The tale of the Great Belli

Good Morning,

For the better part of half a century, if you happened to walk down Montgomery Street in the heart of San Francisco you could be treated to any one of a number of amazing sights. For there in Montgomery Street, at number 722 to be precise, you would come across the offices of the remarkable– and very often utterly mad– Melvin Mouron Belli.

“Who?” I hear you ask!

Melvin Mouron ( pronounced moron ) Belli ( pronounced Bell eye as opposed to belly ).

Now, if I told you that Melvin had a leading role as a villain in a 1968 episode of Star Trek, and also appeared as the Mayor of San Francisco in an episode of Lady in the House, and as an army colonel in Devil’s Dolls, and as the trial judge in an episode of Murder She Wrote with Angela Lansbury – you would be forgiven for thinking that Melvin was an actor.

Well, In many ways you would be correct because in addition to these credits, he made various other on screen appearances over a career that spanned decades.

However, despite having a speaking voice described as”by turns a Stradivarius, a bugle, an oboe, and a snare drum racing at breakneck speed”, Melvin’s main occupation was not as an actor.

He was an author of some 70 plus books, a raconteur, an after dinner speaker, a wag, a gadabout town, a serial lover of women, an imbiber of fine wine, a gastronome and no doubt many other things.

However, in the main he will be remembered as one of the most successful and remarkable lawyers ever to tread the boards in an American court of law – and for being completely eccentric if not completely mad by the time he met his demise in his 88th year.

Melvin Belli was a very different type of lawyer to the ones we mostly see in this country. Not for him the image of the dark suited conservative establishment figures we get hanging about the Courts of Session and Parliament Square in Edinburgh.

Not for him the neat and tidy respectful type of modern office that we envisage and associate with a large firm of corporate solicitors.

Oh no!

If you passed by the ground floor of 722 Montgomery Street you could often see Melvin sitting at his desk through the giant plate glass window that formed the entire ground floor wall of his office. He would sit in one of his many brightly coloured– some would say dazzling, others would say gaudy – checked suits with the red silk lining, resplendent in the finest snakeskin boots, behind a giant desk. On the desk was a full velvet and ermine crown, seemingly encrusted with jewels, which would play “let me call you sweetheart” as soon as anyone attempted to move it. The office had a fully stocked bar, a life size skeleton, female mannequin , crystal chandeliers, various velvet boxes filled with papers and reports, a full tiger skin rug ( allegedly bought from Elizabeth Taylor ) and various other – decorations – using that term very loosely. In the past his office has been described as a badly decorated bordello! The offices of ” You gotta call Saul” out of Breaking Bad must surely have been based on the style set by Melvin.

Whatsmore, if you chose to stand outside and wave at Melvin through the glass window there is every chance you would get a hearty wave back in return.

Melvin Belli came from a Swiss/Italian family who had come to America. His was no rags to riches story as his grandfather was a surgeon, his father a banker and his grandmother one of the few female pharmacists of the time. In short he had a very good middle to upper class professional background.

He was far from a brilliant student, achieving average grades from the law school at the University of California Berkley from which he graduated in 1933. Immediately on leaving the law school he took a job posing as a hobo for the Works Progress Administration and riding the rails to observe the Depression’s impact on the country’s vagrant population. This was an experience that may well have changed Melvin’s life.

He would be a trial lawyer representing the little man – the poor man – the forgotten man – but he would do it in such a fashion as to gain complete and utter notoriety.

”Who are you representing Mr Belli?”

”Mr X, the little man with no hope!”

“And you have filed suit against all these defendants?”

”Yes – Corporation A, their president Mr B, their Vice president Mr C – all a shower of complete bastards!”

So went Melvin’s pre trial press conferences as is the want in America.

In his career Melvin Belli had many notable cases against big corporations and he won so much money – some say as much as $600,000,000 — in damages for “poor” clients that he became known as the Robin Hood of lawyers.

Again, if you happened to be in Montgomery Street when a judgement came in which showed that Melvin had won yet another decision against “The Bastards” you may just be lucky enough to witness one of his more spectacular eccentricities.

On such occasions he was known to take his very expensive suit up on to the roof of the building with a bottle of his choice – be it of brandy, port, whisky, champagne or whatever – and once up on the roof he would hoist the Jolly Rodger flag on the building’s flag pole and fire a small cannon to signify that the enemy had been defeated and brought to justice by Melvin the pirate!

Now lest it be thought that Melvin Belli was only some sort of caricature I would have to stress that he was far more than that. He was extremely successful and had a number of high profile clients including Mohhamed Ali, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Lenny Bruce, The Rolling Stones and in his early years Errol Flynn with whom he was very friendly. Even Jack Ruby, whom he unsuccessfully defended for shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, came calling at Melvin the pirate’s bordello.

He was also sufficiently successful throughout the courts of his homeland that he was widely given the nickname – King of Torts – an area of the law where he showed a complete and utter mastery.

Further he was the foremost advocate of a courtroom technique which he pioneered – and that was the introduction of what became known as “Demonstrative Evidence”. No piece of demonstrative evidence was ever too small, too big or too outlandish to be used when making a point.

He would introduce a full scale model train and track to show how defective rails had caused an accident and the subsequent injury.

He once had a female client strip to the waist in the privacy of the court before judge and jury to demonstrate the effects of defective surgery. In so doing the woman was shy, embarrassed, mortified and tearful – she received record damages!

On another occasion he addressed a jury while representing a woman who had had to have a leg amputated as a result of an accident. Throughout the trial he had on his table, in clear view of the jury, a long box wrapped in cheap orange/yellow paper. He would push it about, stand it up, lay it down, but never opened it. Only when he started his final address to the jury did he unwrapp the box and opened it so that everyone could see its contents.

There inside, as everyone had suspected but could never be sure, was a brand new artificial limb belonging to his client.

He more or less dumped it in the lap of the first juror and asked him to pass it along saying:

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,this is what my client will wear for the rest of her life. Take it. Feel the warmth of life in the soft tissues of its flesh.  Feel the pulse of the blood as it flows through the veins, feel the marvellous smooth articulation at the knee joint and touch the rippling muscles of the calf.”

The jury deliberated for 20 minutes and awarded $100,000 – 10 times the going rate for a severed limb.

In his later years, Belli increasingly assumed a huge caseload that included seeking damages for 24,000 victims of the toxic gas disaster in Bhopal, India. He also represented victims of hotel fires, plane crashes and earthquakes and the families of sailors killed in an Iraqi jet attack on a US Navy frigate.

However, the case that gave Melvin the most pleasure was the one he personally brought against the San Francisco Giants in the 1950s. The team had boasted of the heating system at their stadium, but Belli claimed to have been frozen watching a game, and sued them.

In the courtroom, heavily wrapped in winter clothes, he produced two men from the US Army’s Arctic survival team to testify they had been colder in Candlestick Park than on an Arctic ice flow.

The jury awarded Belli the price of a season ticket, and the San Francisco Bulletin newspaper, having got a quote from the mesmeric Melvin declared: –  “Chilly Belli Beats Giants”!

At times his courtroom display earned him the criticism of the American Bar Association. In a retort, Belli suggested his membership of said Bar Association conferred as much prestige as membership of the Book-of-the-Month Club.

To his admirers, the attorney was a fighter for the little people against the moneyed interests. To detractors, he was a shameless self-promoter who inflated his own importance, and used every outlandish trick in the book to further his own reputation.

Whatever view you take of the great Belli ( be he great because he was a showman or because he was a pioneering and campaigning lawyer ) he ultimately perished his legal career chasing ”The Bastards”.

His firm sued the Dow Corning chemical company on behalf of hundreds of women who had been provided with defective breast implants which were made by the company. The cumulative damages were set to top $200,000,000  when the very ethical Dow corporation simply filed for bankruptcy and folded up lock stock and barrel.

Belli had brought the whole giant conglomerate down.

However, in so doing, he created a huge problem for himself and his own firm fell into bankruptcy when they could not pay the fees of the numerous expert witnesses they had hired to “get the bastards” at Dow. He started to argue with his partners, including his son, many of whom were of the view that the “old man” should have retired years before – as by this time he was showing clear signs of being a true medically defined nut case.

In his private life he was married six times – one wife lasted only 34 days – and even his own divorce hearings were conducted like a pantomime.

In one divorce trial he insisted on calling the then wife seated at the opposite court table ”El Trampo” in all his submissions and would not desist when asked by the court.

Further, he referred to his spouse’s attorney throughout as “The Warthog”– a reference to the female lawyer’s looks.

However, what eventually lead the judge to find him in contempt of court was when the judge reached an interim decision in favour of “El Trampo” on one aspect of the case which lead Belli to address the court saying that the Judge could only have reached such a conclusion because he had been sleeping with both El Trampo and the Warthog!

Yet, apparently these insults were delivered with such charm that the fine levied was only one of $1,000 which Belli paid out of his loose change.

Eventually, a court declared that Melvin was  “unfit to mind the store” and only a few weeks later he died at the age of 88.

He simply sat in his chair, stopped talking and stopped breathing.

I most definitely am not a fan of certain parts of the American legal system nor the kind of contingency lawyer that we often see portrayed on our televisions.

However, it would be wrong to say that there is nothing to be learned from American courts nor the lawyers who practice within those courts. Melvin Belli was  as large as life if not larger. He was outrageous, outlandish, probably lacked a great deal of taste, was completely eccentric, sometimes deliberately rude for effect but on occasion was absolutely brilliant.

He took the view that if you were hauling a shower of Bastards through the court, then the court – or tribunal- or panel – or inquiry should be asked to do only two things.

The first was to find the defendent liable ( guilty ) or not liable ( not guilty ).

The second was that If the verdict was Liable – or Guilty — then the court should hand down a sentence or make an award that was punitive, that was meant to represent fair compensation to the victim and was sufficient to send a message to the wrongdoer, be they an individual, a large corporation, a government department or even a sporting body.

The message was that the penalty for breaking the rules was so steep – so drastic – so punitive — that the perpetrator of the wrongdoing or anyone else would be in no doubt that it would never be worth repeating the action complained of at any time in the future.

“Who do you represent mr Belli?”

”The little man, the forgotten man, the man with no voice!”

“And who do you cite?”

”These guys – those in power, with money, establishment and arrogance at their backs – a scurrilous shower of bastards”.

Having produced the life and times of Melvin Mouron Belli (pronounced Bell Eye) without further ado  — I rest my case

Lord Nimmo Smith and the Hare and the Tortoise

Good Morning,

Many years ago– and it is more years than I care to remember– a Law Lecturer stood before myself and my class mates in a lecture theatre and tried to explain how a misapplication of the principles of law– or indeed the logical application of only selective parts of the law itself, when applied in relation to selected facts and circumstances — could lead to an illogical legal conclusion in any given situation and set of circumstances.

He added that when this phenomenon occurred then clearly the law had gone wrong and there had to be  a reappraisal of the legal principles and facts considered and applied– alternatively if no other conclusion could be reached other than one which produces and illogical result– then the law itself had to be changed.

To keep his lecture as simple as possible for us thickos in his class, he repeated the tale of the hare and the tortoise as told by a mathematician applying pure logic and a selected theory and law of mathematics.

The theory– which is perfectly logical— is that where you have one object which is stationary and another object which is travelling towards the stationary object, then after a certain period the moving object will have halved the original distance between it and the stationary object. After a further period of time, the intervening distance will have halved again and after yet a further period of time that distance will have halved yet again and so on ad infinitum.

In theory, the distance between the two objects will perpetually continue to be cut in half even down to the most infinitesimal distance.

However applying this theory alone— albeit that it is a mathematically proven theory based on a set of given numbers and proven formula— then the Tortoise never caught the Hare– he just got closer and closer and closer– and so in any race the Tortoise never ran past the Hare! In short, by this theory the Tortoise could never have won.

Yet, as we all know– despite this demonstration of clear logical thinking— The Hare got gubbed and the Tortoise was victorious.

It will come as no surprise to many that the tale of the Hare and the Tortoise with its illogical conclusion as told by the law lecturer came to mind when I came to consider the terms of– and more importantly the implications and consequences of—- the recent decision and report of Lord Nimmo Smith and his colleagues.

By this time there will have been many many far more learned commentaries on the detail of the decision than anything that I could come up with. However there are some points that just stick out for me which require further thought and clarification, and then I think there is a need to just stop and pause to take time to think about where this decision– if it is allowed to stand–leaves Scottish Football and those involved in, and those who support, it.

With respect to Lord Nimmo Smith– his report makes no sense in the bigger picture.

For example- take the position of Sandy Bryson. When it comes to any appeal of findings on any aspect of registration– Bryson is effectively the appeal body– so how can he give evidence at all?  In addition, unless I am mistaken, this inquiry was dealing with the application of the rules of the SPL whereas Mr Bryson is the head of registration for the SFA- an altogether different body– or so we are told. Accordingly quite why an employee of one body should be called upon to give weighted evidence on the internal workings of the rules of another body is more then curious.

Whatsmore Bryson is someone who has a potential conflict as it has long been thought that the registration process within the SFA– or perhaps those who administer it— have been caught with their trousers round their ankles when it comes to this whole debacle. After all he would be part of the body who has to look at club annual returns in respect of the SFA rules- which annual return is meant to contain all contractual details between club and players. Further, each year the SFA have to issue a UEFA licence which once again calls for all contracts and agreements to be disclosed and in addition to that thiose regulations call for someone within the SFA to carry out an annual audit of all documents and contracts between the club and all sorts of people- not just players– including managers, chief executives and so on– and this has to be completed and approved before a UEFA licence can be granted.

Yet despite all of these tests and requirements, inspections and compliance tests, Sandy Bryson’s department failed to uncover or have disclosed to them various contracts and agreements relating to payments to players– and presumably others such as managers, directors and the then CEO who, you may recall, went to the Court of Session where it was shown ( by Rangers PLC no less ) that he, in particular, had asked for his own contract to be placed in the shredder so no one could see it!

However, leaving potential ineptitude aside for the moment, Sandy Bryson gave his evidence and in one easy movement Lord Nimmo Smith dropped the ball completely. There appears to have been no examination of  Bryson’s logic at all, nor his interpretation of the rules of registration and so there is no potential contradiction or alternative view of his interpretation. As this is an inquiry, and a key area of that inquiry turns on Bryson’s interpretation I don’t think the job is complete if you simply accept the word of Bryson. An Inquiry is meant to…. enquire…… to ask questions.Yet it seems to me that Sandy Bryson and all he said was accepted with no enquiry whatsoever.

That is especially odd when you consider the all important clause on which his evidence turns which reads as follows:

Rule D1.13: A Club MUST, as a condition of Registration AND for a Player to be eligible to Play in Official Matches, deliver the executed originals of all Contracts of Service and amendments and/or extensions to Contracts of Service and all other agreements providing for payment, other than for reimbursement of expenses actually incurred, between that Club and Player, to the Secretary, within fourteen days of such Contract of Service or other agreement being entered into, amended and/or, as the case may be, extended.

By this time, everyone knows what Sandy Bryson said and how Lord Nimmo Smith relied on his interpretation in reaching his conclusions- so I won’t repeat all that.

What I will say is this. The regulation concerned uses the word “must”—- you MUST disclose all contracts and arrangements in order to validly register a player— Rangers clearly did not— they failed the “must” test– whether deliberately or accidentally does not matter. Failing the must test requires no sporting advantage or anything like it– must means must! If you haven’t complied with “must” then you have not de facto registered the player– even if you think you have and even if the SFA or the SPL think you have. In any legal rule or document ” Must” is a very carefully chosen word– it is chosen over and above “should”,  “shall”, “Is Obliged to” or any other similar word or phrase. The use of the word “Must” denotes the highest possible duty or obligation- and most importantly– the most drastic and catastrophic set of consequences for failure.

If it says you must– then you must– end of! And if you didn’t then everything that follows from the word “Must” in the clause just does not happen. It is clearly a holy prerequisite- an absolute with no wriggle room!

Yet Sandy Bryson was able to come up with a scenario and an interpretation which makes a total nonsense of any reasonable argument why the word “must” is at the very start of the rule concerned– and no one– not one of the learned panel appears to have questioned  him or his interpretation despite all logic telling you that he cannot possibly be correct.

Presumably, in Lord Nimmo Smith’s world— The hare beat the tortoise after all?

However, lets move on from there.  Taking Nimmo Smith to be correct in his application of the law and  his assessment of the evidence, he is still withering about the Rangers PLC board saying that they failed either through negligence or wrecklessness to disclose the payments to the football authorities. Further he clearly says they took no advice on whether they should or should not disclose for fear that they would be told plainly that any such disclosure would jeopardise the tax scheme the Directors Rangers PLC were so clearly hell bent in following.

In other words the choice to deliberately not disclose the contracts and documents  was a calculated one where they put the desire and need to preserve the tax benefits they envisaged before the football rules demanded by the SPL and the SFA— and as I have mentioned up above the key rule uses the word “must”.

What does that tell you about the attitude of the Directors running that company? What does it say about the desire to ensure that Rangers Football Club, its players and its fans were all properly represented when it came to matters involving Rangers PLC, the SPL and the SFA?

It tells you that these directors did not give a jot as long as their tax scam– legal or not– was not jeopardised. The Football Player, The Football Fan ( of any club ) and the Football Authorities and their rules could get stuffed– they did not count as much as the need to ensure that the tax was kept to a minimum by fair means or foul.

Now I have said all along that in my opinion there are a huge number of victims here– victims of this board and its, to be frank, cavalier attitude towards the rights, hopes and aspirations of others involved in football.

I have said on several occasions that both the Rangers Players and the Rangers Fans are among the innocent victims– but they did gain a benefit from the duplicitous actions of the board of Rangers PLC who are the guys who are really to blame for a whole host of calamities– not least the ultimate liquidation of Rangers PLC and the need for The Rangers to start again in the lower leagues.

Take a guy I have a bit of time for– Billy Dodds. Billy has repeatedly said on air that it would not be fair if any medals were taken away from him because he and all the other players did nothing wrong, never believed that they had done anything wrong and just tried their best.

I have no reason to disbelieve him at all— at any time when I have seen Billy Dodds play for anyone I have always thought he tried his socks off.

However, he was part of a team– and that team includes the backroom staff right up to board room level– and up there, the team members chose to play fast and loose with Billy’s heartfelt graft. By their decision not to risk or jeopardise their tax scheme, they decided to peril any medals or rewards Billy won in the blue shirt. They chose to break the rules in so far as they related to Billy and his team mates registration– and in so doing they sure as hell did not consult Billy– or anyone else on the pitch.

Now, if you are a member of an athletics relay team and one member drops the baton or runs outside of the lane, then despite your heartfelt efforts and your total sincerity you will be disqualified simply because the rules have been broken– even if there is no real sporting advantage. That is just the way it is.

Lord Nimmo Smith slates the old Rangers Board and says they bear a heavy responsibility. Heidi Poon slaughtered the same people in her dissenting judgement of some 80 pages in the FTT and the remaining two judges there chose not to demur.

However what should also be borne in mind is the evidence adduced in the case of Martin Bain v Rangers PLC where it was revealed to the court that Martin Bain had ordered the Shredding of his own contract and other documents for fear of leaving himself exposed to the rule of law. Then add to that, the fact that in another tribunal, another Director of the same club was banned from all involvement in football for conduct which was described as  as close to match fixing as you could get. That conduct was the deliberate non payment of tax in order to further and protect the trading viability of the football club.

Presumably, the players who played during the Craig Whyte regime also tried their socks off yet the panel described the off field activity as very close to match fixing.

Further remember, that while Mr Whyte was castigated for not disclosing his disqualification from being a director, there was no suggestion that he had shredded contracts, withheld documents relating to player registrations and payments and so on for a period exceeding a decade.

With all of that info available, and given that the Nimmo Smith inquiry was to be for the benefit of everyone in football– players, ex players, managers, ex managers, fans, officials etc why does Nimmo Smith not look in detail at  those directors who he so clearly criticised — their position within RFC and their experience in football and sports administration? Because one of the things he could have potentially done was recommend further sanction against  the directors themselves just like a previous panel did with Craig Whyte.

Yet he makes no mention of any possible sanction against the people involved.

So why not examine who did what or failed to do what? Why not for example sanction the individuals– as it appears that they have brought the game into disrepute— surely if you criticise a ref and that amounts to disrepute then failing to comply with rule registration for a decade in order to cover up a tax scheme merits at least a charge or a discussion about a charge of bringing the game into disrepute or more?

Failing to examine that possibility seems bizarre to me.

I would also want to ask some questions here. How do the former Rangers players feel about the fact that it now appears irrefutable that the then directors chose not to disclose all their contractual documentation? Would they trust those directors and officials again? If they have to have dealings with these same people in the future– as a manager or coach of another club, or as a players agent– what do they think about this past conduct where their playing papers were not perfect by design?

What do other managers and club directors think of that?

We know that Campbell Ogilvie, who was very much involved in all of this, is at the heart of the SFA– for all we know he was also at the heart of the attempted negotiations where a place in the SPL was to be given in return for some titles being taken away. What do Rangers fans and former players think on that topic?

Also– the head of football administration at Ibrox from 2003 was Andrew Dickson. Even allowing for a decade of “Administrative errors”, how do fans feel about the fact that he still performs that same role today apparently?

Re no sporting advantage on the field of play.—- I think Nimmo Smith takes a very narrow interpretation of what amounts to a sporting advantage and what does not. I think he sees that Rangers were able to field eleven players who they intimated would be their registered players over the course of any year, and that those players were registered ( albeit imperfectly if we accept Bryson at face value ) and so “eligible” to play.

 Well there is a strong argument to say that even if they were registered ( which is a real stretch of the relevant rule )  they were not eligible because key parts of their contract had not been disclosed and the clause says that to be registered AND eligible those contracts “must” be disclosed.

Well as we all know the side letters– which if I recall correctly certain former RFC Directors said did not exist at all— were not disclosed.

What Nimmo Smith appears to say is that by failing to disclose the contracts, Rangers gained no advantage on the field of play as it was still eleven versus eleven!

However, what Nimmo Smith does not take into account is the cumulative effect of his own findings namely that the side letters were not disclosed for fear of voiding the tax scheme, that this was a deliberate and prolonged breach of the rules, which enabled Rangers an off field financial advantage of £47M over a ten year period– which obviously enabled them to buy more and better players—- and which £47M may well not have been available to them had they disclosed and had to pay their taxes— and which £47M or any part of it— was not available to any other club in the same way because they had chosen to comply with the rules and had disclosed all payments made with the consequence that they were open and transparent about all financial arrangements.

And here I go back to Billy Dodds’ argument about he and his fellow players doing nothing other than trying their heart out and so it would be unfair to take away medals etc– as he wants to show them to his kids and grandkids etc.

Whilst I understand– and sympathise with that— every member of every other team in the league also tried their heats out and wanted to show their kids and grandkids winners medals. Billy Dodds is only able to do so because he played in a team with players that Rangers could not otherwise have afforded had they been forced to pay tax on their salaries– like every other team in the league. By the way– don’t take my word for that– that was the evidence of some of the MIH contingent before the FTT.

However it is only once you have been open and honest about all financial and contractual arrangements that your players and your team become eligible to take the field and get the chance to try their heart out against similarly registered and rule compliant opposition. Only then can your clever board directors and company lawyers and accountants seek to secure the maximum tax advantage in accordance with the law of the land as a result of people paying good money to see a game of association football played within the rules— and that is the off field rules and the on field rules.

Nimmo Smith does not start from that point and he should.

If Billy Dodds had played for a Dundee United team or an Aberdeen team which was financially enhanced by £47 Million over a ten year period then I wonder how many more medals he might have won?

Remember too that Nimmo Smith’s findings are only recommendations– so the SPL board have to consider the recommendations– but they need not do that in isolation. That board can look beyond the terms of the remit to Nimmo Smith– so they can look at the tax case and so on. So– If I were them I might just suspend all sentence– leave the whole thing standing in abeyance until after the UTT decision and I would seek clarification on the registration process from the SFA by way of official letter and if necessary from UEFA–as it would appear  that the registration interpretation of the SFA does not sit well with the arguments presented by UEFA re  FC Sion and by other authorities elsewhere such as in the case of Melbourne Roar FC.

Within the SFA rules it states clearly that the association, the clubs and the players will be bound by all rules and regulations of the SFA, UEFA, FIFA and by the findings of the court of arbitration for sport– which has previously ruled in terms which appear to say that Sandy Bryson has taken the wrong approach thus making the Nimmo Smith findings fatally flawed.

Further winning or coming high up in the SPL is the qualification standard to Champions League or European  football which, as mentioned above, requires further licensing provisions of an exacting standard. Looking at the SFA Handbook and the rules and regulations on their site, it is not only the players registrations that have to comply– check those parts where the clubs have to disclose all contracts for managers, coaches, youth coaches, physios, CEO’s and so on

— where does Nimmo Smith look at any of that?– the answer is nowhere.

So what are the SFA doing about their rules and the potential breaches of those rules? Given the statement made by the CEO yesterday are we just to forget about those rules and regulations as if they did not exist?

How does that serve football in Scotland and elsewhere?

In the wider picture we can see that there has been a flagrant and complete breach of administrative function within Scottish Football– no one on the terraces has any idea if they are watching a game that is properly administered, players that are properly registered, club officials that have complied with basic fair play duties, and all overseen by executives who have openly accepted that they would flush the rules down the toilet for the sake of expediency— all because of one club– and the desire not to simply implement rules for the sake of that one club.

There is no trust in the game at all any more– none whatsoever.

I’m afraid this is no longer about just the conduct of Rangers PLC over the decade examined by Nimmo Smith. It is about the absolute lack of governance and regulation by SFA the SPL and those who were in charge of those organisations and who were meant to be ensuring that all the rules were complied with before the players take the field.

In that regard Scottish Football has failed totally for over a decade or more– that is a straightforward and accepted fact.

At the very least Nimmo Smith is saying that a team of suits were able to breach those rules to protect their own vested interests and that the checks and balances within Scottish Football Governance were ill equipped to discover it or stop it despite there being two separate licensing functions and a supposed compliance audit each and every year.

What is the fan to make of that?

Reassessing fixtures, stripping titles and all that stuff is far less important than ensuring that those who were involved in creating this mess– and those who were involved in either covering it up, bargaining it away, or who simply failed to take the correct action for the sake of expediency are removed from football for good.

To ignore that notion is to effectively declare the hare as the winner of the race because in theory the tortoise was never going to be allowed to win as he could never have passed the hare no matter how hard he tried.