Ogilvie interference sets dangerous precedent

In A Man For All Seasons, Fred Zinnemann’s glorious film of Robert Bolt’s dramatic masterpiece, Sir Thomas More’s daughter, Margaret, and her fiance, Will Roper, exhort her father to arrest Richard Rich, a shady and ultimately traitorous house guest.

“On what charge?” asks a resolutely unwilling More. “Father, that man is bad,” Margaret replies. “There’s no law against that,” says More. Roper interjects, “Yes there is: God’s law”. At which More retorts, “Then God can arrest him”.

That exchange appeared entirely appropriate to the news on Monday that Campbell Ogilvie, the newly-inaugurated president of the Scottish FA, would petition Uefa to charge the Czech player, Jan Rezek, over his ‘dive’ to secure a point-winning penalty kick in the match at Hampden Park last Saturday.

Ogilvie was said by a spokesman to be seriously peeved because Rezek had flouted the governing body’s law on simulation. In which case, it seemed to this observer, he could have left it to Uefa to charge him.

The president’s interference not only impresses as petulant, but as a dangerous precedent for someone in his office. It is not difficult to imagine, for example, the managerial fraternity in Scotland seizing the opportunity to bombard Ogilvie with accounts of cheating by opposing players – and following up with accusations of hypocrisy in high places when their reports are binned.