Here We Go Again

WE have been lone voices crying in the wilderness for yonks now; we being the esteemed Doug Gillon of the Herald and me.

We have repeatedly warned that the ongoing row over the 2012 Olympic football team offers a very real threat to British football - but nobody is listening.

This week, the Herald ran a piece suggesting the row is only just warming up, with around 500 days to go until the Olympic tournament kicks off. But of course, this was a wee piece compared to the space accorded a pretty poor 1-1 Europa League draw between Rangers and Sporting Lisbon, or the fall-out after Genaro Gattuso pittin the heid oan Joe Jordan.

Nobody comes out of the ongoing Olympics row well: the British Olympic Committee, the FA, the three "Celtic" FAs, FIFA, various politicians of whatever hue, our football press.

Basically, the damage was done back in 1905, when the IFA, SFA and FAW allowed the (English) FA to take football's seat on the BOA. Ever since, it's been England's ball as far as Olympic football in this country is concerned. Yes, back in the amateur days, such was Queen's Park's status among the play-for-fun brigade that Scotland was represented, but, after the FA abolished the distinction between amateur and professional players in the mid-seventies, until London won the games, football was a non-sport to the BOA.

Once football came back into play post London winning the games, the FA either through arrogance or lack of thought, missed a huge opportunity to unite the game in this country behind a genuine Team GB playing at the games.

Alone of all the Olympic sports - even curling, which is only played in Scotland - football didn't form a single all-British Football Association to represent the game at Olympic level. By this omission, they largely caused this present row.

Had their been a BOFA, there would have been a single, unified British approach to the 2012 team. Hopefully, the decision would have been taken, not to field a team, but, even if the decision had been to play - surely a format which satisfied everyone AND clarified the independence of the four Home Associations within FIFA would have been reached.

As it is, IF even a single Scottish, Northern Irish or Welsh player, (male or female), breaks ranks and joins the proposed all-English Olympic squad, the independence of the FA, IFA, SFA and FAW within FIFA will come under concentrated attack from Jack Warner and the usual suspects.

The English don't care, this uncaring attitude is particularly evident in London. It's their Olympics - they want football teams in both the men's and women's competitions and they don't give a damn that this desire is not matched in Belfast, Glasgow and Cardiff.

The BOA officials are like Disney executives, notorious for not seeing the bigger picture because they only think of their product. They want a BRITISH team, rather than an English one dressed up in a British strip which will still end up as an England one, but with a single BOA lion rather than three on the badge - and they will move heaven and earth for this to come about.

The FA don't care, it's their show and to hell with the provincials in Belfast, Glasgow and Cardiff. In any case, as far as they are concerned, should Warner and Co have their way and the four Home Associations within FIFA become one - well that one will have to be the FA and, because England is the biggest of the four UK nations, they will run it.

The idea that, should the unthinkable happen and Warner and Co prevail, a whole new UKFA will have to be formed from scratch, has never struck them. Were that to happen, given their pull within the European Clubs Association, the Old Firm would probably be included in the new UK Premier League which would follow, but the other Scottish clubs, like the clubs in the Welsh and Irish Leagues, would be cast out to survive as best they could.

The English know, after the 2018 bidding debacle, that Warner and Co, in fact, the vast majority of people within FIFA cannot be trusted. Are the SFA and their friends in the IFA and FAW absolutely positive that the FA can be trusted to withstand the pressure from the BOA to include Scots, Northern Irish and Welsh players in the 2012 squads - and select all-English squads.

Or will enough pressure be applied to cause one or two individuals to put the kudos of being an Olympian before the long-term interests of football in the Celtic fringes of greater England?

Forward, though ah canna see - ah guess and fear.