Every passing day of indecision, allied to the ever more conciliatory noises emanating from the SPL membership and hierarchy towards what is effectively a thinly-disguised “NRDA” (National Rangers Defence Alliance), makes it more obvious that we are in the throes of a cynical war of attrition over the corpse of Scottish football.  Rules and Articles of Association are being gone over with a fine tooth comb, scrutinised to the ‘nth degree in search of any tweak that can buy time for and heighten the prospects of the beleaguered and increasingly desperate forces of darkness within our national game.

What we are witnessing is akin to a soporific bout of safety between Cliff Thorburn and Terry Griffiths at the Crucible … the kind of grinding stalemate that is designed to drain resolve to the point of acceptance of almost ANY outcome, however unedifying, rather than endure continued boredom and uncertainty.

The latest delay was clearly calculated both to allow the near certain removal of a declared dissenting voice and to further minimise the likelihood of an adverse vote by shifting responsibility from the board to the clubs, thereby raising the required “anti” threshold to a highly improbable 5 votes against any Rangers “Newco” application for SPL membership.

Mind you, a giant crumb of comfort lies in the virtual impossibility of a viable deal being cobbled together by Duff & Duffer in time to take advantage of all the current institutional machinations and delaying tactics.

Nevertheless, I’m struggling to find the right word for what is going on here – there just doesn’t seem to be any single noun in the language to describe such a cocktail of blatant cynicism, self-interest, dereliction of duty, bias, evasion and collective cowardice … to which I sincerely hope Celtic would not be party.

The closest I can get to it is “stitch-up” … but that seems strangely genteel and inadequate.

Suggestions, please …

Johnbhoy