Interview: Stewart Regan, SFA Chief Executive

Published on Friday 25 March 2011 18:01

Stewart Regan was at the UEFA Congress in Paris by the time he realised there was something brewing back in Glasgow, an age-old issue that had come out of the Co-operative Insurance Cup final between Rangers and Celtic.

E-mails came tumbling into his inbox and the phone started to ring. Never a good sign in the hours after the Old Firm collide.

The messages spoke of sectarian chanting by Rangers fans, not just in small clusters at Hampden, but in large numbers, loud and sustained. The songs of last Sunday, and how to eradicate them or if they can't be eradicated, how to punish them, will be high on the agenda when Regan sits down on Wednesday with representatives from Rangers and Celtic, the police, the government and others. The venue may be different, but it is, in effect, the Holyrood summit, part II.

"People will be honest and I'm sure there will be some soul-searching by us all about what can be done because I'm conscious that it (sectarian chanting) is becoming more of an issue in recent times," said Regan on Friday. "I've been told that it's gathering momentum and it's more prevalent now than it was this time last year.

"I'm determined to do our bit, because I don't want it to taint Scottish football and I don't want us to be accused of tolerating it. It needs to be joined-up thinking and we need to have a series of steps and if step one doesn't work then we go to step two and if step two doesn't work we go to step three and then the ultimate sanction has to be the doomsday scenario of matches played behind closed doors.

"It's serious enough to warrant sitting down around the table to try and figure out what we're prepared to do, short of those big issues like closed doors matches. That's got to be the ultimate sanction but none of us want that. The fans, the players, the clubs, the leagues, the media, nobody wants it, but we have to try and resolve it. What we can't do is pass the buck and say this is an issue for one body over another. It's all of us."

You cannot get through an Old Firm match without having your ear-drums assaulted by some poison or other, but Sunday's final was a level beyond what has become the norm. The bigots in the Rangers support were out in force, polluting the place with a volume of chanting that was louder than we have heard in years.

Their traditional defence is that the other lot were at it, too.

This is a claim that is usually followed by something like "You never write about them, do you?" which turns into "It's all the media's fault" before moving speedily into the realms of victimisation and self-righteousness, an entrenched position from where they will not shift. Of course, there is no shortage of equivalents among the Celtic fans but, at the League Cup final, the sweep of the sectarian chanting coming from the blue end drowned out the moronic element in green who sing of the IRA.

Chants about the Pope and Fenians abounded, all of it seemingly missed by Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, whose take on it all was that the fans had "set a positive example" and had "contributed to a memorable occasion".

MacAskill's "memorable occasion" is now the subject of a conference on Wednesday.

This is a hugely difficult issue for Regan, a relative newcomer to the Scottish game. Like many others, his ear is not trained to the songbooks of these matches, he is not immersed in the culture and says that, had he been at Hampden on Sunday, then he would not have recognised the tune to No Pope of Rome - lucky him - nor would he have been aware of its hateful sentiments. "I would have needed somebody to tell me that it is one of those unacceptable songs." This is entirely understandable. Regan is not alone in that.

"I'm new to Scottish football and was born and brought up in the north east of England and went to a number of Sunderland vs Newcastle matches and songs in those games are equally antagonistic but they don't carry the overtones we have here. They're used in the same way, to wind the other side up.

"But where do you draw the line and what is deemed to be sectarian and what is deemed to be political, what is legal and what is not legal? I'm sure we will hear arguments that certain songs are sectarian and certain ones are political but both of them are unacceptable because both are antagonistic and both are designed to wind the other side up.

"This is why I want to discuss it at the meeting on Wednesday because there comes a point when you have to say that you can't deal with one little group in isolation, you have to look at the big picture."

Regan's determination to try to address the bigoted chanting is admirable. Whether he can or not is debatable.

Some would say he has no chance, that the Old Firm - or Rangers, to name the chief culprits in this particular affair - are too big and too powerful and that, when it comes down to it, there will never be severe action taken against them for the bigoted songs of their supporters.

Regan won't personalise things for fear of alienating the very people that he needs to take with him if he is to achieve even a modicum of success in this business, so you won't hear him talk in specifics about Rangers or Celtic and the things they sing. But he has a will to tackle the issue, of that there is no doubt.

"We have to come up with some punishment that can deal with it. What that is, I honestly don't know. We talked about a variety of measures in the past, playing matches behind closed doors, I know that was talked about. But we need to get to the root of it and I welcome the chance to get feedback from a variety of different sources. I've actually contacted the organisations Nil By Mouth and Show Bigotry The Red Card and asked them if they would like to contribute to the debate.

"You have to think about measures that make the individuals sit up and take note.

"I know UEFA tackled racism a few years ago and they have had relative degrees of success on that one. We need to understand the extent to which our powers can be applied.

"UEFA have implemented matches behind closed doors. At this stage, we need to discuss and get clarity as to what we can do.

"I had discussions with the SFL and the SPL and we're all of the same mind that we do need to do something, we can't let this carry on, but we need to have real practical measures that can be put in place rather than passing responsibility from one part of football to the next. All of these issues are going to be brought to the table on Wednesday."

Maybe Kenny MacAskill should attend. He has some ground to make up after his nonsense of last week.