George Peat points the finger of blame at John Reid
Peat, whose presence at a disciplinary hearing for Neil Lennon was described as ‘contrary to the principles of fair play’ by Lord Carloway, seemed to be demob happy as he blamed Reid rather than the SFA’s archaic rule book for a season of unrest.
The former Airdrie and Stenhousemuir ‘supremo’ will step down as President after the SFA AGM on June 6 and couldn’t resist another attack on Celtic with Reid his main target.
“The impression they gave was that everyone was against them,” Peat claimed. “I’ve had a couple of meetings with chief executive Peter Lawwell this last season where we’ve sorted things out and things have gone well.
“After the first one, unfortunately, the club had their agm and the chairman spoke and blew out of the water everything Peter and I had agreed.
“John Reid was asking for the SFA to have a good look at itself.
“I thought he knew perfectly well that we were doing that. Henry McLeish had been working for over a year at the time and his report was imminent. That was a wee bit annoying because everyone knew we were in the process of reform.
“After another recent meeting, Mr Paul McBride [Celtic manager Neil Lennon’s legal representative] got involved and starting stirring things up about the SFA.
“Peter was well aware of what we were trying to achieve at the SFA and agreed with the route we were going down.”
Only after assistant Steven Craven had resigned and told the inside story of what went on at Tannadice did McDonald acknowledge that he had lied to Lennon.
At the Celtic AGM Reid warned: “No-one who has admitted to lying to our manager over important decisions should remain in post. He (McDonald] should go and if he didn’t resign, then he should have been removed from post.
“There cannot be integrity in a system that allows a referee to lie and, allegedly, to try to get others to lie about a crucial decision affecting a game. There cannot be a system that permits that and retains integrity.
“So we need a fundamental review but there’s no question that the referee should either be removed, or remove himself.”
The McLeish report will be put to a vote at the SFA AGM threatening to blow away the old boys network of committees that domimate the way that the SFA works.
Despite the criticism of Lord Carloway, which would almost certainly have resulted in Peat being disciplined if he wasn’t retirning, the SFA President still believes that he did nothing wrong by sitting in on Lennon’s hearing.
He added: “What people don’t realise is that there was another manager sanctioned at that hearing but I got all the publicity because I sat in on the Neil Lennon case,” Peat explained.
“A certain legal representative of Neil Lennon’s then came out in the press and indicated that I shouldn’t have been there. As if I had some Svengali-type of influence over the rest of the committee.
“I was perfectly within my rights.”
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