Welcome Back To Scotland - Turn Your Watch Back 100 Years

DID you miss me? After a month of five star cruise liner living, it is something of a shock to get back to good auld Scotland, as winter ebbs away into spring.

Mind you, the 24-hour flight from Sydney, during which I got back the day I lost when we crossed the International Date Line, brought back more than those "lost" hours, it brought me back to the realisation of just how behind the times we are back here in the last Barbarian nation in Europe.

I return to find the eternal squabbling between Celtic and Rangers fans - particularly that newish sub-tribe, the Cyberfans - as bad as ever. I refer of course to that total waste of time and money, the SPL investigation, presided over by Lord Nimmo Smith and his cohorts.

If nothing else, this proved that, when you get lawyers involved, you seldom get clarity and you end up poorer; you'd have thought the "blazers" within Hapden's corridors of power would have been aware of this - but, you can never underestimate the stupidity of the men who  run Scottish football.

Of course the David Murray-led management at Rangers cheated via the payment methods they used - EBTs and so forth. However, to my mind, they didn't cheat when they recruited the mercenaries who benefitted from these. And if that seems a contradiction in terms, allow me to try to explain.

There is no evidence that those players who received a portion of their huge salaries through EBTs only joined Rangers because of this, if not illegal, certainly slightly immoral means of payment.

EBTs per se, are not illegal - however, we can question the methods whereby Rangers or the Murray Group ran their EBT schemes for the players.

So, it cannot be proved that the EBTs were a significant or game-changing factor in the squads which Rangers assembled and which won them the various SPL titles. Perhaps the fact that joining Rangers (or Celtic for that matter) virtually guarantees involvement in European competitions was, I would argue, a more-significant factor in international players, particularly non-Scots joining the club than the fact that EBTs were involved in rewarding them.

Therefore, Rangers, whilst guilty of not fully informing the football powers-that-be of their contractual arrangements, were not guilty of cheating  the SPL or SFA - but may or indeed were guilty of mishandling their tax arrangements - so, they keep the titles.

As ever, the biggest critics of the decision not to strip Rangers of the titles were of a green persuasion, or perhaps, more-properly demonstrating green-eyed tendancies.

NOW we come to the other aspect of the Nimmo Smith Tribunal's verdict - the £250,000 fine on the now defunct Rangers FC, as (mis-)managed by the Murray Group and by Craig Whyte.

Apparently this fine will never be paid, since that version of Rangers FC is no more. However, the men who broke football's rules by not registering the side letters are still about. Sir David Murray has been allowed his say, most of the men who occupied the posh seats in the Ibrox Directors' Box - Alastair Johnston, Martin Bain, John Greig, Walter Smith, Paul Murray etc - even SFA president Campbell Ogilvie - are still around.

Are directors of companies, even ones which failed, not in some way responsible for ensuring that the company's business is conducted within the law, even football law.

Should the SFA and SPL not be seeking ways of pursuing Sir David Murray and his co-directors for the £250,000 fine and for punitive damages for the harm their little EBT scheme has done to Scottish football?

I believe they would have a reasonable chance of success from such a case. I am surprised that none of my other football-writing colleagues, in the millions of words on the subject they have penned since the verdict came out, has thought of that one.

On second thoughts, I am not surprised in the least.