I NOTE the font of all knowledge in matters concerning Rangers - the self-styled "Rhebel Journalist" Phil Mac Giolla Bhain - is now insisting Administration Two is just around the corner.
Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if he was to be correct. But, fear not PMGB; even if this incarnation of "Rangers" goes the way of the previous incarnation, you can look for the brothers along Hampden's corridors of power to move heaven and earth to facilitate the speedy integration of "Rangers Mark III" into Scottish senior football.
After all, if Rangers didn't exist - they would have to be invented, if only to fuel PMGB's obsession with Rangers and anti-Irish sectarianism.
There's money in this - as the men at the top down Kerrydale Street well know. The many successful grandsons and grand-daughters and their descendants, of the Irish diaspora who founded Celtic don't do the: "Nobody likes us and we care", they leave that to the dependancy junkies like PMGB, and get on with getting on, by their own efforts.
Yes the first, second and in some cases third generations of the Irish immigrants suffered intolerable institutionalised discrimination, but, they battled through. It is only the pathetic failures such as PMGB - who chose to turn his back on his native Scotland to piss into the tent, who continue to hide their inadequacies behind a plaintive: "Nobody likes us, and we care".
WHICH is not to say everything in the garden is lovely. The disgraceful events which overtook Neil Lennon at Tynecastle on Saturday were a blight on Scottish football.
Aberdeen has long had an element within their support which is every bit as bad, if not worse, than the worse of the old Old Firm "hooligan minority", but, you don't expect such behaviour in the main stand.
That said, I recall the 2000 Scottish Cup Final. The paper for which I then worked had won a media competition for the best Scottish Cup coverage, which entitled us to four seats in the best corporate hospitality section in the Hampden main stand.
It was not a pleasant experience, due to the poor behaviour of some of the supposedly well-heeled Aberdeen fans around us. So, I for one am not surprised that wee Neil was subject to ill-treatment at Tynecastle.
Celtic and Rangers have never had a duopoly on idiots.
OF COURSE, recent events leave one feeling that, while Celtic leave their idiots in the cheap seats, Rangers have allowed theirs to have the keys to the train set.
Musselburgh Windsor's efforts to take Rangers and Hearts to task for a failure to pay even the derisory £10 fee after enticing some promising kids away from Windsor into their own youth development programmes - which, in Rangers' case is perhaps an oxymoron - is laudable and should be supported by all.
Indeed, compensation fees for young player development has long been a sore point among the lesser lights in Scotland. The sums paid are derisiory and ridiculous. Mind you, we have players in the senior game in Scotland who wouldn't get past pub football in most other European countries, so we shouldn't be surprised. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
It is long past time compensation fees where increased, but, given the way the senior clubs rule the SFA, it aint gonna happen any time soon.
I recently wrote an obituary on Wee Bobby Collins and in the course of my researches I discovered, Collins, then an amateur, stood to pocket £1000 as a signing-on fee, had he chosen to join Everton as a teenager.
However, Celtic boss Jimmy McGrory hijacked the deal at the 11th hour and kept Collins in Glasgow. The Wee Barra didn't get his £1000, but got to stay at home, he also got a somewhat smaller singing-in fee from Celtic,while Pollok, his junior club, who would have got nothing had he gone to Goodison, got £200 from Celtic - so, it was well-worth their fighting the case.
That was in 1949 - I don't think the compensation to junior or youth clubs has risen since then. Everton, of course, did eventually get Collins, but they had to stump up an additional £24,000 - and more than £1000 in a signing-on fee to the Wee Barra himself.
LET'S hope Aberdeen and ICT can attract a half-decent crowd to Celtic Park for the League Cup final. Anything less than 10,000 and they'd have been as well holding it in Perth or Dundee.
OF COURSE, recent events leave one feeling that, while Celtic leave their idiots in the cheap seats, Rangers have allowed theirs to have the keys to the train set.
Musselburgh Windsor's efforts to take Rangers and Hearts to task for a failure to pay even the derisory £10 fee after enticing some promising kids away from Windsor into their own youth development programmes - which, in Rangers' case is perhaps an oxymoron - is laudable and should be supported by all.
Indeed, compensation fees for young player development has long been a sore point among the lesser lights in Scotland. The sums paid are derisiory and ridiculous. Mind you, we have players in the senior game in Scotland who wouldn't get past pub football in most other European countries, so we shouldn't be surprised. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
It is long past time compensation fees where increased, but, given the way the senior clubs rule the SFA, it aint gonna happen any time soon.
I recently wrote an obituary on Wee Bobby Collins and in the course of my researches I discovered, Collins, then an amateur, stood to pocket £1000 as a signing-on fee, had he chosen to join Everton as a teenager.
However, Celtic boss Jimmy McGrory hijacked the deal at the 11th hour and kept Collins in Glasgow. The Wee Barra didn't get his £1000, but got to stay at home, he also got a somewhat smaller singing-in fee from Celtic,while Pollok, his junior club, who would have got nothing had he gone to Goodison, got £200 from Celtic - so, it was well-worth their fighting the case.
That was in 1949 - I don't think the compensation to junior or youth clubs has risen since then. Everton, of course, did eventually get Collins, but they had to stump up an additional £24,000 - and more than £1000 in a signing-on fee to the Wee Barra himself.
LET'S hope Aberdeen and ICT can attract a half-decent crowd to Celtic Park for the League Cup final. Anything less than 10,000 and they'd have been as well holding it in Perth or Dundee.
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