Don’t you just hate it

Date: 15th August 2025

Don’t you just hate it

To be perfectly honest, it is a tough gig being a regulatory body in any sport.

Imagine facing one of your memberships standing in front of you, admitting to a number of breaches of your rules, and you being aware that by fining them and placing them into some form of punishment, you are likely to cease their existence from that point onwards.

I therefore have some sympathy with the SPFL when it came to dealing with the breaches of Hamilton Academical. Having said that, if the SPFL is a membership organisation then surely members who turn up and say I need help should actually get it rather than being punished for just being bad.

The complexity of it is of course that the people who are responsible for Hamilton Academical, insofar as they are directors of anything, seem to be rudderless and unable to direct anything in a positive manner. Their relationship with the fans has broken down to the point at which they are in combat on a press release scale that has hitherto hardly been seen since the days of Celtic and the Rebels and Fergus “The Bunnet” McCann.

It’s an unedifying spectacle.

It is a worrying time. And whilst I might have sympathy for the SPFL when they came to the decision that they were going to put a transfer embargo on Hamilton Academical, as well as placing a £7,500 fine on their heads with £5,000 of it being suspended to ensure that they won’t transgress again, I am, however, rather upset on behalf of Hamilton Academical supporters because the Accies fans have done nothing wrong in all of this.

They have turned up.

They have paid their money.

They have chanted the names of the ones they wanted to win.

And they have traipsed or floated off after the final whistle – dependent upon the result.

Now dependent upon that result being meaningful or permanent.

I’m upset and disappointed when all their good effort and faith has been repaid with a 15-point deduction, relegation and then further 5 points lost before a league ball has been kicked.

It’s a tough life being a supporter at the best of times, particularly below the top two in Scotland. Occasionally you have that flash of opportunity that comes in a cup and like Aberdeen last year manage to win one. But for the majority of us, it is a weekly cycle of possibility, hope, triumph for a season or two, despair, trouble and false dawns. Our real hope? To be as competitive as it’s been before…

Down in the Championship, both St Johnstone and Ross County, even playing out a close Friday night fixture should be in for a season long rude awakening, which will allow those of us supporting other clubs to have a frisson of excitement that we might actually compete the Championship and go into the Premiership, the Holy Grail, that most of us have been out of for such a long time.

But whilst we sit in our stands, munch on our pies, bemoan the quality of Bovril not being the same as it was theory years ago, we put faith in the Board Room to deliver. We are not daft – success is a fleeting mistress. But take in the cash, pay the bills, compete on the pitch and we can forgive much. But being relegated because of a sloping pitch or we did not pay our bills, or our shiny new stadium is to be abandoned, or now our football academy that gave us renewed hope is to cease, albeit temporarily, apparently, allegedly… that destroys us.

For me it is whether or not we end up in the top four in the Championship, whilst for Accies fans it’s whether or not they continue in existence. The move to Broadwood, going back to the 7-year nomadic status of many years ago that Hamilton had to endure before New Douglas Park became a reality, is an ironic thing.

It’s a quick reminder that their existence is neither guaranteed nor safe. Their desire to return to their hometown is as strong now as it was when they had to go round the grounds to find a home venue and sign agreements that no doubt favoured the team who were their hosts more than them as tenants.

They’re probably going to discover that whilst most of us would hope that being part of a membership organisation means that when we are really struggling and need help that somebody is going to come and actually help us, that the SPFL will do something likely to hinder them getting what they need such as the organisational support they deserve.

I hope I am wrong. But again, maladministration has caused a club who have done the business on the park to suffer exponentially. Is it a punishment that fits the crime or is it just another example of people with a pen and a clipboard judging in a way which doesn’t help the game?

Should Hamilton Academical just simply have somebody who goes in and wipes the directors off the board of management and says you are unfit as they potentially would in any other organisation that had transgressed in such a way?

Does the HMRC describe people as unfit to being directors because they keep doing bad things or is that just a fantasy that I have invented?

Should the SPFL or, heaven forfend, a regulator, have powers of regulation which allows them to act? Like the charity regulator, OSCR? We have seen controversy abound in the charitable sector including a recent report about Prince Harry’s charity in Africa or over the Freud Museum. Yes, they are scandals or controversies, and the reputational damage is real, but so too are the powers. People can do something about them. Whether they do effectively or not is debateable, but they exist. Fitba is light years away from that.

It would be interesting to see what the SPFL would do if the member clubs within the Championship and League One decided that what they wanted was sporting integrity rather than fiscal punishment and points deductions when people had done naughty things in the clubs that they were supposed to be custodians of.

I don’t know but what I do know is that what’s crying out is a set of rules that means that fans who turn up on a Saturday afternoon no matter where their team are playing can see the result and hold on to that result and believe that it’s a true reflection of their efforts, club, players, fans and the legacy that they build.

If not, what are we left with? Pen pushers deciding whether or not that diagonal pass was actually genius or that assist was actually legitimate or that the three points that were given for a win should actually be held pending some sort of review. It’s a difficult one and as I said at the beginning I have some sympathy but the sympathy that I have is the people that seem to be punished constantly are the players, the management and the fans and the ones who get away with it are the ones sitting in their boxes avoiding eye contact with the very people who are paying to keep that club afloat.

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Tags: oor Donald, SFA, SFSA, SPFL