Three months after being offered a scoop on a plate it seems that the mainstream Scottish media have discovered an appetite for Resolution 12.
The great unmentionable, highlighting inconsistencies in the awarding of a UEFA licence to Rangers (IL) suddenly seems fashionable.
Since the Herald broke the dam yesterday ahead of the Celtic AGM the subject has been reported on in the Scotsman, Daily Record and even the BBC.
Three years of perseverance by a dedicated band of Celtic shareholders seems to be bearing some fruit as to what went on within Hampden as Rangers (IL) were gifted a ticket to the Champions League lotto in 2011 despite HMRC pressing for a £2.8m payment in respect of contractual payments made to Tore Andre Flo and Ronald de Boer that were kept away from the Inland Revenue and Football Authorities.
Following the SFA AGM at the start of June Stewart Regan claimed that all was well with the matter despite UEFA correspondence with the Celtic shareholders showing up discrepancies between what the SFA told Celtic and what they did with UEFA.
With STV deciding to run with half a story the Celtic shareholders have held firm and released certain details of their correspondence with UEFA.
As a pleasant bonus in August the UEFA correspondence confirmed that no UEFA sanctions would apply to Dave King’s club since they had never played in UEFA competition.
Now with Regan under-fire it seems that Resolution 12 is newsworthy.
The strangest thing of all is that it is fans of the Ibrox clubs that have suffered most from the actions of the SFA.
Had the SFA refused a licence in 2011 the full extent of the financial carnage at Ibrox would have come to light. It may have prompted a protest march to Hampden but it may also have alerted an element of the support to the trouble their club was in rather than chasing an obsession to stop Selik and Neil Lennon.
Today The Herald caught up on the story from August reporting: “In any case, Mr Traverso said, any sanctions for non-compliance would have related to Rangers potential participation in the 2012/13 UEFA club competitions and would have had no impact on their participation in 2011/12.
“Rangers Football Club plc, the former operating company, went into administration in February, 2012, after a £9 million PAYE and VAT debt was amassed to the taxman under Craig Whyte’s leadership. The oldco renamed RFC 2012 plc is in liquidation.
“And Mr Traverso said that the insolvency meant that the “new club/company” was “ineligible” anyway to participate in UEFA competitions for three seasons so “there is clearly no need for UEFA to investigate this matter any further…”. But solicitors for the shareholders have told UEFA questioned the time-bar and said the governing body should investigate as they believe the events raised questions about whether the football authorities’ licensing and monitoring regime is sufficiently robust.”
With a torch now starting to focus on what went on at Hampden some prominent officials may start to feel uncomfortable.
There is no shortage of material to run with the story, social media is littered with letters and documents plus a timeline of failed governance.
Rather than screaming obsessed perhaps some enlightened fans of the clubs from Ibrox will question why Regan and the guardians of the game didn’t blow the whistle on a collapsing institution neck deep in tax issues whose survival relied on Ally McCoist negotiating through two rounds of Champions League qualifiers.
The former institution never stood a chance.