Aim Here

Obi-Kaa

I seriously don't see how the SPFL reacted to allegations of non-bullying by not-the-SPFL should impact on the SPFL's running of the vote. There might be some other issues in the dossier that impact on whether the vote should be allowed to stand, but the entirety of the 'threats' section of the dossier is, to put it bluntly, not worth anyone's attention, least of all Neil Doncaster's.

The Aberdeen phone call and other matters in the dossier are straying away from the allegations (i.e. the allegations of bullying) which I was talking about.

He's aware of allegations of conversations between championship clubs. Neil Doncaster doesn't have any say over other club chairmen, including SPFL board members. The allegations, taken entirely at face value, should be ignored by the SPFL, since they don't concern the SPFL. The only way they could have done is if one of the chairmen claimed that he was going to get the SPFL staff to do something, but that's not what's alleged - merely that he was talking on behalf of a voting bloc of championship clubs.

There's nothing in the allegations though. Even taken entirely at face value, they don't amount to wrongdoing, and even if they do, they don't amount to wrongdoing that the SPFL can act on. Championship clubs are allowed to propose votes, they're allowed to tell other clubs how they're going to vote in future hypothetical circumstances and they're allowed to use that as political leverage. It's no business of the SPFL at all, unless SPFL staff (not board members, but SPFL staff) are involved. Neil Doncaster was entirely right to ignore the allegations unless someone on the SPFL's payroll was interfering.

Doncaster didn't say people didn't talk to him about it. Quite the reverse. He said that there were no formal complaints of bullying - i.e. none of the complainers were willing to put a request in paper that he should do something about it. And since the people doing the moaning weren't complaining about supposed 'bullying' that involved SPFL staff, it's hard to see what he could have done about it even if they had put in a complaint.

Fixed that for you

I dunno. I think it would be funnier if the crowdfund succeeds and the court case goes ahead - only for the SPFL's lawyers to take a few pages of screencaps of the backers on Jambo Pigback actually admitting that the primary purpose is meritless and vexatious litigation intended to waste the SPFL's time and money and the backers end up paying for the SPFL's legal fees.

It's not stupid, in that there is a case to be made for league reconstruction as a better competition for Scottish football in general. Plenty of people support it. This was even a good opportunity to enact it, if there was support, since it could be combined with a fix to the perceived unfairness of prematurely calling the season. However, Ann Budge hasn't ever been a proponent of reconstructing the league until it helps her team dodge the upcoming relegation, so it comes across as a little opportunist and hypocritical. That didn't help gain reconstruction any more support than it already had, especially when she herself thought it should just be a temporary thing.

If you're saying other seasons are irrelevant, then you're tacitly admitting that reconstruction isn't there to fix any structural problems with the league competition in general, it's just a temporary quick fix to stop Hearts getting relegated, on the grounds that you think the way this season panned out is unfair. Changing something permanently for a temporary problem is surely not right. So why fix something that isn't broken? Surely voiding the season is the correct temporary fix, since it keeps the competition intact while actually being the temporary quick fix to the one-off problem with the season. It does have it's own issues of course, since you're nuking 3/4 of a season over a relative handful of unplayed games, and it comes with problems related to competition winnings and European places. And of course, once you agree that both options are bad options, then you can throw in the third bad option (call the season as-is and relegate/promote as applicable) and argue over which of the three bad options is the least-bad bad option. And that argument has already taken place and the answer is that option 3 won out. So it goes.

Tell me about it. This week killed off one of my dropped musician picks from last year, and killed off a bandmate of one of my current ones. It almost feels like I'm racking up negative points here...

There's two backers so far. Will the other 448 put their money where their mouths are?

Now now. Are you quite sure that that Hearts will be in better financial shape than the "diddy Fc's"? Hearts are the only team in Scottish fitba' who are definitely on track to get far fewer of those blue and green pounds than they'd ordinarily expect. They still have expensive cant-pay-someone-to-take-him-off-their-hands liabilities like own goal supremo Christophe Berra burning a hole their books, they're scheduled to undergo a change to fan ownership - with the stability issues that involves (like will that secret multi-million donor trust the new consortium enough to hand over his cash to it year on year, and can FOH absorb a sudden financial gutpunch, like, well, what's already happening in 2020, the same way that a single rich backer probably could.) Anyways, by the time we hit the season start, Hearts won't be giving a flying f**k about reconstruction. It was only ever a self-interested one-off 'please don't relegate us' fix from Anne 'too many teams in the league' Budge. Next year, they'll change their mind again according to circumstances - same as every other team in the league. So it goes.

Why would youse need a 12 team Championship? Are you planning on ending up in a relegation slot next year, too?

Surely Hamilton are pro-reconstruction, since it makes their grip on Premiership status that little bit less precarious. The main meat of the EGM dossier showed that Rangers are all about the TV money; losing out on an Old Firm match and the concomitant broadcasting revenue probably will have pushed them in the 'no' camp. I'm hoping the news breaks soon because Kickback is already in a near-nuclear state of seethe. Finding out that Rangers backstabbed the Hearts in their time of need, after the fans have spent the last week slavishly cheerleading the Doncaster dossier will pretty much tip them over the edge...

To be fair, it'll be 4 teams - they'll get Falkirk and Stranraer on board too. One team from each tier, more or less.

Farewell. It was fun while it lasted.

Needing holiday destination ideas for when the lockdown is over, Jambos?

In part, it's a defence of Doncaster and McKenzie therefore wholly appropriate that he doesn't sign it. Indeed. The letter pointedly doesn't cover the "allegations" that involve Murdo Maclennan and Ross McArthur, who actually are signatories.

Extracting a sentence fragment in a way that completely changes the meaning of what was said is not quoting, it's misquoting. It's also simple, boring and dishonest. Like you.

You selectively pulled a few words from my post to concoct another sentence that means something entirely different from what I actually said.

If you have to resort to deliberately misquoting people to make your point, you're clearly wrong and you clearly know it.

There's no 'explicit' provision to change a No vote in the leaked document, sure, but given that they explicitly have to state you can't change a 'Yes' vote, it's almost certain that, by default, votes of this nature are revokable, otherwise there would be no need for the provision making the 'Yes' votes irrevocable; likewise, if No votes are irrevocable, it would be perverse for this line to only mention 'Yes' votes. It could well be that elsewhere in the document or in another one, there's an actual explicit rule that points this out, but I'm not privy to it.

The SPFL rebuttal suggests Douglas Park made a serious, defamatory allegation, coupled with a threat, hence the four cease and desists. It'll be fun if this hits a courtroom and Old Douglas Park has to explain he was channelling the dregs of FollowFollow...

From the leaked SPFL Resolution document It's implicit in the statement "Once you have indicated your agreement to the Ordinary Resolution, you may not revoke your agreement". The SPFL would have phrased it differently if both 'yes' and 'no' votes were irrevokable. Also abstaining is considered as a default 'no' vote (i.e. if you vote 'no' by abstaining, you have to be able to change your 'vote').