Scottish Football Supporters Association (SFSA) published research—most notably its carefully argued Strict Liability report—contending that Scottish football’s reliance on the soft “reasonably practicable steps” defence renders its disciplinary framework ineffective.
Without a single direct citation, footnote, or acknowledgement, the Independent Review adopts the central architecture long championed by the SFSA:
While the Review interviewed the SFSA as part of its stakeholder list, it presents such systemic reform proposals as novel, internally derived solutions. In fact similar ideas came out the independent fan movement years ago, but were effectively ignored.
In selectively adopting hard sanctions (though some may argue that they should have been even tougher), the Review ignores the foundational philosophy that makes such frameworks work in practice, and builds trust and engagement with the vast majority of fans as a way of leveraging pressure on those involved in dangerous disturbances: namely, policing with community consent.
The SFSA’s research insists that appropriate liability cannot exist purely as a top-down, punitive hammer. It requires a modern, collaborative social contract between authorities, clubs, communities, stewards, and match-going supporters. Effective stadium safety relies on treating the vast majority of law-abiding fans as active partners in self-policing, supported by transparent dialogue, fair ticket distribution, and proportionate stewarding.
Instead, the SFA Review defaults to what some will see as an administrative reflex. It focuses heavily on enforcement—pre-approving banners, restricting access, and imposing top-down sanctions—without addressing the systemic breakdown in trust between supporters and football authorities. By stripping away the civil liberties and community-consent aspects of the SFSA’s work, the Review risks driving fan subcultures further underground rather than integrating them into a safer matchday environment.
Can a review ever be truly independent when the subject of the investigation holds the purse strings?
While Mark Blackbourne deserves credit for his hard work, and while he delivered sharp criticisms of Rangers, Celtic, and Police Scotland, the SFA itself largely escapes structural accountability. The review treats the governing body as a neutral arbiter stepping in to clean up a mess, rather than an active party whose historical refusal to enforce disciplinary rules enables a culture of impunity in some stadia.
By controlling the terms of reference, funding the inquiry, and controlling the publication process, the SFA ensured a report that focused primarily on operational matchday logistics rather than its own regulatory responsibilities.
If Scottish football is to break its cycle of crisis and surface-level reviews, the mechanism for investigating major incidents must change fundamentally:
First, statutory external commissioning: Reviews into major stadium safety failures must be commissioned independently of the SFA and SPFL—ideally overseen by an independent body, such as an Independent Scrutiny Panel (as we have proposed), or ultimately a Football Regulator or a Scottish Government panel.
Second, mandatory citation of evidence: Investigative reports of this serious nature should operate under academic and legal standards of evidence, explicitly referencing published research, stakeholder submissions, and prior policy work to ensure full transparency.
Third, binding tripartite oversight: The implementation of recommendations must not be left to SFA internal committees. An oversight panel comprising independent safety experts, government representatives, and democratically elected fan bodies (like the SFSA) should hold governing bodies publicly accountable for delivering real reform.
Until investigations are properly separated from the governing bodies they seek to scrutinise, “independent” reviews will remain exercise in institutional self-preservation—borrowing the ideas of reform, but refusing to hand over the keys. All this, of course is why our Rebuilding Scottish Football fan-led review (SFSA, 2023) called for a broader framework of independent scrutiny of the governance, finance and conduct of those who govern the game.
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Simon Barrow is a co-founder and former chair of the Scottish Football Supporters Association. He continues to act as a consultant and was editor and a co-author of Rebuilding Scottish Football. He is a public policy specialist and has regularly attended the Cross-Party Group on the Future of Football in Scotland at Holyrood.
Posted in: Latest News, Review of the Game
Tags: Fan Led Review, Scottish fans, SFA, simon barrow, SPFL