SUBMISSION FROM GED O'BRIEN

Introduction

It is clear Scottish Football is in crisis and has been for years. From a viewpoint that is both unique and unusual I would like to offer the Enquiry Into the State of Scottish Football my analysis of how we arrived in this parlous situation. I also hope that I can help offer the beginnings of a way out of this mess.

My name is Ged O'Brien. Until February 6th, 2004 I was the Project Director of the Scottish Football Association Museum Trust, known as the Scottish Football Museum (SFM). I had been employed full time on the project to build a national football museum since 1993, but I had been working on the project as a consultant since 1990.

As the Project Director I was responsible for finding the money to build the Museum. When the Museum was linked with the project to rebuild the South Stand at , I became involved in the Millennium Fund application for the entire Stand.

From 1993 I worked closely with the SFA (then at Park Gardens) and later Queens Park Football Club (QPFC) and the National Stadium plc (TNS). I came to understand much of the workings of Scottish Football.

As I have recently requested an enquiry into the running of the SFM from the Officer of the Scottish Charities Regulator, I will limit my comments here to how the SFM linked to the SFA. A copy of my request for an enquiry into the SFM has been deposited with the Scottish Executive.

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Historical Overview

The Scottish Football Association was founded in 1873. The driving force behind it was Queen's Park FC (founded 1867). QPFC saw the need for a national association for two main reasons: a) to run the international team and b) to organise a national cup competition. They turned down the suggestion from others that they run football in a similar way to which the Marylebone Cricket Club once ran English Cricket. They had no desire to act as the governing body as well as be a constituent member of the SFA.

QPFC's motto was 'Ludere Causa Ludendi' (The Game for the Game's Sake). This sentiment was entirely fitting for an amateur club in an amateur era. All Scottish clubs were amateur, which meant that the SFA was founded by organisations who all had the same core philosophy. This maximised harmony in an inherently competitive organisation.

In a pragmatic sense harmony also was ensured because QPFC were the mightiest club in the world with a membership of 800+. (150 was a good figure at the time.) It is doubtful if too many other clubs felt they could challenge what QPFC might regard as 'good for the game' in the 1870s and 80s.

This situation continued for the first ten years of the SFA's existence. Problems were initially created by the onset of professionalism in in 1885. As had invented the modern world passing game the 'Scotch Professors' had been moving to England in their droves to train players and clubs in the new style. The Scottish game became weakened as scouts and club officials flooded into the big towns and cities to entice players south. This situation was exacerbated by the attraction of being paid in England to play football.

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At first the SFA tried to hold back reality by 'blacklisting' players who were known to have turned professional in England. This had no effect and did not stem the tide. The posters of the lists of banned players are early testimony to the SFA's futile efforts to ignore a wider reality beyond their control.

Matters were made more complicated in 1890 when the was founded. QPFC refused to join the League, as they viewed it as a precursor to and enabler of professionalism in Scotland. Clubs needed to retain rosters of players who would have to train intensively to meet the challenge of regular games over a season. This could only be done if players gave up ordinary employment and devoted themselves to their club. In turn clubs had to pay the players to ensure their loyalty in the provision of contracts.

QPFC were correct in their prediction. Many clubs such as Celtic had been paying players covertly. Reality was accepted by the SFA in 1893, when Scotland embraced professionalism. QPFC found that their old friends who joined the League quickly decided it was more important than friendlies and the Spiders' match card diminished. In 1900 they were obliged to join the League, whilst maintaining their amateur principles.

With paid players both sides of the Border, the structure of the game moved out of synch with the original principles of club football. Very quickly power moved to the large clubs in urban areas. They could provide the large grounds, attendances and money which would attract the best players.

In the 1880s arguably the three best teams in the world came from a small area of Dunbartonshire: Vale of Leven, Dumbarton and Renton (World Club Champions

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1888). Each club was in a town of about 6,000. This was insufficient to provide the wealth for a professional football club.

Even before overt professionalism, Renton saw their best players tempted away by large clubs such as Aston Villa and Celtic. This trend accelerated after professionalism became official. Small town clubs lost players to city clubs and Scottish clubs lost players to English cities. Renton no longer exist, Vale were reborn in the 20th Century as a Junior Club and Dumbarton have gone from League Champions in 1891 and 1892 to stalwarts of the lower divisions in the 21st Century.

In this new era, paranoia and suspicion must have occurred. No longer did a player stay with his club because there was no incentive to move: money became the driving force. The structure of football from 1893 was no longer suitable. However, nothing changed structurally. The SFA was still a body founded by clubs, who delegated Directors to serve on committees. If that was not the case, Directors were delegated to serve on SFA committees through being members of the Scottish Football League or minor associations such as the Junior FA.

It is extremely difficult to believe that any club director would dismiss the bias they had had ingrained in them through decades of fighting to keep their club alive, to become disinterested committee members the moment they walked through the doors of Carlton Place or Park Gardens.

A good example of the problem lay in the group who chose the international team. A gathering of SFA committee men picked the squad until the late 1950s, when the Manager was given full powers of selection. Until that time players were chosen by the most strong minded and persuasive members of committee. There was a strong degree of horse trading concluded between members e.g. 'I'll vote for your

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goalkeeper if you vote for my inside right'. This might explain why the greatest Scottish goalscorer of all time: Jimmy McGrory only won seven caps in the 1920s and 30s.

Yet again we see an SFA function being irrelevant to the contemporary situation, yet being maintained decades after its usefulness had gone. By the 1930s, when Celtic and Rangers had attained the dominance they still enjoy, it is extremely hard to perceive how they could determine many links between their business model and that of a lower league team. It is even more difficult to see an empathy with the arguments of a representative of a minor association which still operated within an amateur ethos. That it happened at all would have been down to the personal views of individuals within the game e.g. Sir Robert Kelly of Celtic expressing concern that TV would harm small clubs the most.

With the rise of European football as a money spinner and source of stronger competition, it is easy to see how Rangers and Celtic allowed the Glasgow Charity Cup and Glasgow Cup to wither as major tournaments. They might have been important parts of football's cultural life before World War II: they ceased to be priorities for large clubs: particularly the . In this sense all SFL clubs would have developed the same attitude to their County Cup competitions: all of which are now minor affairs or defunct. The size and beauty of the trophies are mute testimony to the importance they once held in their localities.

Nothing remains forever. The same battle is now being played out in the increasing dominance of European Club competition. This will be to the almost certain detriment of minor domestic leagues and minor domestic cup competitions. The Scottish League Cup will go the same way as the Glasgow Charity Cup and the Inter-City League.

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Currently the Old Firm remain as colossi. They have won more than 65% of all domestic competitions. They account for the large majority of fans who attend football on any weekend. As money is attracted to them, other teams are weakened, so providing less competition in a League which Celtic and Rangers already disdain. It is difficult to see how the cycle can be broken under the current structure.

This is one of the many crises which Scottish Football faces. Other countries have similar discrepancies of success (Norway, Netherlands, Portugal) but it is at its most stark in Scotland. On the one hand it is known that situations change. Problems occur in football where change is not planned but comes about as a result of short term arguments and self interest.

On a related point it is known that that critical situations which remain unmanaged, quickly spin out of control to the detriment of all. The current unresolved situation over promotion and relegation in the Scottish (SPL) is rooted in actions taken years ago with insufficient regard for the long term consequences of those actions.

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The Chicago White Sox Paradigm

The fact that the White Sox Paradigm relates to American Baseball does not detract from the core principles which were at stake in the early twentieth century. The way in which Baseball solved its problems should be a lesson to Scottish Football.

Members of the Chicago White Sox agreed to throw the 1919 World Series as part of a betting scam. Their opponents were the Cincinnati Reds. When the scandal was discovered it led to sweeping changes in the way Baseball was run. It was realised that a governing body made up of clubs was incapable ultimately of running itself, such were the irreconcilable differences between them. Ironically it is suggested that the Cincinnati Reds' owner slowed up an enquiry into the 1919 World Series because he could not believe that another Club would do such a thing as throw a competition.

To negate the problem, the clubs decided to appoint their first commissioner: Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, to whom they gave total power. He served from November 1920 until his death in November 1944. Landis' powers were too wide and he used them in a draconian manner against the accused players who were actually acquitted in a court of law. Nevertheless, a strong body of opinion argues in hindsight that his actions over the ensuing decades restored public confidence in baseball.

The principle has remained to this day: that a disinterested person, with wide ranging powers, beholden to no club or sectional interest can and should run a sport for the good of all. It is clear that this is a situation that applied in Scottish Football to a great extent until the resignation of in 1999. It no longer operates due to a massive change in the management and power structure of the SFA.

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Jim Farry and his predecessors acted in effect as Football Commissioners, through their personal drive and unparalleled knowledge of the rules. Each Secretary was followed by a like minded man. Currently power is vested in a virtually full-time President working with a ten man Board of Directors. The board have legal power and responsibility to run the SFA.

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The Roles of the Secretary and President in SFA History

The structural problems of Scottish Football had been hidden until March 1999, when Jim Farry resigned in the wake of the affair. Until that time, Scottish Football had effectively been run by extremely strong willed individuals who operated in a Landisian way, even if they did not enjoy the overt official power that the Judge wielded.

The contradictions inherent in the structure of Scottish football were hidden from 1893 onward by a succession of strong-minded secretaries from JK McDowall to Jim Farry. In fact we first see this power shift from clubs to the Secretary when the SFA Executive note sniffily that it would have been nice if McDowall had bothered to inform them before he established the Reserve League. McDowall was the first top official not to have had participation as his main reason for involvement in football. He was a bureaucrat: a manager of organisations and he ruled the SFA for decades.

Recent secretaries such as Ernie Walker and Jim Farry often had strained relations with the men who made up their committees. The former insisted on the bigger picture and the good of the many. In the large majority of cases, the will of the Secretary prevailed, for they knew the workings of the SFA in minute detail. They had the loyalty of their staff, who they ruled with an often paternalistic air. Few committee men had equal stamina, determination, intelligence, foresight and knowledge to challenge their hegemony.

With hindsight, football prospered under men who, though they might have sometimes ruled with a strong hand, more often than not ruled in what they intended was as fair a manner as possible. They took into consideration the competing needs of all and the national good of the game. The inherently illogical structure of the

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game was masked for most of the 20th Century by men who ignored the partisan calls of those who would look to solve only their own problems, or promote their own sectional interests. Most importantly they were not afraid to annoy the powerful in search of a long term, more general good.

This period of growth and relative stability in the SFA came to an end when Jim Farry was forced to resign over the dispute between the SFA and Celtic regarding the registration of Jorge Cadete. In this sense, the Cadete affair should be remembered as a critical change in the affairs of football, for it ushered in the era of domination by the club representative. 1999 saw the death of the Secretary and the dawn of government of the Blazerocracy.

In the aftermath of the Cadete affair, the SFA sought to employ someone who had an entirely different outlook to Jim Farry and those who had gone before him. In essence it appears that the character traits of the old secretary were deemed as inappropriate for the 21st Century.

In an organisational sense the Secretary was on the side of right, for a committee member, no matter how elevated or long serving should not have tried to impinge on the day to day work of the SFA. The role of the unpaid committee man is a world away from the paid executive. From the 1990s on a tension exited in the SFA which was only released with Jim Farry's departure.

The SFA in the 21st Century

In one sense, it is arguable that some type of diplomatic manager to harmonise with the new era is now required. Possibly the job now requires a search for consensus.

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The structure of Scottish Football makes this solution difficult.

The SFA is now run by a small core of Directors, who have power and legal responsibility ceded to them by the Council. This originally was the ultimate source of power. The Council was slimmed down in the 1990s and now consists of 30 men and one woman. This alteration in the power structure is crucial, for the legal character of the SFA has now changed from members of committees listening to strong recommendations by the Secretary to eleven men deciding how the SFA will work.

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Problems of the New Structure

The new structure has led to the creation of a President and first Vice President who no longer need to be Directors of a Club to hold office. This has created a situation unprecedented in Scottish Football history. This power shift from the Secretary to the President has gone unnoticed by almost everyone.

In many senses it is not possible to perform a critique of the job or person in the post of Chief Executive of the SFA. There are situations where a Chief Executive and President can work together, but this can only be achieved if the core principles of the organisation and staff structure are correct before the top tier is assessed.

Structural Problems

How does one climb aboard the SFA train? In essence you need time, inclination and a willingness to serve.

Goal 1: Become the Director of a Club affiliated to the SFA. This places you in a position to be put forward as a committee member.

Goal 2: Get nominated to as many committees as you can handle. If possible get onto committees involved with the national team or finance. Go to every meeting.

Goal 3: Build up a hinterland of support. Be ever present.

Goal 4: Serve your time on Council. Get nominated as Second Vice President if your

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hinterland lies with a large organisation such as the SPL.

Goal 5: After spells as Second and First Vice President, get elected unopposed as President of the SFA. Resign from your club responsibilities so that you can claim independence from all pressure groups.

You will note in this scenario that nowhere in the climb to the top is competency or suitability for the post ever mentioned. This is one of the major and fatal flaws of the structure. There is no job specification or set of competencies which have to be fulfilled or passed.

It can be noted that nowhere in the climb to the top is it really necessary to have built a hinterland based on a keen understanding of the needs of the game or a policy portfolio to which people can adhere or adversely criticise. What is needed is pragmatism, not ideas.

It is quite possible for someone who is entirely unsuited to the rigours of modern life to become President of the SFA. What is required is loyal attendance over many years and the ability to be pragmatic. The attendance requirement serves as an unintentional recruitment criterion and bar to progress to most of the population who love football. In this sense the SFA operates a policy of social exclusion, at odds with the culture of Scotland.

In the old days this did not matter, for the Secretary made sure that the SFA ran efficiently. With responsibility now lying with people from a committee structure any lack of skill on the part of the Blazerocracy harms the footballing body.

With the move to a President with real power, the flaws in the structure become even

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more apparent. We now have an organisation where the person with most power has been chosen by a refined form of Buggin's Turn rather than through a disinterested, transparent and intelligent process. There is no test of competencies and no way of assessing that person's fitness for the post.

This is unacceptable in a modern organisation.

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Barriers to Entry to the SFA

The SFA has been ruled by pragmatism for decades, if not the whole 20th Century. This has had a deleterious effect on the health of Scottish Football. Pragmatism has pushed out planning, intelligent decision making and any form of coherent management.

Pragmatism is a term with a particular definition in football. It means decision making only when necessary. It means decision making for the short term even if vastly worse problems are created by the pragmatic decision. It means crisis management as every decision solves a problem but creates even more critical problems for the future.

One of the main results of this pragmatism has been the ossification of the committee structure. Any other organisation would adhere to the concept of continually looking at its processes and training its personnel so that the organisation could continue to compete in a fluid world. The SFA has ended up with the opposite. One of the worst aspects of this structural conservatism is barriers that have been put in place to anyone outside of a small group in society who might wish to work for the benefit of Scottish Football.

Barrier 1: If you are an employee it is extremely unlikely you will be allowed the time to serve on SFA committees. Therefore it is most likely you will be self employed, working as an accountant, lawyer, surveyor, architect etc: probably as a one man band.

Barrier 2: Given the problems posed by Barrier 1, it is extremely unlikely that a female will ever be in a position to spend the years and decades climbing the SFA's

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slippery pole. Currently there is one woman member of the SFA Council: making it a structurally sexist and inherently unfair organisation.

Barrier 3: Given the problems posed by Barrier 1, it is extremely unlikely that people who are highly successful in their field will have the time or inclination to spend years attaining the Olympian heights of the SFA. Longevity and persistence rather than ability and success are the key to advancement.

One can see that the system has been allowed to ossify, so that if one attains a post on the SFA Council, that person almost certainly is going to be a white middle aged, middle class, self employed man, thus excluding 80% of the population.

If the process encourages narrow selection, it is unsurprising that the organisation will have a narrow, short term, self serving, conservative, pragmatic, unintellectual outlook.

The SFA Staff

Overwhelmingly the SFA staff are an intelligent, forward thinking, helpful, decent, hard-working collection of men and women. Every week they spend many hours beyond the regulation working day, striving for the greater good of Scottish Football.

The SFA is currently divided into thirteen departments. Some are small such as Security, some are large and contain 15+ staff. In a normal organisation it would be expected that the departments would formulate policy, agree that policy with their superiors and eventually present policy to Council for comment and approval. The 'Board' would consist of Directors with specific expertise and responsibility in areas such as Law, Finance, Marketing and Production.

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In the old days, the Chief Executive/Secretary would have the power to ensure policy was approved without much trouble. He was in charge day to day and would have ensured that the policy made sense and did not conflict with any other policies of Scottish Football, long before it was presented.

What the staff had do is to invent ad hoc ways around the problems of micromanagement. In doing so this increases the amount of paranoia in the staff, leading to lower morale. The corollary is that that the SFA becomes more impenetrable and less logical with every passing day. There is the little point in planning if a project can be derailed or destroyed by the whim of someone with no knowledge of, or expertise in your departmental responsibility.

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Solutions to the Crisis in Scottish Football

A new SFA

The SFA as currently organised is life expired. The date on the packaging says 'Use by End Dec. 1893'. It is inward looking and secretive. Its working methods are a result of decades of custom and practice. The following is a series of suggestions which might allow Scotland to forge a new era for the national game within a new structure.

A bipartite SFA?

Given that there is apparently little common ground between professional football and 'community' football, one has to question whether the two should either be governed by the same organisation or governed separately within the one structure. The needs of the two groups are often incompatible.

Apart from discussions and policies of the most general and broad nature, it is hard to see where the two broad parts of football life need to come together. One is quite correctly dedicated to footballing excellence and elitism. The other is dedicated to the participation and enjoyment of the many.

One Body?

The existence of leagues and associations is a result of Scotland founding the

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world's first true national football body. The creation of associations and leagues were ad hoc, in an era when there were no precedents. Again, like the SFA itself, this structure is more than a century out of date. A coherent multi layered body operating with agreed core concepts, but divided into manageable semi autonomous areas is urgently needed.

The course of history allows us to see that Rangers and Celtic will probably move to some sort of supra national league structure in the next ten years. It is logical and will happen, given the current dynamic in European Football. The new Scottish Football body will be needed to ensure that this outcome does not destroy those who remain.

A public spirited SFA

The SFA controls the most significant aspect of Scotland's cultural life. Football is of abiding interest to most of the population. However, the SFA is run as a private organisation beholden to nobody but itself. The raison d'être of the SFA in relation to the rest of the world could be summed up as 'The answer is mind your own business: what is your question?'

Until recently the SFA had no need of external funds, and therefore got used to conducting its business in private. This has had the unfortunate outcome of creating a culture where the SFA feels it is not obliged to explain itself to anyone: the press, politicians, or football fans.

Ignorance had bred mutual fear and distrust. As the public do not know what goes in the corridors of Hampden everyone assumes the worst. The SFA have adopted a laager mentality. A new structure must foster openness between the SFA and their

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public to the benefit of all.

Legal Status

It is not clear whether plc status is suitable for a professional club, even if it brings with it certain commercial benefits. Many fans still seem not to be aware that the shareholder has primacy, irrespective of their wishes or the longer term views of the club.

The status of clubs must be assessed, the particular nature of sport taken into account and a structure created which makes sense. Specifically this would allow fiscal rectitude to be enforced such that no club can run a deficit in a given period. This would do much to prevent similar financial calamities to those of the last five years. The current football structure has clearly failed to manage the situation, therefore other options must be explored.

At the other end of the scale it is clear that local, community based clubs are operating virtually as charities and deserve to be regarded as such. In this respect they can enjoy tax breaks whilst being made subject to rigourous controls that might be created by the new Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator.

Funding

With football ranging from plc's to park teams, it is clear that external (i.e. non-SFA) funding is required. The quid pro quo would that Football accepts scrutiny and input from designated representatives of the people, independent of known football

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structures.

Football is part of Scottish life and should seek to promote core national non-partisan values such as better health and improved education. Football should play its part in being a useful contributor to society, particularly at the base of the sporting pyramid. For this it should receive long term funding.

A Competent SFA

One of the most pressing issues bedevilling the SFA is that competencies are not required by committee members. This is particularly harmful with regard to the Board of Directors, which comprises people delegated from other organisations or hand picked by the President from SFA Council.

As this Board is now fulfilling the role of a company board, it is imperative that a logical and coherent set of criteria is required by which board members are chosen. This might mean that those senior employees so qualified e.g. law, marketing etc be placed on the Board if there is no competent alternative.

It might mean that some long serving members have to stand down or advance no higher than Council. So be it, for meritocracy and advancement through objective, transparent and clearly understood criteria must be the way forward.

Conclusion

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The one advantage of the enquiry is that Scottish Football is in a critical condition. This allows the decision makers to have confidence if they adopt a radical course. It has taken 100 years to misgovern the best footballing country in the world and turn it into an 'also-ran'. It is time for cool heads and hard decisions. It is time for altruism not self-interest. Procrastination is not an option.

Within the structure of the game lies those who will contribute to its salvation. They must seek assistance from all who wish to give it. They must embrace that help in a new climate of tolerance and openness. Currently the structure militates against those who can make Football work. They must be freed from their chains.

The onus is upon all those who claim to love the Scottish Game. They must chart a course through the storms which currently beset it. It is a burden which must not be shirked. It has an outcome which can only make Football deserving of the heritage bestowed on it by the Scotch Professors who gave the Passing and Running Game to the world.

Ged O'Brien

July 2nd 2004

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