29 Mar 2012

‘We run football – we’re not the police’ says SFA boss

Chief Correspondent

The Scottish Football Association’s Stewart Regan explains the SFA’s role in Craig Whyte’s acquisition of Rangers and says it will look to stamp out behaviour that is not “acting with integrity”.

Quite simply, it could be one of the biggest sporting scandals the UK has ever seen. On the one hand you have the Big Tax Case where the revenue says Rangers owe almost £50m in unpaid taxes.

Alongside that, there’s the issue of player registration. Because of the club’s tax arrangements, it is possible they fielded player after player without telling either the Scottish FA or Scottish Premier League about those players’ full salary details.

If they didn’t tell them – and this is still the subject of investigation – every match they played in could be forfeit to the other side 3-0, and a whole lot of silverware will leave Rangers to be re-engraved and presented to another club.

Whatever Englishman Stewart Regan might have anticipated when he moved from Yorkshire County Cricket Club to the Scottish Football Association, I would bet the farm that he encountered a few surprises and one or two shocks in the culture of top football in Scotland – and in Glasgow particularly.

Fair play, he invited our cameras in to his Hampden Park HQ recently as part of our investigation into the goings-on at Rangers Football Club, and nothing was off limits.

Some of this material has been shown both on Channel 4 News and STV News, but I thought these other extracts would be of interest to people, covering as they do questions of leadership for the SFA and whether or not the SFA owes Scottish football fans an apology.

Make what you will of Mr Regan’s viewpoint, but you cannot deny he has shown more openness and transparency than has been the case in Rangers’ recent history.

Read more: Alex Thomson blogs on Scottish football in turmoil