Just out of general interest.
Why did Hibernian not inform Rangers of Neeley's history ? Am I correct in saying it was known within our circles at the time ?
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Thread: Rangers and abuse
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16-05-2018 08:59 PM #31
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16-05-2018 09:10 PM #32This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
If you got the individual out of your establishment you would have considered your job to have been done (some institutions even struggled to do this much).
We are better at dealing with situations like this these days. It might not seem it, but children are actually far better protected than before.
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16-05-2018 09:19 PM #33This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
Last edited by Mr White; 16-05-2018 at 09:25 PM.
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16-05-2018 09:41 PM #34
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Regardless of what was the norm at the time Hibernian clearly have a few questions to answer.
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16-05-2018 09:45 PM #35This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
I can tell you this though - if there is any defensive nonsense, any cover up or anything remotely similar to what Rangers came away with today then I will be absolutely furious.
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17-05-2018 09:53 AM #36This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
There are some, I know a few. They're generally embarrassed by the state of the club and its wide range of public stupidity and misbehaviours.
Your post raises a very interesting wider point for me which is the difference between a club and its supporters. I have long felt pretty sorry for supporters of The Rangers (I know, I know - massive amounts of sectarian bigotry, horrible behaviour more generally, massive unjustified conceit, their share of the twinned Ugly Sister behaviour in ruining Scottish football over literally decades and the grace and favour of Scottish referees since forever).
Putting aside the sectarianism for the moment - which is difficult because it is so vile and a horrible toxic contradictory mixture of being both unthinkingly stupid and consciously deliberately malign - here is why I feel sorry for fans of The Rangers in a way that I absolutely didn't and don't for Hearts fans. Their club has been joy-ridden around for years by a succession of increasingly dodgy characters to the extent that it is effectively largely broken and broke. I don't think any of us knew or even suspected what was going on at the time - it just looked like rich people piling wealth into a club. The consequence has been that their fans - most of who are just ordinary guys whose relationship with their team is central in their lives - have been left with a smouldering shell. The wide boy chancers have gotten away with a clean pair of heels - wealth substantially intact - while the punters see something they love and revere junked and derided.
I don't think that most fans of Rangers knew what was going on but I think most fans of Hearts knew - or at least suspected - exactly what was going on with Romanov and just did not give a ****. Romanov's origins, his attempts and rebuffs in trying to take over other clubs and his wider business dealings made it pretty obvious that he was an utter mentallist and the Poppy Thieves just lapped it up. They positively invited it upon themselves by asking no questions, accepting all the crazed behaviour and all the while suspecting that something didn't add up.
In summary, I hate the behaviour of these bigotted morons but also I feel sorry for them that consecutive ouanqueres have used their club like a post-coital tissue and left it trashed. Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old age.
As for the current iteration of The Rangers and the response to this guy's experience, the club really has shown all of the class of an institution that just couldn't care less. I don't even blame them for trying to have it both ways more generally - we're still the same club/ past debts and failings was another company - but the inability to muster any sincere regret, compassion or just plain looking after one of their own here seems staggering.
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17-05-2018 10:11 AM #37This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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17-05-2018 10:28 AM #38This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
I think its impossible to divorce the actions of either Hearts or Rangers supporters in allowing themselves to be placated by the spending of money they patently didn't have.
For that reason I have no more sympathy (in fact none whatsoever) for either of them dealing with the fall out of their administration events and I wish them nothing but pain from it for many years to come.
They both exhibited massive arrogance, Rangers through their establishment entitlement acquired and enhanced over many years and Hearts because whether they would like to admit it or not have always hankered for the same type of acceptance Hibs have always had for the way in which we play football and the fact that we are seen as trendy and edgy and they are seen as boring as ****.
Hearts are the very definition of the smelly wee brother of the hardest most popular guy is school, they are tolerated because big brother will kick folks heads in if they are not, but not liked in any way and know they are tolerated because of that threat rather than liked and that irritates the hell out them.
They quite happily drunk with devil for decades to have their moment in the sun and forgot the humility and decency they would require on the way down to land softly when they stopped being rich folks plaything.
For the avoidance of all doubt, I really don't like them :-)
Despite the fact that some Hearts Supporters are hun wannabees, I cannot tar them all with the same sectarian brush that its easy to tar rangers supporters with. Although less in number we too have our idiot element waiting in the wings to play up to the sectarian stereotyping of our club.
Its easy to be seduced and in doing so not to question where events are or could take you. I would hope that there are enough "good men" that if things were happening to Hibs that a stand would be taken.
As an example there have been posts recently about folk taking issue with idiots giving it "up the RA" crap. Do you think that would or could happen at Ibrox, it might at Tynecastle, but I am not certain.
On the one hand, Hands of and on Hibs suggest there are, but on the other hand the abuse directed at STF and constant demands for him to pitch in more cash suggests that some may sign up to anything for short term gain.
As one generation of a long generation of Hibs supporters which carries on to my children and will surely carry on beyond I am acutely aware that we are merely the current "good men" charged with the development and maintenance of the club we love. Its not ours to throw away or tarnish on the back of any desire for short term success
I and many folk like me we argue long and hard to preserve and enhance that legacy for future generations.
The price of that has and probably will be again in the future that we don't drink with devil and enjoy the short term illusory benefits that brings, but the other side of that coin is that we will keep and cherish something we can all be proud of without allegations such as poppy thieves etc being levied at us.
GGTTH
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17-05-2018 10:34 AM #39This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
I think there's some historical revision going on here. I can't recall anyone at the time saying this was money that Rangers didn't have. Everyone thought it was largely one man throwing his own fortune at his plaything. From the very start Vlad's credibility and source of funding was under deep, deep suspicion.
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17-05-2018 10:43 AM #40This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
I get what you're saying but:
- can't see how any remotely conscionable individual could live with the naked anti-Catholic bigotry that seems central to practically everything their support does
- am amazed at how their answer to "their club has been ****ed by rich ********s treating it as a plaything" is "find us any rich ******** to plough in more money"
So **** them.
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17-05-2018 10:46 AM #41This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
I think that Rangers supporters never bothered to think where the cash was coming from
It was obvious that SDM was spending cash on Rangers he didn't have, maybe not initially but before very long
£12m on Tore Andre Flo?
Probably more than their turnover at the time
There were share issues and others punting in plenty cash a long time before the fertiliser hit the fan
Much fool them they didn't see the smoke and call the fire brigade
The only difference between mad Vlad doing that at Hearts and SDM at Rangers was that the press didn't light the blue touch paper to the issue until it was too late
In the end both run out of cash and walked away
There is always an element of tiger's back syndrome to these things, but that's when folk need to ask questions
Neither Hearts nor Rangers supporters asked many questions, they were quite happy to bask in the rewards
Now its poor them, news to them, how could this have happened?
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17-05-2018 10:48 AM #42This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
I know, it's a contradiction. I still feel sorry for them. It must be like being a zombie in The Walking Dead.
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17-05-2018 10:56 AM #43This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
I'd maybe buy that argument if rival fans or indeed anyone else had been asking these questions at the time - but as far as I can remember they weren't. It all looked legit- a bona fide very, very rich guy indulging himself.
Everyone - and I mean everyone - knew Romanov was as dodgy as Del Boy Trotter from day one. He'd already been serially rebuffed elsewhere and he was a post-communist oligarch who got suddenly rich and bought a bank to place at the centre of his 'empire'. If it had been called Ukio Launderette Bankas it couldn't have been any clearer.
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17-05-2018 11:02 AM #44This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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17-05-2018 11:07 AM #45This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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17-05-2018 11:42 AM #46This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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17-05-2018 11:59 AM #47This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
And also: if not, should we have done so?
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17-05-2018 12:05 PM #48This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
Sadly true. An indictment of the times.
People would also gossip about folk who beat their wives but they never were in danger of losing their jobs, let alone being reported to the police.
What was the point if they would do nothing about it?
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17-05-2018 12:06 PM #49This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
On top of that, if it is a fact that Hibs knew this guy was a danger to kids, which it seems pretty clear we did, and didn't inform Rangers, even on the QT, that he should at least be closely watched then that in all honesty was a pretty despicable act and one for which the folk running the club at the time should be rightly condemned.
Its a fact that no club involved in this UK wide situation has emerged squeaky clean from it, and probably one of the reasons it ( thankfully ) hasn't emerged as a subject for point scoring between fans is because even now many clubs who haven't been affected up to this point might still be revealed as having a skeleton in their closet in the future .... lets face it, that's almost a certainty.
There is no question here of condemning The Rangers 2012 for the fact that they had a paedophile working at the club, so did lots of clubs it would appear ... the condemnation is because not for the first time they have utterly contradicted their stance that they are the same club in an unbroken line since 1872 in order to abdicate their financial or moral responsibilities.
I would sincerely hope that if ( possibly when ) Hibs are asked to face up to our complicity in this matter and the question of historic child abuse in football generally that we act with integrity and honesty, as I'm sure we will.
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17-05-2018 03:35 PM #50This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
There were comments in informed circles quite a bit before the credit crunch of 2008 which is widely reckoned to have hastened the dismantling of his empire and the pressing need for him to exit Rangers.
SDM and Rangers had / have such power over the media these never surfaced in mainstream conversation before the event, but it was a known issue alluded to in part on the mega thread around the sale of Rangers to Craig Whyte.
If nobody was asking questions or at least thinking how the hell is he managing to do this, then they certainly should have been.
You and I hold differing perspectives on this which is absolutely fine, you feel they are due some slack. I don't feel they are.
For me ignorance is no excuse, they were quite happy to lord it over all, and now they are paying the price and fingers crossed will continue to do so.
That's before we even get to the tax evasion of the EBT's that further multiplied their advantage
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20-05-2018 09:20 AM #51
Front page of one of the broadsheets today is Gareth Southgate warning his players about racisim during the world cup, and how their black players will need to handle it.
Wouldn't it be wonderful, if every team in Scotland had their manager speak about sectarianism in the papers, before we played the huns?Last edited by blackpoolhibs; 20-05-2018 at 09:24 AM.
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20-05-2018 10:02 AM #52This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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20-05-2018 10:20 AM #53
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There is no moral high ground on this one, but Rangers response seems to be pretty low.
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20-05-2018 12:41 PM #55This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
Having said all that, I'm not saying Hibs were squeaky clean in the whole affair. I think they probably thought (correctly) that they had dodged a bullet when Rangers poached the guy from them, but his crimes do seem to be serious enough that they probably should have involved the police even though attitudes were different 30 years ago. An 'off the record' phone call to Rangers would probably have been the right thing to do but that would have meant Hibs were stuck with the problem.
In today's climate the attitude of "Rangers" is beneath contempt but so typical of all who seem to be involved with that club.
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20-05-2018 12:48 PM #56
Is there any sort of official investigation being carried out?
It seems to me that a story appears every few months but that's it.
If there has been widespread sexual abuse of children that has gone on within most of our lifetimes and involved some of the country's biggest clubs (ours included) then there really should be some sort of independent inquiry to sort it all out, no?
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20-05-2018 01:05 PM #57This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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21-05-2018 06:44 AM #58
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I suppose this was before the days when a dodgy reference could get you in trouble.
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21-05-2018 07:24 AM #59This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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21-05-2018 08:28 AM #60
All the chat that 'nobody' knew Rangers finances were smoke and mirrors just isn't true. When Joe Lewis pumped 40 million into them in 1997 it was obvious that Murray foresaw trouble ahead. You just don't get into bed with Bahamas based business types if you can possibly avoid it.
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