Aim Here

Better than Shankland?

Excellent. If the three clubs are expecting actual financial help with the legal fees, that's a big hint that the three clubs know the mass of SPFL clubs are still on their side. Which is important, since Hearts' case rests on the notion that no reasonable member would have voted the way they did. Having the chairmen still onside, and presumably submitting testimony, makes it a shitton harder to claim that the club chairmen's votes were due to them being misled by Neil Doncaster supposedly lying to them about the prize money, and it also means that they'll be happy to defend the reasonability of their decisionmaking. If the case gets as far as taking evidence, Hearts will have a massive hurdle to overcome. I'm almost disappointed that it went to arbitration because of this. Having Hearts' QC trying to coax Donald Findlay (also a QC) into admitting he was a helpless gullible wee lamb led around by Neil Doncaster's sinister hypnotic wiles, and that he didn't know what he was voting for would surely be good entertainment.

The main purpose of him asking for those executive powers was so that he could bypass the vote in cases like the one we just had so that he could just put through a 'lets not relegate Hearts' type proposal by executive decree and bypass the hassle of the last 3 months. It's not that different from what Leslie Deans was proposing - an executive override to the decision (although he was demanding a different mechanism - just call the status of the league an 'emergency' and overrule the shit out of everything - that would likely have been challenged in the courts). You guys don't seem to know what you want. Do you want the clubs to be able to vote to relegate you next time, or not? If whatever the SPFL chief does gets a ton of mindless flak regardless of what way his decision goes, then really you're not doing this for Hearts or for Scottish fitba', you're on a witchhunt.

I seem to recall that the boss was worried that the big bag of money was a bribe and had to be assured that it there was no quid pro quo attached before taking it (and the fired employee even got a few digs in about not taking the money beforehand). The fired employee and his or her supporters really have no right to use taking that big bag of money as a rhetorical attack, in the circumstances, after trying to shame the rich boss into taking it in the first place.

It's not fair. It's the least unfair unfair solution. There are no practical solutions that are fairer. Now take yer fucken medicine and get fucken doon.

Doesn't matter. The procedure still came up with the only result that was ever going to happen.

Not really. Had the Dundee vote been performed perfectly, according to your exacting standards, the end result would be much the same (no successful alternative proposal was going to be anything other than much the same as the one they eventually voted for - perhaps with some tiny concessions to nudge Dundee or some other club into a yes vote, because there was nowhere near enough support for anything else) and Hearts would still be in court arguing 'It's not fair', but with even less of a case than they have now. Can you seriously envisage 30-odd SPFL clubs suddenly voting for null and void? For cancelling relegation to punish the good teams at the expense of the shit ones? For attempting to play out the season in defiance of Sky and UEFA and/or the Scottish government advice and/or the ability of Premiership players to physically play the resulting schedule pileup? You guys are big on accusing everyone else of 'self-interest'. How can it be 'easy' to stop 30 club chairmen acting in their own self interest? Try persuading your boss to become an altruist, at the expense of his own financial interests sometime - and then try to persuade 29 others. The only person who could have stopped this court case happening was Ann Budge.

Can't you just photoshop his head on something other than a Dundee team strip?

My god! I have seen the light. Of course, why didn't I, and Neil Doncaster, and the 30-odd club chairmen and all the rest of Scottish fitba' think of that? It's so simple. Just keep playing games. Gosh. We all feel stupid now.

Why do you think that is? Could it be that we're not 'lining up behind the SPFL'? What everyone is doing is accepting that this is the least bad way to end the season - the same as 80% of the SPFL club chairmen. Nobody much liked Neil Doncaster before this coronavirus hit, but in comparison to the bile, hypocrisy, stupidity, spite, and outright attacks on the rest of Scottish fitba' coming out of the camp that lost the vote, he's coming across as a relatively reasonable, sane, and measured individual. Despite concocting a lengthy dossier on Neil Doncaster's wrongdoings, you guys somehow managed to make make him look good! Your problem is that you see this as a fight between Hearts and Neil Doncaster. It's not. It's Hearts versus most Scottish football clubs, as well as just the reality of the pandemic. Squeezing enough training to be safe, as well as 8/9 football matches, AND another 2/3 playoffs into 6 weeks, as well as organizing the next season isn't possible, especially since some teams have yet to even recruit players for next season (and when the league was called off, it was unclear that there would even *be* those six weeks). There are a ton of reasons why club chairmen figured the proposal was the best way to end the season, and 'Neil Doncaster hypnotized me into voting for it' was exactly none of them. Neil Doncaster even took Hearts' side on reconstruction. So did Celtic - but that doesn't fit the absurd fantasy of the Kickback delusioneers so it's completely ignored in favour of some absurd 'They all line up to hate us' story that is based on a distorted view of events, and on ignoring the inconvenient facts (It's hard to squeeze out of you guys the salient, possibly case-ending, fact that Dundeegate wasn't where the Premiership season was ended, that came over a month later, and with the assent of Hearts). Your way of looking at the world is completely topsy-turvy agenda-driven distortion of the facts. If you ever wonder how flat earthers or antivaxxers or moon hoax conspiracists can believe the nonsense they do, you know now.

How so? They're still putting a case in front of the arbiters which essentially is just 'That's not fair' repeated about 8 times.

No I didn't. Someone else did. You brought up Hibs' spell in the Championship, which has nothing to do with Arbroath.

What the f**k does that have to do with Arbroath? Arbroath weren't in the Championship at that time.

People in Scotland died of Coronavirus today, too.

July 2019? It's pretty impressive of you to keep track of Hibs' pre-season friendlies. You must be a dab hand at pub quizzes.

In terms of death rates, San Marino, Belgium and Andorra are the only three that are worse. San Marino and Belgium called their league seasons off in a similar way to Scotland. That leaves the mighty footballing bellwether of Andorra, who resumed a shortened league in early July, a month after their last reported new case, and two weeks after their last reported death due to Covid19. For comparison, 155 people are reported to have died of Covid19 in the UK today.

Are you saying that the staunch fighting words I'm reading on JKB are just a bunch of dafties spouting grandiose pish? Say it's not so...

Relegated teams are the ones punished financially in a normal season. That's how it works. All in the game, yo! The three clubs certainly were served as respondents. The petition document explicitly states that outright. And their defence can diverge from that of the SPFL. It already has, in fact (as per the motion to dismiss). It would be legally and financially reckless for the clubs to trust the SPFL's defence to represent them. For instance, the SPFL has far less incentive to fight an unrelegation; they can choose to settle by cancelling relegation with little or no cost to themselves, but with a supposed £10 million cost to United and Raith, if Hearts and Thistle's Fantasy Island figures are to be believed. If they're not paying the lawyers, the lawyers aren't likely to be acting in their interests.

They should have known that litigation expenses would have been the consequences when they went ahead and <checks notes> won football matches.

If only United would lie down and accept not being promoted - then it wouldn't have cost them that £75-100k in legal costs (assuming Hearts don't pick up the tab, that is). Instead, it'd only cost them the price of being stuck in the Championship as opposed to the Premiership. A measly £8 million, last time anyone looked...

You got me. I'm jealous of not being milked rotten for cash by Hearts, and of Heart's subsequent success on the pitch. Not to mention the incisive legal acumen on display in Kickback. If only we could all be more like you guys.

That's just one of the begging bowls. There's also the 'I'll just leave my bank account details lying around, feel free to pop some money into it, if you want' begging bowl statement from Ann Budge and the 'Here's the Kickstarter for the legal fees' begging bowl from some random fan. Between it being a massive money sink, and the monolithic 'if you're not with us, you're one of the vermin' mindset and the constant state of two-minute hate against suppressive persons other clubs, being a Heart of Midlothian fan right now must be a bit like being a Scientologist. Except with John Robertson instead of Tom Cruise. Have you guys thought about offering personality tests outside of shopping centres to recruit supporters?

They're playing Doncaster away.

Sure. That's merely in addition to Hibs and United playing at home at the same time, though which is a bigger tell that they'll have to redo the entire fixture list.