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The SFA Must Ensure That Scottish Football Doesn’t Suffer If It Goes Ahead With Ibrox Plan.
The SFA and the club from Ibrox are reportedly near to agreeing a deal on the use of Hampden for the hapless Govan side’s home games whilst they try to fix whatever has gone wrong at Lego Land. The “emergency measures” they will need to take are pretty important to consider, including a delay in doing a proper relaying of the pitch and the eviction of Queens Park from the ground they had thought they’d be playing in.
In their rush to accommodate the club from Ibrox, the SFA has to remember that it has responsibilities for more than just one club. I’ve said already that they must get a fair market rate for the use of their ground, but there are costs beyond that which the governing body must make sure that it is in no way responsible for meeting.
Say you were building a patio on your house and you made a huge balls up of it and had to move out for a couple of weeks whilst the builders went in and sorted out your mess. You would find hotels all around the city who would be more than happy to take your custom. But aside from paying them for the room there would be any number of additional costs which you would incur in the course of your stay, and the hotel would expect you to pay them.
Hampden is a temporary home. And every cost incurred in facilitating that needs to – must – come out of the Ibrox coffers. Because Hampden belongs to every club in Scottish football. The SFA budget is the budget for Scottish football as a whole, and there are no circumstances under which it will be acceptable for any other club or organisation under their umbrella to pay for this in any way, shape or form, for however much or however little it may be.
Take the pitch. The SFA had a plan in place for a hybrid grass pitch, which takes a long time to grow but which is durable and resilient enough that, in theory, it shouldn’t need replacing for a good while. We’ve all seen the state of the Hampden pitch in recent years; it’s an embarrassment to the national game. This new turf was going to make a big difference.
But now that won’t happen. The word is that the SFA will use the cheaper, but quicker to put down “lay and play” style turf which they used at Wembley a couple of years ago to get the Charity Shield on. It is not as durable. It is not as easy to maintain. There are ongoing costs associated with it. In this case, Scottish football should not be liable for those costs, and nor should the SFA itself be paying to do the relaying of the pitch. They had budgeted for another job, a more substantial job. If Ibrox needs the quick and cheap solution, that’s on them.
Because the chances are that the SFA will, eventually, have to relay the turf along the lines they had originally planned to do. So why should Scottish football have to pay to maintain whatever they have to lay for the Ibrox club in the meantime?
When Hampden is rented out for concerts and other sports fixtures, the SFA takes the bulk of the money brought in through concession stands and outlets. That should be the case here. Every light that is switched on, every electrical current that runs through the place, every drop of water they are charged and billed for and perhaps even the staff who will work in those concession stalls … all of that will be paid for by the SFA and thus by Scottish football.
Corporate and advertising at Hampden belong to Scottish football.
If Ibrox’s “commercial partners” want to use the national stadium for their own advertising, then that needs to be taken into consideration and they should be billed accordingly.
Look, their deal is with the Ibrox club, it is up to them to sort out the consequences of that.
The SFA is fully entitled to make some additional money for Scottish football via that avenue.
Each and every penny that Hampden makes needs to – absolutely must – go back into the game here, as part of the deal. Let’s bear in mind that this was not the SFA’s screwup. This was not Scottish football’s mess.
This is one club which can’t get its own house in order, and which needs help.
The SFA is offering them a home.
That’s where it starts and stops. The rest of Scottish football isn’t running a pro-Ibrox charity. If this enterprise doesn’t turn a healthy profit, then the Executive needs to be held to account for that because that’s just not on.
Police costs are going to be substantial. Again, the SFA – Scottish football, in other words – absolutely must not bear the financial burden for that. These games will be played under their roof, but it’s up to Ibrox to foot the bill, as they would have to if they were playing at home, and if this turns out to be even more expensive than that, hard lines.
It’s also up to the Ibrox club to sort out a seating plan for their own supporters. Not one penny, not one shred, of SFA resources – which, again, is to say Scottish football’s resources – must be utilised in order to sort that out for them. The SFA is not obligated to do any of that.
Neither Queens Park nor the national team must be disadvantaged. In the case of the club team who thought they’d be playing their games at the ground, there needs to be a compensation package for them and it has to be agreed and paid for by the Ibrox club, not the SFA.
And depending on how long this little farce lasts, the SFA needs to come up with a plan in the event that the Ibrox club makes the League Cup semi-final on 2 November; we know that Ibrox is likely to be out of commission until October at the earliest.
Most of us suspect it’ll be for much longer than that.
On no account should Hampden be used for that game as a “neutral venue” if they are playing home games there, and I don’t care what so-called precedent was set during our own Hampden sojourn in the 90’s. Murrayfield didn’t exist at the time and we were there in the first place because Celtic Park was still being built.
Well now those two alternate venues do exist and that’s the game-changer.
Unless the game involves Celtic, our ground should get consideration. If it does involve Celtic then the whole kit and kaboodle needs to be moved to Murrayfield, no matter what friction that causes. Doncaster has already said that this arrangement won’t be allowed to interfere with sporting integrity, and we ought to make damned sure he’s held to that.
The Ibrox club is supposed to be making a “statement to fans” on Monday about this whole carry-on.
We’ll see what they say then, and we’ll see how much of it is honest and accurate. This will be them getting their version of the story out. But they can’t be the only ones to make such a statement; the SFA owes the rest of Scottish football a statement on this as well.
And in that statement, they should lay out the precise details of what this deal will involve.
There are elements which have to be confidential, yes, but they owe the rest of the game an assurance that this will turn a profit for Scottish football rather than inflicting costs on everyone else for the benefit of a club which has never given a damn about anyone else.
Let’s not forget that this is the same club which has waged a multi-front war with the governing bodies and in the course of that conflict considered every other club in the game to be little more than collateral damage, and it has slandered the directors and the owners and the operators of those same clubs in aggressively pushing the Victim Lie.
This looks as if it is going to cost the Ibrox club an enormous sum of money, and it’s fitting and right that it does. Every fan who bought a season ticket has a case for getting a partial, or full, refund. If the club ends up back at Ibrox with the Copeland Road stand closed then 8000 of them will be entitled to get every penny of their money back. Sponsors will be entitled to partial clawbacks. So will those who paid for hospitality and corporate packages.
The fix will be expensive. It will cost them in both the short and the medium term. That’s their problem. The SFA is entitled to offer them a measure of assistance, just as a hotel would offer you somewhere to stay if you couldn’t stay at home.
But not for free, and certainly not at someone else’s expense.
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