Andy’s Sting In The Tale (14/03/25) “King Arthur, Carl Schmitt and Finding Solutions”

(Photo:@Homesoffootball)

This week saw the third ‘Round Table’ meeting hosted at St Andrew’s House by Minister Maree Todd and attended by a mix of the games administrators, politicians, and fans.
The minutes are not out yet but following a question from me on your collective behalf when we first convened, the minutes will always be in the public domain unless something is discussed, but for good reasons declared confidential and not recorded in detail.
Fair enough, ‘Chatham House’ rules like that simply allow people to be more frank in discussions because what they say will not be attributed or used against them.

Anyway I was there this week except I wasn’t really.

I was beamed into a wee lap top computer, on my own, facing the audience, seeing only half of those present, with no speech/interaction button or moderator but hearing most of the discussion.

For those who know and follow my particular journey and battle with AML I’m still in purdah till at least early May with no personal immunity and with ‘everyday’, but dangerous to me, obstacles to swerve and avoid.
I’m still on immunosuppressants which are toxic but have so far prevented the internal civil war that is called ‘graft vs host’ disease.

My bloods currently show that so far my German stem cells are working well and all seems to be on plan.

Here’s a wee aside/and plea.
If you are or have friends or kids or whatever, over 17 and under 25 ask them to register with Anthony Nolan Trust as donors because my 23 yr old German donor has really changed my life.
It’s non onerous.

So, back to the Round Table on Monday.

As Max Boyce used to say, “I was there”.

The meeting, as a forum is still finding its way in genuinely good faith and can become the basis for a very powerful game-changing movement if the people round the table want that.

Here is a wee insight.
I’ve been chair at the SFSA for a few years now and have learned that it is easy, very easy to sling mud at the establishment tent from a discreet distance but that achieves zilch apart from a few column inches in hungry red tops.
Change, real change, has to come from within and from common good policy agreed rather than superimposed dogma or empty slogans.
Football, essentially run in Scotland for clubs by clubs will always have major inbuilt challenges including ‘revert positions’ that need to be constantly challenged, especially when things like kids football get almost zero priority and when substantial government (tax-payer) monies are coming into the game.

The Football ‘revert positions’ can be summarised as:
‘Short termism’, ‘Self-interest’, and ‘all clubs are not equal’ , because the big guys have the loudest voices.

It is a fact that at its worst, 
Football demonstrates that ‘Greed is good’.

We can’t change that across the top of the game but we can do what we do for ourselves better, and sometimes that means asking the kind of questions that the new Football Regulator in England will be asking and more importantly finding the best pathway.

I was desperate to ask questions after both the SFA and the SPFL presentations but stuck in my wee box I was dumb and invisible to the room.
Not normal for me.Scott Robertson on behalf of kids football made an incredibly important point that of all the record revenues feeding into the game nothing is coming into grass roots football.
Nothing is funnelling down.
Bloody Nothing!

Every footballer starts there but somehow grass roots has become the least considered and most underinvested area in our game.
Well done Scott.
Nobody and no club can disagree with more resource into kids.

Then it was the end of meeting three, but Maree Todd summing up finally remembered Andy in his wee box and they turned up my sound and asked if I had anything to contribute.
I said I had one question and one point for the next meeting agenda.

So the floor was mine-ish.

I am fed up hearing that ‘Pay per View’ for Scottish International Matches is because of Uefa Central Media Sales.
So I asked the SFA person to confirm whether Uefa Central Media selling process(which the SFA have long used to justify their ‘Pay per View’ approach to selling Scotland games) is mandated by Uefa or just an SFA business choice.

After a politician’s non answer at first I simply asked the question again.

The hard fact is: the choice to use, (and hide behind ) Uefa Central is an SFA choice that can be changed in the future. It is all about short term money.

And over 90% of Uefa nations national teams are on Free to Air.
‘Pay per View is not normal in Uefa land.

And then the point I wanted to make was made from my lap topped voice.
That ‘kids football needs to be prioritised by both the Round Table and the game itself’.

The game needs to reset from within.

And that’s Where Carl Schmitt Comes in (the man in  my heading not my stem cells donor,) 

In his 1932 book ‘The Concept of the Political’ he summed up a “friend/enemy” distinction that is human nature and that King Donald is using to his short term benefit in the USA.

Basically ‘if you’re not in the club and not a card carrying friend then you are an enemy’, and therefore we hate you and will do everything we can to hurt and destroy you.

And coincidentally this morning when thinking about Sting, I read in the NYT a really good column on what we can call

‘The Compilation of Wisdom’.

It was specifically about Trump and what history will see as his disastrous first 100 days.
In reality it’s about ‘how to go about change’ that rings true with what our game needs to do.
Here’s a summary and it’s bang on for what the Round Table can become.

Long Term Change Can Be Managed

But it has to work for all sides

Andy’s Sting in the Tale

1. Grounds for Divorce
2. Bloody SRU Normalising Pyros
3. Why was Ibrox Jumping?
4. Alcohol Survey
5. A Setanta Story
6. Steve’s Contract and Meaningless Percentages

1. What Do the Big Clubs Know, or Believe?

Man U are currently £1Billion-ish in debt with a bunch of expensive overpaid impulse purchases they can’t move on to others.
So hard-up as a business they have decimated their payroll including some well-loved customer facing staff and have also since withdrawn the team-building perk of free lunch together.

Like all financially challenged clubs they announced this week a Norman Foster designed plan to move to a £2 Billion, 100,000 super-stadium nearby, subject to a crucial land deal.
The fans said, “Real fans hate what has happened to our club, they have forgotten their community”.
Sir Alex said, “We must be brave and build a new stadium suitable for a new history”.

Around Europe some big clubs are in deep preparation for something: Barca are well into a project for a new Camp Nou and this week the two Milan giants announced plans for a new San Siro.

I’d say they see the future as being more than their domestic leagues.

And maybe instead of.

2. Should We Blame Firework Phil?

Hearts ex CEO back in the bad old days of mad Vlad took his deep ingrained firework habit to Tynie sowing seeds for a future of ‘copycatting by idiots abroad’.
Well, this week we even saw pyros nonsense at Downfield Juniors v Dundee North End last Saturday, a day when simultaneously you couldn’t see Doddie Weir’s family at Murrayfield for the SRU induced smoke.
No wonder the feeble minded think it is a good idea to emulate.

3. Jumping Songs and Reportage

First well done to Rangers for a truly amazing result against a very good Fenerbahçe side.
Despite what ‘The Special One’ said afterwards the score was the real judge and the only judge.
And good luck on Sunday to both Glasgow giants, I hope it’s a good game and that both sets of your fans do us proud.

That means none of the particular songs glorifying para military organisations celebrating the killing of mostly innocent people, no razor gang tribute nonsense and no songs about knees and blood.

When Rory on TNT said Ibrox was jumping on his commentary last night he didn’t say it was with sectarian ditties that should be consigned to the very sad past they came from.

Am I the only one who finds our media’s and club’s acceptance of the unacceptable just plain wrong?

If the cry was Up to our knees in Muslim blood would it make a difference?

4. Whether You Do or Whether You Don’t

Please fill in our survey of fans on alcohol at grounds just like watching rugby or cricket.https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/s-f-s-a/alcohol-in-football-grounds-2025

5. The New Setanta

No it’s not the names that the original company has used since it went bust and caused carnage to our game.
It’s a maincrop potato from Ireland which was bred from Red Rooster and something else.

I just thought you’d like to know in time for this year’s plantings.

Andy’s Sting is:

A wee blog that tries to follow stuff in football with wide view but an emphasis on what happens North of the Wall.
Many fans are increasingly alienated by the click bait attitude of our mainstream media who follow the readership rather than the real news.

As ever and always, any opinions I type with my two fingers are mine and like someone I wish was advising Sir Keir today, and King Donald of Mar-a-Lago too, John Maynard Keynes, I reserve the right to change my mind if I get better information.

In fact I welcome real debate and there is nothing wrong with disagreeing and then going away to think it all through again.
It doesn’t make us enemies.

Andy’s Album of the Week

Dr Feelgood : Down By the Jetty

Back in the day, I used to buy the NME and Melody Maker most weeks and had increasingly become aware from the small ads for gigs and some live reviews that a band from Canvey Island in Essex were starting to make waves.
They were called, Dr Feelgood, a slang name for heroin or sometimes the dealer.

Anyway on 14th March 1975 watching the OGWT on a black and white telly in our student accommodation Dr Feelgood closed the show with three tracks.

Yes, bands like Led Zeppelin at the time used (AKA ripped-off?) classic blues tracks as a basis for their music and I guess sort of made it their own but Dr Feelgood stripped the blues right back and drove it as fast as they could.
No Hype, No Fuss, Just Dr Feelgood from the Essex island.

They were a year ahead of the punk phenomenon but seminal and Paul Weller, Blondie and The Ramones all later paid homage to the influence from this Essex four piece.
This album was the best they recorded and in the quest for the next level, whatever that is or was, the band in my opinion didn’t know where to go to next.
Milk and Alcohol was probably their commercial peak but the band had by then become trapped in their semi-successful bubble.

I saw them live at the Playhouse in a package that included ‘Richard Hell and the Voidoids’ and ‘John Cooper Clarke.
Both support acts were crap and Feelgoods were good, very good but I wished I’d seen them in 74, or ’75 in a small venue.
‘She Does it Right’ and ‘Roxette’ are wonderful tracks and this is a quite remarkable and edgy album.
I remember Wilko after his cancer, stage 4 diagnosis, surviving a few seasons in Game of Thrones a few years ago and remember finding out he had studied English Lit at Newcastle University and been a teacher in his previous life.

Where are the guitar heroes coming from today?