Originally Posted by
Dashing Bob S
I’m now personally getting to the point where I think it’s possibly already too late for me to maintain any interest in our farce of a national sport. I say this because the game’s supporters shouldn’t need to be engaged in vociferous protest, simply in order that our administrators enforce natural justice, fair play and sporting integrity on a league of association football. But it’s difficult to have any confidence in a body of people, whom, without fan power pushing them, would almost certainly have admitted Rangers straight back into the SPL, without any serious penalties.
I was briefly proud of my own club and Rod Petrie, believing we had done the correct and only possible thing, to the extent that I immediately renewed my season ticket. Now I see that this was merely a snide, patronising concession and I regret ever having invested this confidence.
I’m truly heartbroken that Hibernian, which has been synonymous with the triumph of the underdog and an ethos of class and integrity, as exemplified by its greats such as Smith, Stanton and Sauzee, has been inextricably caught up in this undignified mess that Scottish Football has become. And it’s become this way because it has allowed a member club to become bloated on bigotry and sectarianism, and afforded it an entitled place in our national game out of all proportion to what it should be. As a result the administration of the game has attracted shysters, fellow travellers and their craven apologists. They are unfit to run football and it pains me to say this, but FIFA should kick us out of the world game right now, until we establish that we can run the sport pursuant with the ethos of fair play by pre-agreed rules.
This incident reflects shockingly on us as a country. Some will say that it only proves we cannot be trusted to run our own affairs, others will argue that the culture of dependency has made us shrink back and sit on our hands while the lunatics who have taken over this particular asylum masturbate frantically while it burns down around us. Whatever one’s view of the grubby proceedings, in retrospect it now seems as if we have been on this inevitable collision course for decades. We should not be having this discussion, not heading for this defining moment in Scottish Football, simply on the basis of the corruption of one member club. All that should happen is that the simple rules of the association are enforced. That ship has probably sailed now; it looks as though we are heading for a cataclysmic meltdown of our national game, with probable outside intervention, and that might not eventually be a bad thing, as it may offer the last chance to resurrect something positive from this mess.
I’m very angry right now, as evidently, are many other long-term supporters of Scottish football. I know so many of them who have invested financially, physically and emotionally in their clubs over the years, often at the expense of those other things in life. I know that so many of them now feel cheated and duped, like they have gone along with a scam perpetuated by mealy-mouthed confidence tricksters, who will lie, twist and squirm to maintain a wrecked and suffocating status quo. Right now, the people who run our game have a hell of a lot of work to do in order to convince me and many other soon-to-be ex fans, that there is any point whatsoever in investing in their succulent lamb, sashes-and-flutes-pandering WWF toytown league.