Not fit for purpose: The only victory for Resolution 12 would be to disband the SFA

In 1873, one year after the foundation of a now-lost Glasgow club, the Scottish Football Association was formed, making it the sport's second oldest national association in the world.

The SFA is a remarkable organisation. While most of the world was still sleeping, in terms of football, Scotland was leading the way, having participated in the first ever international match – against England, of course – at the West of Scotland Cricket Club in 1872.

And yet famously, infamously, notoriously, the men's national team has, uniquely in the British Isles  failed to progress past the groups stages of any major international tournament in its history.

That is despite having been peppered with some of the greatest players in football, all the way up until the 1990s.

McGrory, Hibs' Famous Five, the Lisbon Lions, Baxter, Bremner, McLintock, McGrain, Dalglish, Jordan, Souness. For more than 100 years, the playing talent was abundant.

The Famous Five: 

In 1967, the Scottish champions were European champions, too, and the national team was good enough to humiliate the world champions on their own patch. But a sustained endeavour towards a major trophy or a final or a semi-final? Nope.

When we were kings: Billy McNeill

I refer to this purely for background and anecdotal evidence that there has been an apparent malaise at Park Gardens and Hampden Park, ever since – more-or-less – the SFA was founded.

But it's not good living in the past, especially when the evidence of contemporary failure is so abundant.

The most recent revelations surrounding Resolution 12 bring this into sharp focus. Those pursuing this deserve credit for their efforts in a thankless task, even if I, personally, believe that the strategy directing those efforts has sometimes been flawed.

Nonetheless, they have tried and no one should doubt their efforts.

On the other hand, I take reports of their “victory” with a  pinch of salt. They may have been vindicated by some of the language used in the letter they received from UEFA, seemingly acknowledging, at least implicitly, that the SFA failed in its duty of governance of the matter of Rangers' licence to play in European competition.

(And the essence of transparency is that information is widely disseminated, not held by trusted sources.)

They may even have written evidence pointing to malfeasance but the vindication of having someone in high office telling you what you already knew is some way short of a victory.

No, victory would be some measure of justice – appropriate punishment for the offenders and compensation for the injured parties.

We know Rangers can't be punished because they were last seen in 2012 and are now throwing hammers around that great field of dreams in the sky.

We know this. Fans of every club in Scotland know it, too, and yet the fact that the “established” media resolutely close ranks behind the Scottish football authorities to deny this patent truth leaves a sense that the injustices that began when Rangers started cheating through tax avoidance continue to the extent that the accompanying lies are inscribed in silver.

Celtic and other wronged clubs are unlikely to be compensated because they seem to have no interest in saying, “Let right be done”. There may be pragmatic reasons for that in terms of the practicality of recouping financial losses or lost potential earnings.

And if, as has been mooted, the appropriate penalty against the “member association” that is the SFA would mean all teams being banned from European competition, that would be too steep a price to pay for most – though not all – fans.

On the face of it, any “victory” that may be pursued could be described as pyrrhic, though that does not excuse an abject failure to lead by Celtic PLC and others.

But if the lessons of the past are to remain an open wound, it would surely be some kind of victory if they led to a better future.

One in which football was run for the fans and the good of the game itself; where fair play took precedence over financial imperatives.

Is that likely to be achieved in Scotland under the present structure?

Recent years saw the received wisdom of the nylon blazers challenged by two men, now both sadly departed.

The late Paul McBride QC, to put it politely, scared the bejaysus out of the SFA. When arguably the most formidable criminal lawyer of his time was railing against the heady mix of corruption and incompetence guiding the Scottish game, the SFA office-bearers were shown up, not so much as paper tigers as sleekit cowrin tim'rous beasties.

McBride threatened to rock the football establishment to its foundation and there appeared a genuine chance that he would almost single-handedly force a new, binding constitution for the modern age before his tragic death.

The other figure was, of course, the late Turnbull Hutton. The one-time “conscience of Scottish football”, who “stood up for the 'wee' clubs”, Hutton projected a moral force that, coupled with his executive-level experience at Diageo, was more than a match for patsies and yes-men occupying senior roles in Scottish football.

Turnbull Hutton and Paul McBride: Should fans need heroes?

These two men gave – pro-bono – their time and talents in pursuit of the greater good of the beautiful game.

And yet, it is entirely wrong that fans who wish to believe in football should be left waiting for heroes to emerge to fight their corner.

Fans should not have to fight the governing body; it should exist to fight for them.

And yet let's look at this organisation, in its own words.

The Scottish FA exists to promote, foster and develop the game at all levels in this country.
Founded in 1873, Scottish football’s governing body has recently undergone the most radical changes in its history, enabling us to lead the game into a new era. The launch of our strategic plan Scotland United: A 2020 Vision outlines the vision, values and goals that underpin the organisation and its many facets.
The plan encompasses four strategic pillars:
•    Perform and Win
•    Strong Quality Growth
•    Better financial returns
•    Respected and Trusted to Lead

Two things may immediately jump out from the above.

Firstly – and disgracefully – nowhere in those “four strategic pillars” is there any mention of fans.

Is it the fans who are expected to “respect and trust” the SFA or are they to be led by it? Or is the sole relevance of fans to the Scottish Football Association in relation to “better financial returns”?

The second point leads on from the first – that the SFA appears to fail on all of its stated key aims.

In fact, going back to 1873, when has the SFA ever achieved anything of note? The “golden era” of the Scottish national team consisted of qualifying for five consecutive world cup finals and going home at the earliest opportunity every time.

A simpler question would be: in what areas is the SFA actually a success?

I would argue that the answer is: none, ever.

And I would further argue that the SFA is inherently dysfunctional: structurally, institutionally, in terms of its personnel and its apparent inability to ever repair its standing in the eyes of the fans, without whom there can be no ticket sales and no domestic marketing opportunities.

The SFA has about as much chance of realistically aspiring to its “four pillars” as a Mafia-owned restaurant, run for years as a money-laundering joint, has of aspiring to a Michelin star.

And when that happens, what? As was once said in a famous film, “You bust the joint out – you light a match.”

In these sensitive times, I must quickly urge you to keep your pyros in your pocket. This bonfire must be a metaphorical one – of the vanities of the stuffed shirts, scoffing at the principles of fair play, good governance or even key performance indicators.

The Scottish Football Association is “not fit for purpose” and is beyond reform. Its office-bearers should be invited to a ceremony to be given thanks, a 9ct-gold-plated watch and a gentle boot out the door.

Only a completely new body – with new people – has any hope of bringing Scottish football back to a position of repute.

As a starting point, I'll offer my four “cornerstones”, to underpin the current pillars:

1. Football, without fans, is nothing. We exist to bring football to the fans of all clubs and of all our national teams. We listen to the fans; we respect the fans; we endeavour to meet the aspirations of the fans in all our activities.
2. We commit ourselves to excellence. We measure that excellence primarily on the success and quality of performance of every Scottish national and club team.
3. We are committed to supporting Scottish football at all levels, through providing support in the forms of facilities, coaching and best practice to nurture player development and a continued strengthening of both the quality and entertainment value of the game from grassroots-level to international competition.
4. We will work with fans, clubs, the media and commercial partners to strengthen Scottish football commercially in keeping with the ethos of financial fair play.

Okay, so my “four cornerstones” are cobbled-together ideas and I do not expect that they would form a framework for anything at all.

My point is that I don't believe a multi-million-pound study from a former East Fife player, who left his last political job under a cloud was needed to do a better job of defining what should be the aims of a body entrusted with the task of moving the game forward.

A new body should mean new personnel – from diverse professional backgrounds, including several from outside Scotland (preferably not simply replacing one club tie with another), who are unlikely to rely on “old certainties”.

People with fresh ideas, a willingness to engage and a track record of success.

And – who knows – maybe it would even be “respected and trusted to lead”?
Wouldn't that, in itself, be a victory?
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For Celtic PLC, will Resolution 12 be their Labour Party IndyRef moment?

If you thought the above headline signalled a party political blogcast, rest easy – this is instead about a lesson from history.

For most of my lifetime, the Scottish political scene has been a two-horse race. There was a brief period before 1979 in which the Scottish National Party was securing around 30% of the vote but, for decades, Labour and the Conservatives had dominated the vote with the majority of seats going to Labour.

Having lived through the Margaret Thatcher years, I saw support for the Tories evaporate and Labour secure what seemed an unassailable position of political supremacy.

But the two graphics posted tell a remarkable story: from 56 Westminster MPs in 2001 to just one in 2015; from a party that was able to lead a Holyrood administration for the first eight years of the Scottish parliament to one facing predictions of a near wipe-out in just over six weeks time.

The details of Scotland's changing political landscape and the complex issues are various but one common accusation remains: that Labour thought Scotland would always vote Labour, regardless of its message or policies, because Scotland always HAD voted Labour.

Political allegiance is usually more complex than simply assessing lists of candidates and policies. For many, it is tribal, sentimental, to do with family traditions, even “in the blood”.

Many of those who abandoned Labour did so with a heavy heart. “I didn't leave Labour; Labour left me”, was a common defensive cry from those facing accusations of disloyalty – even treachery – giving succour to their political enemies. The very need to explain exposed a deep-felt sense of anguish – sometimes guilt – in abandoning the party that had once represented their parents' and grandparent's interests when no one else would.

But, for huge numbers of those who believed in a set of values, the party's shift to accommodate modernism and “new realities” represented a betrayal – and the rational conclusion that if the party no longer held true to its founding principles and ideals, then it was no longer worthy of support.

And yet this logical outcome was something that the party's leaders, political strategists and communications professionals apparently believed would never happen.

It beggars belief that a party that could be so strategically successful in its campaigning in the Scottish Independence Referendum could at the same time finally exhaust the patience of those who had long doubted their political integrity.

But the reality is as stark and sobering an example as it is possible to get of the folly of taking people for granted. Labour's tactics, communications and cooperation with parties it claimed to oppose was for many the final nail in its coffin.

Yet there is room for suspicion that Celtic's directors and chief executives are similarly complacent.

While many, if not most, Scottish football supporters deem the Scottish Football Association to be corrupt, flying in the face of its own rules and the principles of fair play in order to maintain an establishment club in the Premiership, Celtic have stood by.

As the team, players and fans were cheated, Celtic at no time formally complained or protested publicly.

As a new club was entered into the bottom division – one which did not meet SFA criteria for membership, depriving qualified applicants a place – Celtic approved. And, infamously, they took no part in preventing the Ibrox Newco being admitted to one of the top two divisions, leaving the fight for integrity to the laudable actions of Turnbull Hutton.

Raith Rovers leading the way where Celtic apparently feared to tread.

And now we have Resolution 12, which seems almost certain to fail, and on which the club could have acted years ago.

And, for all this, they expect continued support – primarily with cash – from supporters they no longer defend, appear to care for or even represent.

So what is Celtic? A club that plays in the same colours at the same ground as the one graced by Tully, Johnstone, McGrain, Burns and Larsson? Its continuity as the entity founded by Brother walfrid is in no more doubt than that of the Labour party of Keir Hardy.

But it's values can no longer be seen as being in any way consistent with those that once bonded together a “Celtic family”. Celtic fans are being asked to support a club that no longer values fair play, the communities from which it has gained its support or playing football for the fans in a way to thrill and inspire.

And without those values, does the name, strip and ground alone entitle the club to the continuing support of people who have agonised over its decline?

When Labour found common cause with Tories and LibDems to oppose Scottish independence, the sharing of a platform with a Tory-LibDem coalition, as well as some cynical tactics, were too much for even its most faithful supporters.

But you could easily replace Labour's Jim Murphy, John McTernan and Blair McDougall with Dermot Desmond, Ian Bankier and Peter Lawwell, standing with the SFA and the Ibrox regime, led by a convicted criminal.

It appears that they do so in the belief that a promise here, a discount there and a “heartfelt plea for unity” are all that are needed to keep the tills ringing for yet another season; employing naïve hope in the aftermath of crushing experience.

But when trust has been damaged beyond repair, can supporters Keep the Faith?

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As Resolution 12 founders are Lawwell and the PLC Fit for Celtic?

In the event that, three months from now, we are faced with a case that is dead in the water with no meaningful answers, we should not miss our targets

Repeating yourself too often is rarely a good thing. “You can say that again”, I hear you cry, but I'll resist.

Only yesterday, I was expressing my belief that the efforts to have a UEFA investigation opened into possible misconduct by the SFA in allowing Rangers to be entered into the 2011 Champions League, (having failed to meet the Financial Fair Play criteria set out by European football's umbrella body) were almost certainly doomed to failure.

I need not reiterate my concerns as you can read them, if you wish.

However, tonight's hasty announcement from “Brogan, Rogan, Trevino & Hogan” (not a firm of solicitors but an individual Celtic fan) must surely have been greeted with the thunder of jaws dropping and heads slapping across the Celtic community.

(I will state now that this is not an attack on BRTH, Auldheid, Canalamar or any of the other people genuinely trying to pursue justice on this matter. I don't know their backgrounds but neither do I doubt their goods intentions – you may have to jump to the end of this piece for that to become clear.)

This was an urgent request for any shareholders willing to be named by the solicitors claiming to represent them to sign a mandate authorising their names to be used.

It is not often I agree with Stewart Regan but it is quite proper for an organisation to decline to answer questions from anonymous sources. Anonymity is for bloggers and social media users (though the owner of one site attempted to use this blogger's preference for using a pseudonym in an attempt to silence criticism).

Refuting Regan's argument, BRTH stated: “This is not so, as the organisation Regan heads up has been written to by a large commercial firm of solicitors who have clearly advised that they act on behalf of a distinct class of people, namely shareholders in Celtic PLC who signed up to and supported Res 12 at the 2013 AGM.”

There are a number of problems with that statement.

Firstly, the size of the legal firm is irrelevant. Any legal firm registered with the Law Society of Scotland is as competent to act as any other, large or small, and can be expected to operate to the same professional and ethical standards.

“We've got a big firm behind us” may be useful in terms of their resources and expertise but it means nothing in terms of legitimacy.

Secondly, the relevance of “a distinct class of people” is obscure. Perhaps the Resolutioners are trying to imply that some sort of class action is taking place. That would be inaccurate – they are requesting information that the SFA does not appear to be compelled to give and, indeed, may argue that they are compelled to withhold on the grounds of confidentiality.

For this, they would need only cite the Procedural Rules Governing the UEFA Club Financial Control Body:

“Article 10  – Confidentiality
Members of the CFCB  ensure complete confidentiality of all facts that come to their attention in the course of  their duties and, in  particular, refrain from divulging the contents of deliberations.”

That alone would likely be sufficient justification for the SFA to decline to divulge any information that may relate to a potential investigation that the Resolutioners are currently seeking to initiate.

Really, would ANY organisation divulge potentially confidential information that may lead to a damages action and even criminal proceedings, to an unnamed group of people? Logically, it would only take a similar group of shareholders of any club (including Celtic) to request that the SFA refuse to engage with them, whether that would mean a hearing before a sheriff or simply a meeting of the SFA Board (of which Peter Lawwell is a member).

Given that the member clubs are competent to submit complaints, it is not at all clear that an unnamed “class of people” has any greater legitimacy than “a bunch of guys”.

This, of course, gives the SFA any number of additional get-outs, the most obvious being avoidance or prevarication, with any UEFA investigation being time-barred by the end of June this year – roughly 12 weeks.

The implications of this are profound. Any lawyers would surely advise the SFA not to answer any questions that could leave them open to civil or criminal action, never mind liable to UEFA or FIFA sanctions.

In the circumstances, the SFA would seem to have every reason to keep schtum. However, there is another very clear available tactic.

For any normal legal request, it is usually considered reasonable to allow for ten working days for a reply. If we presume that the Resolutioners must wait two weeks for all the mandates to be received – April 1st – it would be likely that any reply would not be received before April 15th.

This would be unlikely to contain any meaningful answers. Rather, it would most probably be a legal opinion that the SFA did not have to respond to the Resolutioners, according to their rules, and even that SFA rules either did not allow – or actually prohibited – the Association from dealing with the inquiry (something that would be virtually impossible, were Celtic or any member club to make similar representations).

Alternatively, if it was deemed that the SFA should respond, the lawyers would most likely ask for clarification on a number of points, requiring the Resolutioners' lawyers to respond with due diligence – meaning that they could not simply reply over a coffee break but take reasonable time to ensure that they were meeting all of their professional duties.

The timeline is now at Friday, 29th April before the SFA have received their first response telling them why they should address the points made. Another round of letters would take us to Friday 13th May.

Do you see where this is going?

With the added complication of an unlikely UEFA investigation being requested at the same time, the SFA can kill this through legal letters and delays until the UEFA Statute of Limitations has passed.

And all this calls even further into question the Celtic board's request that the shareholders take action first. You could believe that these millionaires with their years of corporate experience and high-powered lawyers haven't spotted the obvious flaws that an independent blogger has identified.

In that case, you could also consider replacing the buttons up your back with Velcro.

Of course, there may be something I am missing. I've been wrong before and told I was wrong even more often – notably when I was saying that Peter Lawwell and the Celtic board were overseeing managed decline of the club.

I'm only basing my judgement on my personal experience and appreciation of the facts.

I referred yesterday to a sense of “betrayal”. The Resolutioners have put their faith in the Chief Executive and the Celtic PLC board. They have been strongly encouraged in that and that trust should neither be seen as a character flaw nor a reflection on their individual abilities.

They have largely been (rightly) lauded for their efforts, even if refusing to consider that the people they have been urged to trust – who have, no doubt, convincingly assured them of their own good intentions – appears to have been a miscalculation.

But the most burning question remains: did the Celtic board, in any of their regular “supportive” meetings, point out the potential flaws that it has now taken this blogger approximately 40 minutes to write?

If not, and as seems almost inevitable, their years of collective efforts come to nought, will the Resolutioners then re-evaluate their faith in the people they have been defending? Will they and other Celtic fans stand by and watch their endeavours ridiculed?

We should all hope that this article is the most complete waste of less than an hour of a blogger's time that has ever been expended; that the SFA will offer full transparency – that they will offer a convincing response disclaiming wrongdoing or that UEFA sanctions will be brought to bear.

And that would be my preferred option – justice, integrity and a game I can believe in.

In the event that, three months from now, we are faced with a case that is dead in the water with no meaningful answers, we should not miss our targets. The SFA may not be fit for purpose – but are the PLC board and Chief Executive fit for Celtic?

Surely they won't fool the Children of the Resolution

Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.

I have a professional contact, who loves to point out how hard she works. And she does work hard, too, emails from the early hours backing up her assertion that she spends most of the day at her PC.


But – it's a big one – she's hopelessly, haplessly inefficient. One of the reasons that she works so hard is that she has no concept of processes. And she rebuffs any suggestion that she might do things differently because she has always done things this way and therefore it is right.

And that impacts on me, as well as everyone who works with her. If I need information, she can't give it to me when I need it. She does everything strictly in the order that it comes up, with no view to time sensitivity, relative importance, knock-on effects, etc.

In short, if she worked less hard and was more receptive to the view that she might take a different tack, my life would be easier and her strong work ethic would be a source of admiration from me rather than frustration, noting her apparent assumption that she is doing things the only possible way.

I admire hard work where it is necessary or achieves a better result than a less industrious approach but I'm always wary of people who praise sweat for its own sake, when approaching a problem from a different angle might have been more effective.

So I am ready for brickbats from some quarters if I do not lavish unqualified praise on those who are working hard for a result on behalf of Celtic that they are highly unlikely to achieve.

And so we come to the hard-working people who are trying to pursue the aims of the now-infamous Resolution 12.

In short, Resolution 12 was put to the Celtic AGM and withdrawn because the majority shareholders indicated that they intended to vote it down. Had it been passed, it would have required the board to refer the Scottish Football Association's decision to submit Rangers' application to play in the Champions League to the UEFA Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) to examine what appeared to be a breach of the rules on Financial Fair Play.

Specifically, that, as Rangers had not paid their tax bill in 2011, they should not have been allowed to participate in any UEFA competition.

By all accounts, the main protagonists, notably “Auldheid” and “Brogan, Rogan, Trevino and Hogan” of Celtic Quick News fame put forward a carefully-researched proposal, backed by as much evidence and legal advice as could be reasonably available to them.

However, one of the notable things about AGMs in recent years has been that they are largely a charade, as far as fans being able to use their shareholdings to influence the direction of the club. Simply put, any policy that the directors and major shareholders dislike can be voted down.

So those proposing Resolution 12 had to rely on their carefully-researched case persuading the big hitters at the club that it was in their interests to act.

And that could only be based on another assumption – that those who wield power at Celtic Park view their interests and those of the club in the same way as the overwhelming majority of fans.

It is here that the pragmatism of their efforts can be called into question. CQN has long been the site most loudly banging the drum for the corporate “plan”, and Peter Lawwell's strategy for achieving it. And all the evidence to date seems to show that the Resolution 12 proponents maintain an unshakable faith in the integrity and good faith of those running the club.

With due respect to Auldheid and BRTH, that confidence is not universally shared amongst supporters.

The result is the now farcical situation whereby the Resolution 12 supporters, having invested years of effort in trying to pursue sporting integrity are defending a board that refuses to even request an investigation into the possibility that the club was cheated out of a chance to compete in the Champions League, and denied potential earnings of up to £15 million.

“In the intervening period of time, there have been numerous meetings and consistent correspondence between those shareholders and officials of Celtic PLC, all with a view to furthering the aims of Res 12, and there is no doubt that the Celtic board have played a full part in taking the resolution to where it now stands,” they have claimed, omitting to mention that “playing a full part” would have involved Celtic, as a member club, formally requesting action by the SFA, the absence of which would logically dictate that a formal complaint would be made to UEFA.

“Working together, the board and the shareholders have seen to it that formal letters of enquiry have been sent to the SFA, together with various pieces of documentation and supporting evidence.

“Through the shareholders’ lawyers, the SFA were asked to answer specific detailed questions in relation to their procedures, however the SFA responded by saying they would not answer any questions other than through the “member club” i.e. the board of Celtic PLC.”

Throughout the process, the board of Celtic PLC have consistently failed to exercise their rights as a member club, knowing full well that their refusal to act allowed the SFA the only get-out in a situation that was at best demonstrative of incompetence and at worst corruption.

Instead, the club have insisted that the shareholders should pursue any action.

It beggars belief that meetings where the club's representatives demonstrated verbal support that was inconsistent with their inaction should be seen as facilitating anything. The shareholders of any company are not required to act in the interests of the board; the case is quite the reverse.

For the CFCB to open an inquiry, its members would almost certainly have to consider that a group of minority shareholders, without authorisation from the board of directors of the club or any resolution passed at AGM were somehow legitimate stakeholders in representing the club.

There is little to support that position. Does anyone really imagine that UEFA would set a precedent of allowing any minority group with a handful of shares to precipitate the machinations of their investigative and disciplinary processes?

Theoretically, the CFCB could decide, unilaterally, to open a case but in the absence of a complaint from the allegedly aggrieved party, to do so would be a remarkable decision.

Which takes us back to assumptions and Occam's Razor, quoted at the top of this piece. When business people are reported to hold private views that are in direct conflict with their actions, it can be assumed that their actions are a more accurate indication of their intentions.

And when a club declines to take a complaint, where it appears that it has unfairly incurred a loss, it requires fewest assumptions to conclude that its representatives do not wish to have the outcome that such a complaint might bring about.

We could only speculate on their motives. But we can state with certainty that the club has not pursued its interests in this matter and infer why that might be.

In the meantime, the shareholders have been left to submit a complaint that the CFCB has no responsibility to consider and – crucially – resolve the entire matter before July 2016, when its own statute of limitations on this issue would run out.

In other words, the shareholders will almost certainly be rebuffed and the board will then say, “Sorry, but it's too late to do anything now.”

If that scenario comes to pass – and, in the absence of direct fan pressure on the board, it is difficult to see how it will be avoided – we will have been witness to one of the greatest betrayals in football history.

Of course, that last assertion would prove outrageous, if the board can be relied on to act in good faith, in pursuit of the club's best interests, fairness to its fans and sporting integrity.

Can we assume that to be the case?--