Glenn Gibbons: SFA will find it hard to fill the ledger book of Kells

Published on Friday 9 October 2009 22:51

CONTRARY to reports in the more sensationalist of the media organs, an apparently meaningless trip to Japan with a skeleton staff – and complete with contrived mid-air scare – is the least of the Scottish Football Association's worries.

Of much more significance than today's friendly in Yokohama was the announcement earlier in the week of the 10million sponsorship agreement struck between the SFA and Adidas.

While this was clearly good news for the keeper of the ledger at Hampden, it was also a reminder that the man responsible for closing the deal, David Kells, is to retire next month. There is every likelihood that the association will find it impossible to unearth a worthy successor.

Very few at the governing body's headquarters will be aware of how fortunate such a comparatively insignificant organisation has been to secure the services in the past 30-odd years of two men of such extraordinary astuteness as Kells and his predecessor, Bill Wilson.

It was Wilson who introduced the SFA – then an almost Dickensian institution – to commercialism in the last days of Willie Allan's secretaryship in the mid-to-late 1970s.

In the three decades that followed, he transformed them from a small-time operation with an annual turnover of 150,000 to a relative giant dealing in multi-millions.

Kells's outstanding work as a fixer at Celtic under Fergus McCann was continued in his dual role as overlord of Hampden Park Ltd and commercial director of the SFA.

As well as the lucrative concerts and other highly-prized revenue streams at the national stadium, Kells was the inspiration behind the Scottish Football Hall of Fame, whose annual inductees' dinner has provided the Scottish Football Museum at Hampden with essential income.

It is a measure of the range of Kells's work that the jobs will now be split, with the experienced Peter Dallas, presently his assistant, assuming the running of Hampden. The worry, however, is that no progress has been made on finding a commercial director.

The word from within the building is that a serious problem is traceable to the president, George Peat, whose insistence on dabbling in the high affairs of state sees him on the premises three or four days a week.

The result is that the SFA has become one long episode of Yes, Minister, with the interference of the PM (Peat) not allowing Sir Humphrey (Gordon Smith) and his fellow civil servants to get on with the business of government.

Admission can't admonish referee

EVERY time a referee owns up to a potentially match-changing error of judgment, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the confession is utterly meaningless – and the suspicion that it has been made for dubious reasons.

On those occasions when an official bares his soul – the latest example following Craig Thomson's denying Celtic a blatant and possibly crucial penalty kick in last Sunday's Old Firm match – it more often than not sounds less like an admission of guilt than a plea for absolution.

This seems to be rooted in the questionable notion that culpability becomes somehow less offensive when it is accompanied by the perpetrator's acknowledgment of his misdeed. But there is, of course, no merit in recognising your wrongdoing when it has already been widely established through trial by television.

Far from admiring his "honesty", those fans who will go to their graves convinced that some aberrant referee has cost their team at least the chance of victory will much prefer the more agreeable dictum of the celebrated Scottish psychiatrist, RD Laing: "You don't cease to be guilty just because you plead guilty."

A knight to forget for Hateley

THERE are times when it seems that encouraging a child to play with a live grenade is only slightly more dangerous than giving an ex-football player a newspaper column.

As the former Rangers and England striker, Mark Hateley, demonstrated once again this week, no topic is too preposterous and no endorsement too shameful when a fast buck is on the line. In this respect, extravagantly-earning footballers over the past 20 years or so appear to have been developing a rapport with the philosophy of the legendary plutocrat, John D Rockefeller.

When, at the height of his fame and wealth, the founder of Standard Oil (Esso) was asked by a journalist how much money was enough, he answered: "Just a little more."

Hateley, of course, is no Rockefeller, but his claim that a knighthood for Walter Smith is overdue suggests that the two men would have shared an affinity with finance which no amount of pride could put asunder.

There is, of course, nothing intrinsically wrong with proposing Smith for an honour. Nor is there anything surprising or even offensive about the red-top to which Hateley regularly contributes creating a controversy by making a claim that is likely to have left a large majority of its own readers reeling in disbelief. It is that the Ibrox manager merits recognition by the Queen because his achievements with Rangers and Scotland meet "all the criteria like Alex Ferguson, Bobby Charlton and all these legendary characters within the game".

It is some newspapers' perfectly legitimate function to generate debate – and induce outrage – with statements that are transparently ludicrous. But the truly offensive aspect of this exercise is that Hateley should have lent his name to it.

He surely cannot believe that Smith's accomplishments – winning championships and cups with a club that is one half of a duopoly – merits his inclusion in the same level of the pantheon as Ferguson and Charlton. The Rangers manager himself would be the first to tell him that the money isn't worth that kind of self-humiliation.