Just days after Rangers withdrew four players from George Burley’s first Scotland squad it emerges that Barry Robson not only reported for duty, he insisted that he was fit and desperate to play.
Despite this, he was overruled by former Rangers club doctor, Stuart Hillis, citing a knee injury that Robson’s own club manager didn’t know about and the player himself was convinced did not affect his fitness to play.
The result was media coverage lumping Robson together with four Rangers players – all of whom were declared fit for club duty on the evening of the match.
Predictably, SFA Chief Executive Gordon Smith has had nothing to say. Rarely found wanting a crass or inflammatory comment, Smith’s credibility has been in shreds almost since he was given the job.
- He implied that cheating was part of the culture of Lithuania and Slovenia
- Was found to have contributed to a book citing Catholic education as a factor in football bigotry
- Falsely claimed that every football club had complained to him about cheating
- When challenged, falsely claimed that he had been misquoted by journalists, an allegation he was forced to retract
- Has made the deluded claim that all criticism of him can be attributed solely to his association with Rangers and stated that he can disregard comment on his actions from football fans based on the assumption that he is being personally targeted as a “confident” former Rangers player
However, when it has been suggested that the SFA have colluded with Rangers to rest their players and at the same time undermined Barry Robson’s international career to manage the negative publicity that the moves would attract, Smith remains silent.
Let’s be clear: if Gordon Smith can question the integrity of two UEFA football associations, it is quite proper to question the integrity of the body that he is currently so badly mismanaging.
Smith cannot dismiss legitimate questions based on nothing other than his paranoid insistence that his status as a former Rangers player and his confident nature attract malicious comment.
Celtic have consistently found that integrity and commitment to Scotland leaves the club at a disadvantage faced with an association that discards all standards of fair play at the behest of its favourite club.
Recent manifestations of this have been absurd anomalies in disciplinary sanctions being taken against players and officials at Celtic and Rangers.
The last time that a Scottish official’s action blatantly favoured Rangers over Celtic – when Jim Farry deliberately withheld Jorge Cadete’s registration making him ineligible to play against Rangers – Fergus McCann let it be known that the Scottish League itself would find itself in court if it did not take appropriate action. Farry was sacked.
It cannot be that the current incumbents at Celtic Park, one of whom led the country into war and one of whom has been credited with being a vital contributor to a national economic revival, along with shareholders who operate at the highest level of international commerce can sit idly by while the interests of Celtic are being undermined.
John Reid, Dermot Desmond and Peter Lawwell must challenge the SFA directly: either produce a legitimate justification for its recent actions or find itself answering before UEFA.
In particular, some key questions should be addressed:
- Why has the SFA declined to enforce the rule allowing it to bar players from playing for their clubs when they have withdrawn from their international squad in midweek?
- If the Rangers injuries were legitimate, why were no other Rangers players called in as replacements, Cardiff City’s Gavin Rae, for example, being preferred to Kevin Thomson?
- If Barry Robson was so badly injured that he was unable to even remain with the Scotland squad despite his protests, why was the usual process of consultation with the player’s club disregarded? Evidently, communication between the Scotland team and Rangers management and medical staff had taken place.
Such responsibility cannot be left to Gordon Strachan, who has already been targeted by the SFA, most notably by the referee at Ibrox tomorrow, and who has faced the indignity of having a national bookmaker run a special bet on the possibility of his being sacked by Sunday night.
To fail to address this is to let down Strachan, whose career prospects are affected, as well as Barry Robson, whose opportunities have come late in his career only to find himself the victim of the most absurd brand of politics.
It is also obvious that holding high office at Celtic is not just an honour – it comes with responsibility to innumerable supporters the world over.
- One other thing – we criticise reporters when they unfairly attack our club but it only right to mention that Keith Jackson is the only Scottish journalist who has so far highlighted the issues in this case. Praise where it’s due and all that!
