Neil Doncaster has praised Peter Lawwell for the video interview that most Celtic fans described as car crash TV.
The first 20 seconds started promisingly with what appeared to be an apology but for more than four minutes afterwards the Celtic CEO went into great detail to justify the decision to go ahead with the Dubai trip.
Describing the world class facilities didn’t do him any favours after 13 players were forced to self isolate while a shadow team dropped more points at home to Hibs.
The laboured apology didn’t go down well with Celtic fans but when he claimed that his club had been hit harder than any other club by Lockdown he effectively taunted half of the clubs in the SPFL.
This weekend the two lower divisions are mothballed, you won’t find many voices confident that the ‘circuit breaker’ will only be for three weeks. The Scottish Cup has been halted with the coincidence of the lower division suspension coming on the same day as Celtic announced the impact of their Dunai trip not lost on fans across the Scottish game.
Sympathy for Lawwell is hard to find among football fans but he has a strong ally in the long serving Chief Executive of the SPFL.
Covering a Question and Answer session with Keith Jackson, the Daily Record reports:
K J: You have said nothing about Celtic’s catastrophic trip to Dubai. Isn’t this a glaring lack of leadership?
Neil Doncaster: Firstly, we very much welcome the stance taken by Celtic. I think it’s been very helpful to express contrition and hopefully that enables the game to move on. The club should take a lot of credit for taking that stance.
In terms of criticism of the league for not criticising one of its members, I’m not aware of any situation in my time when the league has criticised a member club other than when it has broken league rules or the law. Clearly, that’s not the case here.
No rules were broken by Celtic’s Dubai trip but it has set Scottish football back, bringing it into the focus of an unsympathetic government in Edinburgh.