No Laws For The Rich

THE choice of the green ink today may or may not be significant - let's just say I'm in, if not Colonel Angry of Tonbridge Wells mode; however, I might be mistaken for Pissed-Off of Possil.

What has got me reaching for the green ink - the traditional writing fluid of the clinically deranged/killer bees in his bonnet sufferer?

It's the continued outbreak of, if not lawlessness, then certainly a belief that: "the laws don't apply to me" in football.

When did Law V, paragraph 1 get repealed? That's the bit which says: "The referee is the sole judge of fact". Ergo, whether he makes an honest mistake - throws a wobbler - is a cheating Masonic so-and-so - is hopelessly and dangerously out of his depth: whatever the man with the whistle says, goes.

For over a century, since the oiks began playing soccer and a referee had to be introduced, since they couldn't agree in the same way as the public school chaps who had hitherto played the game - the referee's word was law. And even when the man in the middle did make a mistake, that was accepted an an honest error, since it was inconceivable that anyone wielding that much power might be corrupt.

These days, with the mind-boggling sums of money involved in football, the viscreal need for success at the top end, these old-fashioned standards of behaviour have gone out of the window. Where once club directors were driven by the remnants of Victorian civic largesse: "tha's made a good deal of money out of t' good people of Grimethorpe Alderman Higginbottom, time to put summat back by getting onto board of football club and buying us a Scotch wing half". Today increasingly it's: "Alexei has bought a Spanish football team, Pavel owns one in Germany, I've made just as much as them out of oil and gas; Sergei, buy me a club in the Premiership so that I may enjoy sporting success".

The multi-millionaires now running the big clubs don't have that background of civic pride, they've ducked, dived, cheated and bent rules to make their squillions, they're not going to allow some rules and precedents, set in stone by a bunch of Victorian public school boys, stop them getting the success they feel is theirs by right.

And, if football's rules and regulations get in their way, they always know a compliant lawyer who will argue the toss on their behalf.

Remember that Monty Python sketch about the faculty rules in a university in the Australian outback? Rules 2,5,7,9 and 11 were the same: "No poofters".

Well, if the SFA ever get around to implementing any of Henry McLeish's review body proposals (I know, it's a huge IF), then might I suggest they adopt two along similar lines: "No politicians" and "No advocates".

I specifically pinpoint advocates here, rather than general run-of-the-mill lawyers. While I have little time for lawyers of any hue, Scottish football history ought to warn us against advocates. Look at the bother Donald Finlay, one of the best advocates in the business, caused Rangers when he was allowed to dominate a karaoke mike.

Now Celtic has unearthed this guy Paul McBride QC; it'll all end in tears, I warn you. Not only that, they have also got the Rt Hon. Lord Reid as chairman - a man of such sterling qualities the movers and shakers of Scottish Labour hate him even more than the Tories. What a character reference to have on your CV: "His friends dislike me even more than my enemies".

Ladies and Gentlemen, there might be ship-loads of money circulating within football today, but, at the heart of it: there is no difference between wee Tam, Erchie, Shuggie, Wullie, Davie and Rab taking off their jaikets and putting them down as goal posts, telling Jimmy, since he's hopeless he's in goal and enjoying a quick game of three-and-in during morning play time at the primary and Messi, Xavi, Ianesta, Fabregas and Co playing in front of over 100,000 in the ground and millions more watching on TV. It's just a daft game.

Of course you have to have rules, but where you have rules, there must be a readiness to obey these rules - that seems to be absent from the top end of the game these days.

Down here in darkest Ayrshire, when your team allegedly went out of the Junior Cup in an away tie, on alighting from the bus back home, the secretary would be asked a number of searching questions:

Q1. Did you win?
A1. Naw.
Q2. Did you draw?
A2. Naw.
Q3. Did you get a protest?

Everyone connected with senior football had a good laugh at the juniors' refusal to accept defeat until that defeat had been tested within the game's corridors of power - it aint so funny now the seniors are increasingly adopting this stance.

We all know it's an old junior football tradition to elect the village idiot to the local club committee; a sign of how they do things differently in the juniors.

It's not so funny now this tradition has been picked-up by the senior game.

Of course, for there to be a return to sanity, there has to be a lead from the top. That means FIFA, Herr Blatter, the blessed Jack Warner and friends. Therefore, it aint gonna happen any time soon.

But, I live in hope that there might be, within the ranks of the (English) FA, the FA of Wales, the (Northern) Irish FA and the SFA, enough good men and true, prepared to re-establish Britain's moral guardianship of all that's fair in football, to drive a re-assertion of fair play and respect for the laws of the game through the next meeting of IFAB and from there into football across the world.

Time to make a stand.