Hugh Keevins: The Captive Don't Threaten Their Captor

Picture the scene.

The SPFL's Commercial Director walks into an office and sits opposite the television companies' top bean counters to re-negotiate the terms of the contract to show the highlights from Scotland's flagship competition, the Premiership title.

The jumping off point is that the SPFL believe their product has been sold at an unrealistically low price and is demanding that the broadcasters come to their senses immediately.

"So, tell me," says a bean counter. "Your defending champions went to Dingwall to play Ross County while out on their feet after league, cup and European matches in quick succession. Right?"

The man from the game's head office says, "Check." The bean counter comes back and says, "Celtic also went there without their captain, Scott Brown, their best player, Kris Commons, and left the discovery of the season, Kieran Tierney, sitting on the subs bench. Right ?"

Getting an uneasy feeling over what's coming next, the SPFL suit says, "Check."

Moving in for the kill, the bean counter adds, "And Celtic still won 4 - 1 in a canter. Right?"

The suit, mentally noting that Sunday's victory for Ronny Deila's side came hot on the heels of emphatic wins over Hearts and Aberdeen in league and cup, steels himself for the bean counter's conclusion.

"So what would we be doing by paying any more money to show the highlights of such a one horse race ?" says the man from the telly.

What indeed.

"And before you go," says the SPFL man's interrogator, "Is it true the minute's silence to honour the dead on Remembrance Sunday was disrupted by some travelling supporters, causing embarassment to their club and the people watching on television?

"Don't bother answering that. Close the door on your way out."

Unreserved praise to Celtic for surviving the elements, loss of first choice personnel and overcoming general fatigue to record a comfortable win.

But if ever anything showed domestic football is their private domain and Europe is the place where they have to be judged, Dingwall underlined that rationale at the weekend.

And if the case for going cap in hand to the television companies for extra money is ever to be enhanced it will be when Celtic and Rangers play in the same division next season.

The Old Firm no longer existed in the eyes of the Celtic supporters who rejoiced in Rangers going into liquidation. The lack of an Old Firm challenge has been the cause of Celtic gradually losing ground in Europe, according to Deila at the weekend.

So, what's it to be?

The answer is they need each other like never before. And the rest of us will need to put up with what comes with the renewal of traditional hostilities.

People who verbally disrupt a minute's silence to honour the dead are despicable. Remembrance Sunday is an annual source of embarrassment to Celtic, in spite of the club's best efforts to donate tens of thousands of pounds to the Poppy appeal while trying to divorce themselves from the type of people who would rubbish those good intentions at the same time.

Public condemnation of the mindless is all they can do while they remain hostage to the misguided element who follow them.

Rangers are, until a visit to the Supreme Court proves otherwise, guilty of tax avoidance under the guise of their Oldco.

But you can't have the seamless history they want without the questionable bits being included in it. I pay tax. You pay tax. Football clubs should pay their taxes in full as well.

Any other stance is hypocritical.

Meanwhile, back at the football.

Celtic have been sleepwalking while their historic rivals have been away in the lower divisions, selling their best players and being buffeted from pillar to post in European competition as a consequence.

Neither Celtic nor Rangers is in a great state of repair, but the sight of each other in a competitive environment should concentrate the mind and smarten up their ideas from next August onwards.

Once the bean counters have had a look at it and established whether that is the case, or not, then we should be wary of handing the telly people any ultimatums.

Otherwise they might hand the game a red card rather than be held to ransom in the first recorded case of the captive making demands of their captor.

And then where would we be?