Scottish Football's Theatre of the Absurd

Incest, goat-slaughter, mindless violence: the links between Rangers and Greek Tragedy aren’t hard to find. However, as this season progresses, a few deeper parallels between our Germanic cousins and the likes of Sophocles begin to emerge. Scotland’s pundits agree that this is shaping up to be the most dramatic conclusion to a season in years, and, following the sudden reversal of fortune that has taken place since Celtic beat Rangers twice in a row and went 8 points clear at the top of the table, it looked like it was destined to be a distinctly knackered-looking Rangers team who were going to find themselves cursing fate as the curtain fell on season 2007-8. Would Wattie and Co. find themselves punished for the hubris of thinking they could bore European and Scottish football into submission with a succession of replays and energy-sapping extra-time snoozefests? This morning, however, it briefly looked like the story might be reversed again, and this peculiar dramatic interlude deserves a bit of attention.

Two weeks ago, the SPL announced two versions of the fixture list for the title run-in, one with an extension that would kick in if Rangers made the final of the UEFA cup, and one with no extension if they didn’t. Rangers pointed out that they hadn’t, in fact, asked for an extension of any kind, but immediately started a low-level gurning anyway, in which they and their friends in the media started moaning about the extension they’d been offered. Hysterical phone-in hosts, with typical incisive logic, played their role of Greek chorus to perfection, and began claiming that Rangers were being ‘punished for their success’ by, erm, being offered an extension they hadn’t asked for. Rangers did indeed qualify for the final, and weary Celtic fans accepted that the extension would kick in. And that, it would appear, was that.

Until, that is, this weekend, where Rangers did the unthinkable, and dropped points to Hibs, and since, certain journalists have been calling, in increasingly petulant tones, for the SPL to ‘bend over backwards to help Rangers’, to ‘do everything they can’. In this, they seem to be taking their cue from SFA man George Peat, who, James Traynor tells us, has joined Rangers Chief Executive Martin Bain in piling pressure onto the SPL bosses. ‘The SPL should be turning somersaults because a Scottish club are in a European final and must reconsider the decision not to postpone Saturday's match’ he apparently declared.

At the end of certain Greek tragedies, a God figure would be lowered onto the stage on a crane to sort everything out, punishing those he didn’t like and rewarding his favourites. This 'Deus Ex Machina' role seems to be the one in which SFA bigwig George Peat has cast himself. Today’s Daily Record reports that he’s threatening to ‘march into the SPL’s offices first thing this morning and insist the league be extended’, presumably brandishing his stage-prop thunderbolt as he does so. Indeed, Peat’s role in all this seems curiously involved. Quite what the SPL’s fixtures list has to do with Peat is anyone’s guess, and you’d be forgiven for wondering whether this concerted pressure is really an attempt to help Rangers in the UEFA cup final, or just, you know…in general?

This morning, as I write, it looks as though the unseemly pressure that has been brought to bear on the SPL has been unsuccessful. On the evening of May 5th, the SPL had announced they would be sticking to their guns, under mounting pressure to extend the extension they had already announced (y’know, the one that Rangers had never even asked for). SPL spokesman Greg Mailer said last night, with a certainty they may already be rueing: ‘The SPL has decided that we will be pressing on with the fixture model which was announced on April 22, with the season to finish on May 22. We can confirm we have received a request from Rangers to postpone their fixture with Dundee United on Saturday. We are unable to do that for a number of different factors one of which is the need for the final round of league matches to be played with simultaneous kick-off times. This is necessary to ensure that no one club can gain an advantage over another club in terms of winning the championship or qualification for Europe through the UEFA Cup.’ But this morning, the 6th of May, it seems as though Peat didn’t need to storm the offices. And yet this morning, even hours after releasing the above statement, we were told that they were on the verge of changing their mind with a degree of fickleness that would shame Imelda Marcos on a shoe-shopping expedition. That they haven't, so far, is to their credit. But that the SFA would connive with Rangers (and, seemingly, the Daily Record) to force their hand to do so is the real story behind this farcical episode.

For Celtic fans, it might be instructive at this juncture to remind ourselves just how we got here. Back in December, Rangers chose to postpone games to give themselves a rest: they borrowed from the fixtures bank, and now, when the bank is demanding repayment, they demand the right to borrow more, arguing that it’s unfair to expect them to meet their obligations. In fact, the situation that Rangers are in is nobody’s fault but their own. Between the 2nd and the 23rd of December, Rangers played only 1 match in the SPL, because they chose to cancel a game against struggling Gretna. Celtic played 4 SPL matches in the same period, dropping points in the process as we struggled with injuries. We had no fit right back, but we just got on with it as best we could. Which, it turned out, wasn’t very well. So the idea that Rangers should escape a similar fate, an inevitable consequence of a backlog, is unquestionably unfair.

Scottish football isn’t being asked to ‘bend over backwards for Rangers’, it’s just being told to bend over. Whether buggering the rest of us at the whim of Martin Bain offers a further allusion to the Greeks is something I'll leave to your discretion, but that the SFA should attempt to to facilitate this unfairness, to attempt to give it the weight and heft of official sanction, transforms it into a scandal, and one that might well have provided a tragic conclusion to Celtic’s championship hopes.

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