BBC Scotland avoid the Five Way Elephant as they broadcast Doncaster interview

Neil Doncaster has came out of his bunker to provide interviews today to selected media partners.

BBC Scotland and Sky Sports are both on the ball with the Five (Six) Way Agreement of 2012, carefully avoiding the big questions as they contribute to the Continuation Lie.

Having scripted the Five Way Agreement with the nod of his favourite SPL CEO, Doncaster and the SFA have given the Ibrox Tribute Act a get-out card for anything that they feel doesn’t favour them.

The people who rubber stamped the 2011 UEFA licence are still in place with the SFA refusing to go to CAS while the Celtic board of directors wish that those pesky shareholders would move along for the good of Scottish football.

Ever since 2012 Scottish football has been held hostage. Doncaster has been unable to find a job elsewhere, any move to oust him and he’ll open a cupboard full of skeletons that would spark a supporter backlash that club’s wouldn’t want to deal with.

The SPFL were put in their place over the cinch sponsorship deal, they could well find themselves in a similar situation with their new Sky Sports deal but don’t expect Chris McLaughlin to ask the direct questions or any worthwhile follow up.

Today BBC Scotland published a bland whitewash to promote a deal with a broadcasting competitor:

C McL: Overwhelming but not unanimous. Rangers have been very public about their opposition to this deal, why do you think they have been so opposed to this?

ND: It’s not for me to speculate about people’s motives in relation to this contract. Forty-one of the 42 clubs have endorsed this process – that’s an overwhelming endorsement of where we’ve got to. You have to remember you have very experienced, heavyweight businessmen like Ron Gordon who has been a key architect of this deal. Dave Cormack, Mark Ogren, John Nelms, Andrew McKinley, you know all of them kicking off the process in terms of the review that was carried out. That allowed Ron and myself to sit down with Sky. These are big serious people who understand what it is to negotiate a broadcast deal.

C McL: One of the biggest criticisms is that you didn’t take this to market.

ND: But I don’t understand that criticism at all. We sat round the boardroom table with the 12 Cinch Premiership clubs. We went through the process – we clearly had a broadcast advisor on board. We have done market testing, we know what the market is and we know who is interested.

C McL: So why not properly take it to market then, if you know these things anyway?

ND: We have taken it to market. We’ve spoken to potential buyers of Scottish football. We know what the attitude is and ultimately Sky Sports stepped forward and they were the ones that made this offer.

C McL: Would it not have been wiser, to avoid criticism from clubs like Rangers, to just go through the process?

ND: We did go through a process. We’ve spoken to these other potential bidders and I think suggestions otherwise are absolutely wide of the mark and I genuinely don’t understand why there’s a feeling out there that we didn’t.

C McL: How frustrating is it not to have a club the size of Rangers on board with this?

ND: I’m not going to go into specifics about how individual clubs regard the deal.

C McL: Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack said recently it was important to get this deal done but also that the league mends its relationship with Rangers, which was seriously damaged over the cinch deal. Do you agree?

ND: I think we would always like the idea of all 42 clubs pointing in the same direction – it makes our job much easier if that is the case, but we won’t be deflected from what we are here to do, which is to look after the interests of all 42 member clubs.

Celtic have yet to make any comment on the new deal, beyond his statutory obligations Michael Nicholson hasn’t given any interviews in his year plus as CEO.