BILLY BREMNER MEMORIAL JOIN OUR CAMPAIGN
Date: 22nd December 2023
(Photo:@Homesoffootball)
Thanks Rose for the inspiration for today’s Sting.
A true Scottish hero who our establishment couldn’t handle so they banned her sine die.
(They have a track record of daft reactions).
Rose, we need your fight and passion again collectively to confront our game’s deep-seated reluctance to change for the better.
It was ever thus and this is a huge fight that will take real unity and as many Rose Reillys as we can muster.
This Week’s ‘One-Subject’ Sting
“Move Along MSPs, Nothing to See Here”
That’s Bollocks Ian and Well You Know it!
(AKA – Why the 39th Meeting of Holyrood’s Health, Social Care, and Sport Committee will become a Landmark because the cat is coming out of the bag).
We live in an age where the nation is appalled at the way PPE Medpro, an invented, ‘on the spot shell company’, can make half a dozen phone calls to China, one to a friendly lawyer to hide the owners names and create a paper ‘shell’ company that actually does nothing or makes nothing.
Fair enough you might think, but they then, it seems, sell face masks and gowns from a third party manufacturer in China to our Westminster government, deliver them all through third parties, with no infrastructure like warehouses on the Isle of Man to check, store, and dispatch them, and then trouser something like £30 Million, maybe more when real analysis is done.
Outrageous profiteering at a time of national emergency some think.
More will ‘out’ and this wee cabal will suck others in as this moves forward so I suppose nothing should surprise any of us.
Dinna fash readers, this ‘Sting in the Tale’, will not Mone about Michelle, Doug, their Trust fund that isn’t theirs, honest, their house that had to be sold or any of that manure.
But I sincerely hope Keir Starmer is serious with his plans for a PPE and VIP Lane Regulator to fully investigate all the shenanigans in the tawdry, Westminster-induced gold rush back in 2020 and all aspects of the ‘VIP Lane’ set up to feather certain people’s already well-feathered nests.
I hope Sir Keir’s regulator is given the clout to dig deep enough and the balls and backing to confront what needs confronting.
If you’ve been on the moon you might have missed the fact that Westminster are also well down the tracks for introducing a similar heavy hitting regulator but this time into English Football.
The idea originated when senior football people not aligned to clubs were increasingly concerned about how the game is serially unable to govern itself fairly and with a long term plan.
Sound familiar North of Hadrian’s Wall?
Anyway some heavy hitters including ex Sports Minister Tracey Crouch, with cross party support has battled the initial wall of denials and negative lobbying first thrown at her by people in football opposed to change, mostly for personal reasons.
England will have a regulator and the regulator will ask the right questions, and make calls that help the football community as a whole and not just the biggest and most powerful clubs.
It’s not a magic wand but an important start.
Meanwhile, to use a Greavsie-ism, ‘Up in Chilly Jockoland, Henry McLeish started a parallel and equally needed process that set out to initially ask a range of football insiders for their thoughts on our game as it stands and what we need to do to make it better going forward.
It was a listening process.
This is the same Henry McLeish who used to be First Minister, is a football man through and through, and whom the SFA rated high enough to commission, pay handsomely and work with to produce ‘The McLeish Reports’.
So he has form.
Well, over a period of 18 months, hundreds of Scottish Football heavyweights got together with Henry, mostly on Zoom with the pandemical background, and an inclusive future-plan was produced by a loose and welcoming group called The Scottish Football Alliance.
All are welcome in The Scottish Football Alliance, by the way.
Even initial dissenters.
Both the SFA and SPFL were invited to be part of the discussion back at the very start.
Both ignored the requests.
But they are not on the naughty list, just outside the tent for change.
Both are obviously too busy running the game, by clubs for clubs to consider things like grass roots issues, or what fans think about £80 tops that cost £5 to make, or how to genuinely work with The Scottish Government for endless mutual health benefits.
Or how to improve their commercial departments into top end cash generating units?
In reality we all know both are running the game ‘by the top clubs for the top clubs’ who crave the Uefa riches and in order to meet their personal aspirations need more than the current ‘commercial engine’ tootling along within our game is able to deliver.
The Scottish Football Alliance launched formally at Holyrood in Autumn and there are measures in place for a follow up debate by MSPs on the idea of a Regulator in Scottish football and how it might work best for us all.
The response from the 6th floor at Hampden was silence.
Deafening silence.
Just as it had been to their invitation to input into a plan for changes until yesterday, (see link below).
Meeting of the Parliament: HSCS/19/12/2023 | Scottish Parliament Website
Here is What Andy Thinks
Football wants to run itself for itself and has evolved into two organisations which are allegedly ‘club run for clubs by clubs’ but in reality are ‘club run for a very few clubs, by a very few clubs’ with a very short term attitude to everything.
Self-interest has become both the dogma and the protection mechanism for every chairman in the land and there is a huge difference between club chairmen and fans when they get together about how to organise and manage how football is run.
Chairmen look after their own club and vote protectively, always.
If that means they sometimes hurt their fellow chairmen like happened when the leagues were closed and Partick Thistle got shafted during Covid then that’s just what happens.
That is Scottish football.
Fans are different.
When they first come together each is fiercely protective of their own club at first but amazingly barriers soon break down and they can and do see the bigger picture.
Scottish Football needs that urgently but is incapable of seeing it from within and simply gets by, managing a decline of mostly its own making.
It is currently unable to manage the complexities of a sport that goes from informal kick-abouts with jerseys for goals, up to the inadequate international statement that is Hampden Park.
Dealings With The Scottish Government
Don’t ask how much taxpayers money makes its way into football from Holyrood, historically and year by year.
Amazingly nobody knows.
Why?
Good question.
Is that a disgrace?
Yes.
Don’t ask for minutes of all the meetings between Scottish Football and the Scottish Government, and there are plenty.
There aren’t any minutes or even records, till yesterday.
Why?
Another good question.
Is that a disgrace?
Yes.
Don’t ask why SFA and SPFL board meetings are not available for core stakeholders and open like the Scottish Government chamber.
Why?
Those who run the SFA/SPFL don’t want it even when they speak about our taxpayer’s ‘via the Government’ Money.
Moving On
Here are 14 Things That Henry McLeish’s ‘Open and Welcoming’ Scottish Football Alliance are Calling For
And when Henry says ‘we’ he means we because everyone and their views and needs are welcome and wanted.
That even means the SFA and SPFL and the Chairmen have to be involved.
In all parts of the process too.
There are lots of good people inside the game and it all needs to start with a bit of listening and they have to be allowed to contribute.
Henry’s Starting Agenda for Scottish Football
1. We need to constantly improve our product, build our Scottish Football brand, and market ourselves better to stimulate and attract more income at all levels. The game needs more resources and our commercial engine has to improve.
2. We need to increase and welcome better competition at all levels especially at the top.
3. We need to produce better quality players by focussing on and nurturing youth development though a fully funded, integrated youth and elite structure. And we have to stop damaging kids that get dumped along the way by the current system.
4. We need a fairer distribution of resources at all levels across the game.
5. The pyramid system has to be more open and allow clubs to find their own levels. Regionality is sensible and almost certainly essential.
6. Scottish football has to be accessible and welcoming to all especially those who can least afford it and football should tackle inequalities openly and fairly.
7 We need to improve the player and fan experience by constantly upgrading infrastructure at all levels.
8.Fans need to be recognised as the lifeblood of the game, as a key source of revenues and as core stakeholders with a voice that is listened to.
One hard fact is the SFA and SPFL don’t know what fans think because if they asked, they might not, sorry, would not get the answers they want, so they simply don’t.
9. Scottish football benefits when fans have a stake in their club and the club is integrated into the community. That should become the norm.
10. Women’s and Girl’s football needs extra investment to accelerate and find its level.
11. Fans’ involvement in structure and governance of the game should be formalised at all levels.
12. Overall the game has to move from short-termism and self-interest to long term planning for the common and greater good.
13. The SFA/ SPFL roles should be reviewed and streamlined with all options open.
14. Scottish Football should work with the Scottish Government on long term health improvement programmes.
I can’t disagree with any of the above and don’t know how anyone paid to run our game can.
But yesterday, Ian Maxwell, the SFA Grand Fromage spoke to MSPs in the 39th meeting of the Health Social Care and Sport Committee.
Unusually for any SFA you can actually watch and hear it all.
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee | Scottish Parliament TV
Ian is a decent guy and a football man through and through as well.
And yes, he has a great job that pays well, and is remunerated to avoid change. More about running a stable ship rather than thinking about the game’s future.
If I was the regulator in Scottish Football I’d want people like Ian in my team and on my side.
But working on a different agenda and looking forward all the time.
Currently Ian’s first job is to stop any hint or indeed threat of change in its tracks.
That is what he is told to do by his labyrinthine committees.
That can and does bring the wrong approach to dealing with real problems.
The wrong things get said and mandated and football tries to close ranks, establishment style.
Just like whoever blamed the Liverpool fans when the questions first arose about Hillsborough.
Or the EPL initially dissing Tracey Crouch about her Regulator idea.
Or Michelle Mone’s lawyers threatening the Guardian journalists.
Or the Post Office who knew they had a dodgy IT scheme yet didn’t come clean about the poor souls who were in jail!
The Establishment doesn’t want to be challenged in any way.
Not now, not ever.
“Nothing to see here, all is good in Scottish Football”.
The self-same establishment that knows of at least 3 clubs with particular current financial challenges.
The same establishment that is aware of several clubs with serious questions about ownership!
The same establishment that has done half of bugger all since 1982 to restart Schools Football.
The same establishment who had to be fought by our women’s internationals through our employment courts system to agree commonality between our men’s and women’s international teams
The same establishment whose gross mishandling of the Rangers 2012 financial crash set up a series of nightmarish future scenarios that in a very harsh reality will cost Scottish taxpayers over an estimated £100 Million.
So guys, Please don’t come the “nothing to see crap here”.
To be fair, Ian was well briefed for the committee, seemed to know the questions coming his way in advance, and attempted to diss the challenge by a series of mis- truth, politician type answers.
But, that won’t be enough because he is hamstrung by a failing and flailing system and is on the wrong side of history.
‘Henry and his Hordes’ are just caring people who want to make football as a whole better for the future.
They don’t get paid for caring, which they do passionately and don’t have committees telling them how to think.
Their long suffering insight makes this challenge much more real.
It won’t just do away because there is no quid pro quo deals to be made at the 11th hour.
No secret 5 way deals to get rid of them.
The people on the 6th floor won’t avoid or buy this one off.
It has a way to run, a long way, and football in Greavsie’s ‘Chilly Jockoland’ needs to ready itself for the fundamental change and changes it needs.
That’s it for this week
Feedback input and wee stories welcome as always.
Andy’s Xmas Classics
A bit of levity after a heavy Sting.
I’m currently in the UAE but walking through the malls you wouldn’t know it with the wall-to-wall Xmas songs blaring out and a heavy dollop of American-influenced Holiday Season Schmaltz and merchandising.
But there are good winter solstice songs to celebrate and as promised here are Andy’s Yuletide ‘First 11’.
You won’t find them on any off the shelf compilation album.
And yes, by the time you read this and play some of the songs, the light will have just started trickling back at night.
Maybe it will even reach Hampden and peace and goodwill will reign.
Happy Xmas War is Over, John and Yoko.
Driving Home For Christmas, Chris Rea
Fairy Tale of New York, The Pogues and Kirsty McColl
Feliz Navidad, Jose Feliciano
I believe in Father Christmas, Greg Lake
Santa Bloody Claus, Eric Bogle
Here Comes Santa, Bob Dylan
A Spaceman Came Travelling, Kate Rusby
Stop the Cavalry, Jona Lewie
(My second favourite), River, Joni Mitchell
(And the bestest Xmas song ever), Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses with Patty Donahue in fine festive voice.
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