How Do You Solve A Problem Like Wee Lennie

YOU have to feel sorry for the SFA "Blazeratti" - corporate hostility at the Co-operative Insurance Cup Final, followed by a few days overseeing the national squad's get together, then a couple of days in London for the Brazil friendly; just the itinerary you need to ease you out of a long hard winter and into spring.

Then along comes Paul McBride QC, self-appointed caped (and be-wigged) crusader after justice for the down-trodden and oppressed, or, as we know him "Wee Lennie".

Not being one of the A Team or Lap Top Loyal or whatever you like to call those battlers after truth, justice and the big exclusive whose calling is to chronicle events involving what the provincials call the Axis of Evil or the Bigot Brothers, I have had few dealings with the Celtic manager. He has, however, always struck me as basically a misunderstood soul, whom it has to be said, doesn't go out of his way to either be understood or loved by anyone outwith 'the Celtic Family'.

But when, as I did the other evening, you observe a gentleman of the ROL (that's Rangers/Orange/Loyalist) persuasion, cease dragging his knuckles across the sawdust-strewn bar floor to place them round a pint glass, prior to adding his twopenseworth to the tap room debate: "See that wee cunt McBride, he makes yon wee shite Lennon seem like a nice guy", well you realise Mr McBride is not doing anything to enhance the reputation of the College of Advocates.

Philosophical argument from later in the same debate: should a prominent Celtic anything be a Queen's Counsel? - discuss further.

Of course any semi-competent lawyer could drive a coach and horses through the SFA's rules regulations and practices. This much has been acknowledged and to his credit, particularly in the field of disciplinary matters, Stewart Regan is making strenuous efforts to drag the body whose administration he leads into at least the 20th, if not the 21st century.

But, given that it's down to that long-ago-discredited bunch, the elected office bearers and councillors to decide on any changes, and given that whatever changes Regan and his professional advisors deem necessary will first of all have to be re-written in the style of a Janet and John book (and not the Terry Wogan Show version) before the representatives of the various county FAs can understand what they are meant to be voting on - don't hold your breath for change.

So while Mr McBride perhaps (do I judge him harshly?) gets a kick from his TV appearances, hearing his voice on radio and reading his press cuttings; I fear he is doing Celtic and Mr Lennon no favours.

Nobody likes a smart arse and when even the tabloid pit bulls of the hack pack hold you in contempt, you've got problems.

The trouble is, football's rules and regulations were set in stone back in the days of amateurism, when it was a case of the game for the game's sake - when the referee was indeed the sole judge of fact and you didn't have 23 camera angles to show, actually, he got it wrong.

These days are past, but in the past must they remain?

Once you let the lawyers in, you open an unsavoury can of worms, since justice and the law are not the same thing and these guys make their money out of that difference.

Look at parliament, a thoroughly discredited body after all the sex scandals and more particularly the expenses scandals of recent years. And which occupation has the greatest number of practitioners within the Palace of Westminster. Yup, got it in one - lawyers.

McBride's reading of the relevant SFA rules is that Lennie's latest ban, after the great Parkhead handbags huddle should run concurrently with his current four-match ban, might find favour with their Lordships inside Old Parliament Buildings in Edinburgh, it might have the backing of the regulars in Baird's Bar, but in few other places.

The fact is: Lennie was banned back in November. We can debate the rights and wrongs of what has since transpired since his Tynecastle melt down, but the fact is, had Lennie not appealed that ban and thereby set in motion the train of events which so delayed the implementation of that ban; he'd long since have served it and so this latest suspension from the technical area would have been (as it in fact is) a totally separate issue. He would have served one ban, been back on the touchline, then due to start serving a second ban.

The issue of concurrency has only arisen because of his initial appeal and the failure to speedily convene the relevant appeal tribunal then implement the first ban.

To the vast public body of the fans, whether or not "They" were out to get Lennie - had there not been the delays, this current situation would never have arisen.

In any case, am I alone in thinking this need by certain managers to be in the dug out is somewhat child like. By common consent, the view is awful; many coaches have told me, they get a far-better appreciation of what is happening on the field when watching from a higher vantage point in the stand. If Lennie (or any other coach for that matter) HAS to be in the technical area, doesn't it say something about his failings - he cannot trust his subordinates to properly get his message across to his players maybe; he needs to "frighten" them into doing his bidding by sheer force of personality perhaps; that it's just a long-ingrained habit - who knows.

In the North American sports: American Football, Basketball, Baseball or Ice Hockey, where there are rolling substitutions and different line-ups for different situations within the game, I can see the case for the coach being in the technical area at the side of the playing area, but with football, a much-more freestyle, flowing, evolving game with fewer natural or even staged breaks in the play, a coach is perhaps better-off high up, watching the panorama evolve below him, yet able to communicate with the technical area and have his tinkering done by his assistants.

Serve your ban then Lennie - you might learn and indeed benefit from it.