BREAKING NEWS - The final round of Scottish Championship fixtures...

[ian1964 10,447]

What duties is it these clowns actually undertake that justifies their salaries?,seriously?.

[BrahimHemdani 1]

Spot on we are BH, and again I would say it will do us no good. Our diplomatic silence, a major failing of the Murray era, looks to be rearing it's very ugly head again.

 

Our first agreement in a little while, TB, thanks for that!

 

I think the reason is equally obvious; namely, whatever the rights and wrongs, P Murray's tenure on the Board is on a shoogly "fit and proper" peg right now and King who is in the same pickle, quite understandably doesn't want to force the issue.

 

However, I see no reason why "Rangers" could not have issued a very dignified statement, saying that we did want to be seen to gain any advantage from playing last and therefore favoured all the games kicking off at the same time on the same day.

 

That would have done us the world of good both with the SFA and the other Clubs most notably Hibs and Hearts. For all the criticism of Regan, it was he who took action to force the change. Backing the SFA at a time when they are considering the "fit and proper" issue in connection with one director and another potential director/chair would have been the "diplomatic" thing to do, not the opposite.

 

Leaving it McCall was quite wrong in my view.

 

It was a terrible decision, Rangers should have said so loud and clear. Not saying so as a Club actually gives the impression that we weren't that bothered or worse still were happy to accept the advantage, which would have been equally wrong.

[ian1964 10,447]

Keith Jackson: A word of warning for Neil Doncaster and Co.. DON'T push your play-off panic button just yet boys!

 

SPFL chiefs stumble from one fixture farce to the next and our man Jacko reckons the powers that fail to be should have a right good thing before igniting the next touchpaper.

 

FOR a fleeting moment on Saturday afternoon Neil Doncaster may have thought he had finally caught a break.

 

When Craig Sibbald’s header ruffled the back of Hibernian’s net the SPFL’s downtrodden chief executive may even have popped back up from beneath his desk on Hampden’s sixth floor in the belief that it was safe to come out again.

 

Only to have Alloa’s Liam Buchanan nearly take his Rockabilly flat top clean off.

 

As Ronny Deila discovered yesterday inside the same stadium, Scottish football is nothing if not the home of the hard luck story. Around every corner lurks a quirk of fate with dangerous intentions. If it can go wrong, the chances are it will.

 

Yes, Buchanan’s late Championship equaliser against Queen of the South may not make much difference in the final analysis of this season’s promotion scramble. In all likelihood it has merely delayed the confirmation of the top four for a matter of a few days.

 

And yet, even so, Doncaster needed it like a hole in the head because this morning – on the back of a week long battering – he and secretary Iain Blair are scheduled to stare yet another credibility crisis squarely in the eye.

 

Having been prepared to extend the season this morning on the supposition that Hibs might reach two finals in the one weekend, will they now do the same for Falkirk? Yes, logic and fairness dictate that they should. Some might even call it acting in the interests of sporting integrity.

 

Today they are expected to announce their final, definitive plans for the end of season play-off which will determine the identity of 12th team in next season’s top flight. Or at least, that was the plan.

 

But Doncaster and Blair could do a lot worse than parking this one for just long enough to catch themselves a breath. They should certainly not be pushed or panicked into making another catastrophic wrong move.

 

Alloa’s 2-2 draw means Falkirk, arithmetically at least, are still in with an outside chance of competing in both the Scottish Cup Final against Inverness Caley Thistle on Sunday May 30 – and then in a Premiership play-off final the very next day.

 

An outside chance it may well be but for as long as this remains the case, Doncaster and Blair have another live device on their hands.

 

They intended dealing with it once and for all today and if they do get around to making a decision on whether or not to rubber-stamp an emergency extension to the current SPFL season then they had better get their act together or they’ll find themselves blundering into the eye of another s***storm by hometime.

 

The way the last few days have gone, you would not bet against it because Doncaster’s recent decision making has displayed all the calm and measure of a drowning man.

 

Which is why his heart must surely have sunk when Buchanan booted a lifeline out of his grasp just before tea-time on Saturday.

 

They used to joke if Ally McCoist fell into the Clyde he’d come out with a salmon in his pocket. By the same token, Doncaster would probably find a junky’s needle in his.

 

Yes, he’s handsomely paid for the job but the truth is Doncaster is little more than a convenient human shield for those who really make the decisions inside Hampden’s bomb proof bunkers.

 

He is not employed to offer these clubs direction or leadership. He is there to do nothing more than facilitate their demands and then take the blast for them when, inevitably, it blows up in his face.

 

These last few days have left him with a nuclear glow and now, at a time when he’s coming under all manner of fire from some of his own clubs, he must also attempt to handle the Molotov Cocktail of ‘sporting integrity’ and ‘extending the season’.

 

This is the result not just of some seriously bad luck but also of bad preparation. The truth is, the SPFL’s top men have rather needlessly boxed themselves in here by deciding not to take a more flexible approach to this moving fiasco.

 

For reasons best known to themselves, they have been determined not to issue at least two sets of proposed fixtures based upon the identities of the specific teams involved. Rather, they wished to come out with ‘one size fits all solution’ and this intransigence has left them in pickle.

 

Instead, they went into the weekend with only two clear options in mind. Plan A involved sticking to the original schedule of play-off matches but depended not only on Falkirk beating Hibs but also them being eliminated from the promotion process by a Queen of the South win at the Indodrill Stadium.

 

On the other hand, had Hibs reached the final then Plan B would have been rolled out this morning and the many possible consequences of this announcement might very well have created one crisis too many for the Doncaster administration to survive.

 

So now that neither of these scenarios has played out, this would indeed seem like a sensible moment to pause for breath and to fully consider the possible ramifications of forcing an extended season upon the likes of Motherwell, Ross County, Partick Thistle and Rangers when, in fact, there may be no need at all.

 

These clubs face shelling out a small fortune in additional wages as well as a logistical nightmare in attempting to persuade a combined total of around 50 players to sign short term deals which would allow them to play into the first week of June.

 

The smart move would be for Doncaster and Blair to take a big step back from this one for 24 hours at least in order to give themselves some extra thinking time. There certainly seems little to be gained from rushing into this, when the stakes are likely to be so high.

 

They may even be tempted to shelve it for another full week in the hope that this time bomb defuses itself this coming weekend. That would mean relying on Rangers taking points from Falkirk at Ibrox on Saturday and/or Queen of the South beating Dumbarton at home.

 

In any other world these might look like reasonably safe bets. But here - in the world of the coupon buster - anything can happen. And as Doncaster must know by now, it usually does.

 

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/opinion/sport/keith-jackson-word-warning-neil-5551005

[BrahimHemdani 1]

And spare a thought for the Gersnet Dinner organiser and attendees too