This has, by some distance, been the most exciting summer for Scottish football that I've known.
Depressingly, it's not because of big name, big money signings - there haven't been any (no, making Fraser Forster's loan deal a permanent one DOES NOT COUNT, Celtic fans), nor is it because of success on the pitch. It is, of course, because of the ongoing newco saga involving The Club Formerly Known As Rangers.
And this week it's managed to get even more mental.
Tuesday was the day of the big SPL vote, where the chairmen of the other clubs (and, bizarrely, Rangers, who got to vote on whether they could play in the top flight!) voted almost unanimously - Kilmarnock made themselves look like complete tits by abstaining - that the newco would not be accepted into the Scottish Premier League for the 2012/13 season.
For the 24 hours beforehand, stories had floated around about some clubs having cold feet, and panic began to spread in the ranks of fans; before the vote, 8 of the chairmen had committed their clubs to vote 'no', to the delight of their supporters, and, one must assume, had seen a massive increase in their paltry season ticket sales as a result. Surely they wouldn't turn around and shaft us all?
Thankfully, they didn't. It's a measure of how low fans hold many Scottish football journalists in their esteem that many believe the predictions of delays, and of financial armageddon for SPL clubs in the event of a 'no' vote, were little short of lies and propaganda.
So, problem solved?
No chance.
This crisis is partly the fault of Rangers' hideous activities, and partly the fault of the SPL and the SFA - who turned a blind eye to events for aeons and, who, instead of spending the last few months coming up with a plan for this eventuality, chose to believe the unrealistic claims coming out of Ibrox that liquidation would never happen and didn't lift a finger to intervene until it was far too late. Yet it has now been dumped on the thirty clubs of the Scottish Football League, the three tiers of clubs below the SPL.
Representatives of these clubs attended a meeting on Monday, prior to the SPL vote, where SPL chief executive Neil Doncaster and his SFA counterpart, Stewart Regan, to discuss the next move in the event of the Newco being thrown out of the SPL. For a rather succinct and damning view of the meeting, one should check out the statement issued later in the week by Clyde FC, the Cumbernauld club who finished last season third from bottom of the third division.
Doncaster and Regan did not deliver a proposal; they delivered an ultimatum.
They wanted the Newco Rangers parachuted into the first division, rather than starting at the bottom of the ladder. To sweeten the deal they offered a £1 million one-off payment (ostensibly to cover TV rights for the Newco's games next season), and the establishment of playoffs in that division to provide a further promotion place.
If this offer was declined, the SPL would renege on its annual contracted £2 million payment to the Scottish Football League - claiming they wouldn't be able to pay it. An SPL2 would be set up as the second tier of the league, with Rangers, plus any club the SPL invited, playing in it. The clubs left out of that tier would be left to wither and die.
Clyde described it as "a very unpalatable proposition". Stranraer claimed "the proposals are produced in haste". The chairman of Cowdenbeath, Donald Findlay, went further: "Speaking for myself, and myself alone, it is clear to me that people at the highest levels of our game have tried to hold a gun to my head and the heads of my colleagues. That will never work. But I have a long memory and will not forget what they tried to do and the way they tried to bend me, and this Club, to their will. That will never be allowed to happen." Findlay is best known outside Scotland as one of our most respected QCs - Scottish football fans will recall, however, that he is a die-hard Rangers fan and former director of the club, who was forced to resign in shame after being caught on camera singing sectarian songs. They don't come much more Bluenose than Findlay. If even he is resistant to this, then there is something truly putrid going on.
So the clubs of the SFL are the ones who have to sort out this fiasco. Some, like Stenhousemuir FC, a second division club, have given in - the loss of £50,000 a year, which they believe Doncaster and Regan threatened, could send them to the wall. It remains to be seen if other clubs will follow suit. Several have already made statements either confirming opposition to a division 1 Rangers (Clyde, Cowdenbeath, Dunfermline, East Fife, Morton, Raith Rovers, Stirling Albion, Stranraer), or strongly hinting at this stance (Alloa, Annan, Falkirk, Hamilton Accies, Livingston, Partick Thistle). Dundee and Airdrie United, both of whom it seems would be promoted a league if the Newco were sent to the third division, will abstain from the vote.
Regan and Doncaster need 16 of the 30 SFL clubs to vote in favour of the Newco being in the first division. So far we have one 'yes', two abstentions, and eight clubs who seem to have already said 'over our dead body', plus six other clubs who have hinted the same way.
The vote is, somewhat aptly, on July 13th. Friday the 13th.
It's going to be a hell of a week up till then. The SPL and SFA are putting huge pressure on the clubs to go one way. All Scottish football's fans (including, according to polls, supporters of Rangers, who want to see their club start in the third division!) are yanking them in the opposite direction. Will integrity win the day or not? And, whatever the outcome, Rangers will have only 22 days from the end of the vote to get ready for the start of the league season (15 days if they are entering the Challenge Cup). Is that enough time to get the house in order?
Whatever the outcome, the days of Regan and Doncaster are surely numbered, not least after Regan claimed that there was a duty to save Rangers because their demise would cause 'social unrest'! Not for nothing did the Raith Rovers chairman, the awesomely named Turnbull Hutton, call the authorities "corrupt" even before Monday's meeting. Even the government are going to investigate the shambles now. Even when this saga finally ends, the fallout will contaminate our national game for a long time to come.
L.
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