One of the most difficult obstacles to change is the mindset of those who will benefit from a new dispensation.
There are people who, deep down, are comfortable sitting at the back of the bus.
There is a form of moral superiority in being oppressed.
It makes you one of the good guys
Over the past few years I would get plaintive communications from members of the Celtic Family.
The common denominator was always that I was wasting my time and that things would never change in Scotland.
The “things” they referred to was the special place reserved for Rangers FC in the pecking order of planet fitba.
All of them doubted that change would ever come.
However I suspected that some of them didn’t want change to arrive as it would take away their moral superiority.
To all of these people I would merely say that these things do take a long time to change.
They do.
Then suddenly visible signs that the tide is turning can appear very quickly.
Last night something happened.
The SFA judicial panel simply looked at the facts and checked the rules.
There was no special treatment.
Suddenly Rangers were just another member club of the association.
This is a scene that the late Jim Farry would not have recognised.
He acted with bad intentions to assist Rangers in denying Celtic the services of Jorge Cadette.
The Bunnet did for him.
Nothing personal you understand, just business.
The decisions made yesterday are, of course, open to appeal.
This is largely academic as Rangers will soon die.
The sanctions, I am told, will only transfer to a NewCo is that new club acquires Rangers SPL share.
Liquidation is death although the journalists who shouted that Craig Whyte was a “billionaire” who loved Rangers are now stating that the big “L” is not the end of Rangers FC.
They’re wrong.
Liquidation IS the end.
In the future historians will note that as Scotland’s establishment club was breathing its last the good folks in planet fitba stopped being fearful of that marble staircase.
When Rangers die the people who used to follow that club maybe offered a new team to support.
The new team will land on a level playing field
Things will have changed, changed utterly.
For the bears this vista is terrible, for me it is beautiful.
Rangers finally became a UK and then a global story.
What was happening was so scandalous that it couldn’t be kept in lodge and under wraps by the succulent bambs.
A tip of the hat to Thomo at Channel 4.
He didn’t need to get involved, but he did and because of that the quintessentially British club is known as a scandal club throughout Britain.
To the members of my own clan who girned about the immovability of the status quo my response was always “yes we can”.
This is what history feels like.