SFA That's What They'll Dae - They Couldnae Run A Gird

THIS whole Rangers business just gets crazier and crazier with each passing day. At least the Scottish Football Association has finally roused from its slumber and become involved - with the setting up of an "independent" inquiry, specifically it appears, to ascertain if Craig Whyte was a fit and proper person to run a football club.

Well, pardon me, but, unless Mr Whyte is ever able to successfully sue the backsides off the BBC, Trinity Mirror, News Corp and the various lesser media organisations who have printed or broadcast various pieces about his business history and practices in the year or so since he emerged from the woodwork to "buy" Rangers, I think we know the answer to that one.

I have so far been, as far as I know, the only blogger or journalist to invoke the name of the late and still to the dwindling number of Third Lanark fans living, unlamented, Bill Hiddleston. But, I can see little difference between Third Lanark 1967 and Rangers 2012.

Similarly, I can see in the downfall of Rangers, echoes of the downfall of Scottish basketball 20 years or so ago, when Mr David Murray, as he then was, quit the basketball court for the larger arena of Ibrox.

I honestly do not see the SFA liking what any truly-independent inquiry will report to them. For my money, Mr Craig Whyte is not, by a long chalk, the only person involved in the downfall of Rangers, and how the SFA have acted over that club in recent years, who was nothing like a fit and proper person.

To be fair to Alistair Johnstone, he did warn us - the great Scottish football public, that all was not well with Mr Whyte. However he, potential "Blue Knight" Paul Murray and Dave King were all complicit in David Murray's years of mis-management of Rangers, which got the club into a pickle in the first case.

To look at a parallel case - Fred Goodwin maybe lost his knighthood, but what about the other RBS directors who took the hefty salaries and the kudos in the good years, but who said nothing to deter Fred the Shred as he embarked on his disastrous pursuit of that Dutch bank? Were they not also at fault? Did nobody have the cojones to say: "Hang on a minute Fred, are you absolutely certain this is a good move?"

For Fred Goodwin in the bank's boardroom - were the same questions never asked of David Murray, or Dick Advocaat? Paul Murray sat in the posh seats at Ibrox, he was round that boradroom table as it all unravelled. Doesn't he - this potential saviour of the club, also have to answer for his part in getting Rangers into bother in the first place?

And what about the Hampden blazers? They knew their own clubs were being asked to fight with one hand tied behind their backs. Didn't they ever think: "Haud oan a meenit, this isnae right?"

They knew the rules were skewed in favour of two clubs, who were in a power duopoly, might there have been some way, for the overall good and even betterment of Scottish football, whereby they might have brought Rangers to task sooner?

THEN there is the part which we, the "free and fair" Scottish press, who did little or nothing to even warn, play in the debacle. Having seen at first hand how Murray's recruitment of North American talent had seriously fucked-up Scottish basketball; how he had allowed the guys running MIM BC to hoover-up the local talent, without having, like every other club, an under-pinning grass roots youth system, some very good, most adequate, until, when it became unsustainable - he got out - I had told various sports desk pilots the same thing would happen at Rangers.

I take no pride in being proved correct. I warned years ago, it would all go pear-shaped and it has.

Scottish basketball continues - it's back to being the "church hall" game it was 35 years ago, before Murray got involved - in fact, it's not even as good as it was back then, but, it has survived. What precious little Scottish talent there is can still fight its way to the top, but basketball hasn't died in Scotland.

Football will survive the Rangers debacle, even if, as should happen, but won't - Rangers had to go to the foot of the class - back to the Third Division of the SFL, or even, assuming the long-required pyramid is ever put in place, back to the juniors.

We might have to serve a few more years in pots four or five for the Euros and the World Cup, but, survive we would. Indeed, properly re-organised and without the "We were the peepel" baggage, we might even prosper.

But, it seems, because television contracts have ensured that Celtic and Rangers are more-important than the other ten SPL clubs, the 30 SFL clubs, the "Non-League Senior" clubs of the Highland, East of Scotland and South of Scotland Leagues and the 170 or so Junior clubs, an accommodation will be arrived at whereby Rangers will rise again and slot straight back in as one of the top two clubs.

That's wrong.