06 March 2007

Patsy of the day

Following yesterday's report by the BBC on the Pannell Kerr Foster review of the administration of the Scottish Football League, the blazers come in for a good kicking in this morning's press - here and here in The Herald and here in The Scotsman.

It is easy to point the finger. The SFL is "an organisation not suited to a modern-day business environment"; the shortest-serving employee has been with the SFL for 18 years and PKF feel "the institutionalisation of the workforce may be stifling the desire for improvement"; and "it is, frankly, astonishing that a high-profile business in the digital age (as the SFL is) does not view IT or a website as a priority". Nor is the SFL 's case helped by the somewhat intemperate reaction of its chairman: "The SFL has been in existence for 116 years and has been a well-organised and orchestrated organisation. As far as I'm concerned it is the best administrative organisation in the UK and anybody in football will tell you that."

And yet...

A review of the administrative and financial structures of the SFL, an organisation which looks after the lower divisions of Scottish football, in isolation from the activities of the Scottish Football Association and the Scottish Premier League, is rather a peculiar way of looking down the wrong end of the telescope. The administration of Scottish football is, on the whole, a bureaucratic nightmare. Instead of throwing sticks at the smallest and weakest of the three organisations, what is needed is a top-level review of the administrative tasks required for the industry as a whole, with the subsequent development of a modern administrative structure designed to fit those tasks.

Er, but don't hold your breath, waiting for any such outcome.

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