This whole SPFL farrago could have been avoided

It didn’t have to be this way. It remains to be seen whether the emphatic rejection of Rangers’ demand for an independent investigation will take the heat out of the internecine wrangling among clubs and the SPFL over the vote to end the season.

What is not up for debate, though, is that temperatures simply did not need to be ramped up to boiling point permanently for more than a month.

On 10 March, I contacted an SPFL executive because even then, as the coronavirus pandemic raged elsewhere, it had become obvious there was no prospect of the Scottish season being completed on the football pitch.

Mistakenly, I believed that the SPFL board must have been putting the finishing touches to a smart plan to deal – as best as possible – with an invidious predicament. I didn’t envy them, but was certain that they would be driven by the need to formulate a unifying and fair footballing response to the crisis.

True leadership is the ability to bring others to your cause... not by showing them the edge of the precipice but with the path to righteousness. The fact that there was no attempt to take the latter route, and the farrago that ensued from Dundee’s disappearing original vote, is why many of us remain convinced that there have been profound failures in the governance of the SPFL. Not helped by the you-don’t-know-what-you-are-talking-about style condescension from chief executive Neil Doncaster and chairman Murdoch MacLennan to any challenges over the league body’s promptings.

Yet, the two men, and the SPFL’s legal counsel Rod McKenzie, can too easily be set up as the Aunt Sallys in this sorry saga. All the clubs, and those represented on the SPFL board especially, emerge from this smelling of manure. And that includes Rangers managing director Stewart Robertson. The Ibrox club’s fuelling of conspiracy theories to a fanbase addicted to such craziness has been wholly unfortunate.

However, the SPFL’s original resolution a month ago to curtail the season immediately for the lower divisions, and so pave the way for the Premiership to be ended in similar fashion, allowed for such silly stuff to be seeded. Just imagine if, on 8 April, following the building of a coalition with an emollient reaching out to all 42 senior clubs privately, the SPFL had announced the following course of action:

“In the desire to protect all of our members as best we can – our guiding principle in this unprecedented moment – we will not impose relegation on any member, but neither will we deny promotion, or titles, to clubs within sight of these after three-quarters of the season having been played.

“In order to fulfil aims that we are certain will be shared by our clubs in the collegiate approach required now, we propose a temporary reconstruction wherein we will move to three leagues of 14, with a resolution crafted that means this change would be triggered by the passing of a vote to curtail this season, and deliver prize money to our hard-pressed clubs.

“To ensure that this transition can be made as smoothly and as simply as possible, we will retain the current financial distribution model, with the board willing to engage in discussions over altering this model in reviewing 14-14-14 at the conclusion of next season.”

Precisely which clubs, with the possible exception of Rangers, would have found fault with such an even-handed approach to all the difficulties thrown up by the inability to play football in the country until July, at the earliest?

Such a resolution would have required to meet the 75 per cent threshold – with nine clubs from the Premiership, eight clubs in the Championship, and 15 clubs from League One and League Two approving – but does anyone seriously believe it would have fallen short? It is obvious, and natural, that self-interest rules among SPFL clubs, but so little give would have been asked of any team in this scenario.

Accepted, 14-14-14 would have been harsh on the Lowland and Highland league winners, Kelty Hearts and Brora Rangers. However, that has as much to do with a pyramid unworthy of the name that denies these champions automatic entry to the SPFL, and forces them to scrap for it in a three-way play-off involving the bottom club in League Two.St Johnstone have said their concerns over reconstruction came from the possible impact on the television contract.

It is difficult to see how Sky would not be satisfied by a 14-club Premiership that would split following two rounds of games to see a top six – which inevitably would include Celtic and Rangers – and bottom eight play a further two rounds.

And, in selling the three 14s, surely the SPFL could have highlighted the inherent issues with the 12-club Premiership’s current format. Scottish top-flight clubs, frankly, should be ashamed when it comes to their endorsement of a structure that operates entirely contrary even to basic notions of sporting integrity.

That seems an inescapable truth when there is the potential for any club to play a direct opponent three times away and only once at home during a season. Before we even start on the fact that only one of the top 25 leagues in Europe has a lower guaranteed drop-out rate than Scotland’s (near) closed-shop highest tier.

The health emergency presented an opportunity for senior football in this country to be better and bigger – configured better, as clubs proved they could be bigger than simply being driven by petty considerations.

That it failed, suggests it is not just the SPFL officials and board that need to take a hard look at themselves.

This whole SPFL farrago could have been avoided - and here’s how

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