If Fergus McCann was still at Celtic, Hearts and the Ibrox side would now be facing the full rigours of the law…

Last night, on the Trinity Tims podcast, we touched briefly on the era when Fergus McCann was the man who was in charge of Celtic.

I stated that if somebody like Fergus was in charge of our club, they would have fought every spurious allegation emanating from Tynecastle in the aftermath of winning the League title.

Fergus McCann really was a defender of the faith when it came to Celtic.

In recent times we’ve heard the expression ‘these men bleed for Celtic’ bandied about in relation to the current board.

If you are looking for the definition of a men who bled for Celtic, look no further than Fergus McCann.

Sometimes I look back on the day when he unfurled the Championship flag at Celtic Park after we’d stopped the ten, and he was roundly booed by sections of the support.

In hindsight, I find it hard to wrap my head around that particular incident on August 1st 1998.

At the time there were three main bones of contention between the support and McCann.

The resignation of Wim Jansen two days after winning the League due to his toxic relationship with General Manager Jock Brown.

McCann’s sacking of Tommy Burns, which some sections of the support viewed as pretty callous.

And finally, McCann’s persistent adherence to financial prudence.

In the ensuing years since those days, the ‘crimes’ McCann was charged with seem mild in comparison to some of the things we’ve seen the current board engage in.

As beloved as Tommy Burns was by the support, for the duration of his time at the club, he failed to stop Rangers 1872 winning nine in a row.

His teams played a beautiful attacking brand of football.

But sadly and to his detriment, Walter Smith always seemed to know how to contain it.

That, ultimately, was what brought about Tommy’s downfall.

Understandably, the resignation of Wim Jansen after stopping the ten left a bad taste in the mouth.

Jansen left because he wanted full autonomy as the manager of Celtic.

But Fergus McCann would not give him that kind of leverage at the club.

McCann deliberately moved away from the traditional British “manager” model by introducing Jock Brown as a General Manager to oversee fiscal and footballing negotiations.

This system stripped Jansen of total control over transfers and forced him to work through a corporate middleman, a setup Jansen fiercely resisted from the start.

Ultimately, it was this toxic relationship between Jansen and Brown that forced Jansen’s decision to resign in the end.

This all linked back to McCann’s rigid adherence to financial prudence.

However, his strict management approach is widely credited with saving the club from total financial ruin.

Over the years, despite his rigid adherence to his policies, Fergus McCann is best remembered as the saviour of the modern day Celtic you see today.

But for those of you of a younger disposition, who weren’t alive during this era, he also defended Celtic heroically against any perceived injustices.

There are a few stories I could tell about how he fought for our club.

But the Jim Farry story is probably the one that stands out the most.

The now infamous Jorge Cadete affair ultimately ended Jim Farry’s career as the Chief Executive of the SFA.

The feud originated in March 1996 when Celtic signed the Portuguese forward from Sporting Lisbon.

Celtic submitted all relevant paperwork and received the International Transfer Certificate (ITC) on March 7, 1996.

However, Farry claimed the ITC was invalid due to a “conditionality clause” and refused to process the registration.

Due to Farry’s stalling, Cadete was not registered in time to meet the SFA’s 14-day clearance rule.

As a direct result, he was barred from playing in the Scottish Cup semi-final on April 7, 1996, which Celtic lost 2–1 to Rangers 1872.

McCann discovered that the SFA had received explicit advice from FIFA stating that the conditionality clause was irrelevant under football law and that the ITC should have been accepted immediately.

To his detriment, Farry chose to ignore FIFA’s guidance.

While the media and football establishment initially derided McCann for challenging the governing body, the Scots-Canadian entrepreneur relentlessly pursued the case for three years.

During a three-week hearing in early 1999, Celtic’s legal team presented overwhelming evidence that the registration delay was avoidable and intentional.

Farry performed so poorly under cross-examination that the SFA’s own legal counsel threw down his pen in frustration.

Realising their case had completely collapsed under the weight of evidence, the SFA abruptly withdrew from the hearing, issued a public apology to Celtic, and paid financial compensation.

The SFA’s executive committee claimed Farry had misled and embarrassed them.

He was suspended in late February 1999 and officially dismissed for gross misconduct on March 8, ending his nine-year tenure in total disgrace.

McCann’s victory was a watershed moment in Scottish football history.

It shattered the perception of accountability-free governance within the SFA.

McCann later noted that the challenge was never personal, but rather a necessary campaign to drag the governance of Scottish football into the modern, professional era.

Imagine if we had somebody like McCann running Celtic right now?

Instead of a despot dictator like Dermot Desmond?

Who dangles the rest of the Celtic board like puppets on a string?

What’s even more galling here is that Desmond, as principal shareholder, does not have the right to behave as he does.

Yet he does.

Unchecked.

The only perceived injustice that Desmond has railed against in quarter of a century was when the Ibrox board over celebrated during our 2016 Scottish Cup Semi-final defeat to them.

So angry was he after that loss, that he went out and brought in Brendan Rodgers as manager.

These days, though, it seems as if the only people who piss Desmond off in Scottish football are the fans of the club he has supposedly loved all his life.

Desmond never defends the club.

He and his cabal of useless of board members continuously allow the SMSM to write spurious lies about Celtic.

If Fergus McCann had been in charge of Celtic during the incidents that happened last season, he would have fought the allegations against our club tooth and nail.

For starters, the Ibrox side would not have been allowed to get away with the behaviour of their fans during the Scottish Cup quarter final.

In fact, all of the incidents that have occurred over the last few years, such as Scott Brown being attacked, batteries being thrown at Leigh Griffiths, glass in Joe Hart’s goalkeeping area, and the attacks on our coaching staff would have faced the full rigours of the law if McCann was in the Celtic boardroom.

Celtic never really challenged any of those incidents.

Not that we know of, anyway.

The spurious allegations that emanated from Tynecastle in the aftermath of our title win would also have been dismantled by someone like McCann.

There and then.

He would have taken every one of them down.

Bloom’s “one or two of our players were attacked” claims would also have faced the full rigours of the law.

While our club was bombarded from every angle, not a word was uttered from our heroic custodians.

Brian ‘Unity’ Wilson dressed our silence up as some sort of heroic tactic.

Now he feels the board’s actions are vindicated due to the fact every allegation was disproven.

Well, they certainly weren’t disproven by anyone in the Celtic boardroom.

That’s for sure.

Instead of actually defending the institution they are tasked with defending, they maintained their default position in all matters of any gravity at Celtic.

Silence.

Just over quarter of a century ago, we had a man who was willing to take the entire SFA down at our club.

A man who relentlessly pursued Jim Farry for 3 years until he got justice.

What do we have today?

A bunch of gutless, silent cowards.

Oh, we have one who’ll speak alright.

He seems to love the limelight.

He waffles on and on, and in the end, says absolutely nothing of note.

Effectively, we have a Chairman who suffers from verbal diarrhea, and a CEO who suffers from verbal constipation.

Aren’t we just blessed?

What we’d give to have a man like Fergus McCann at Celtic again.

Sadly, his era is now consigned to the history books.

The current board now live off the fat of what he created.

I’m sure he didn’t expect Celtic Park to remain as stagnant as it has since he left in 1999?

Other than the infamous disco lights, Celtic Park is pretty much exactly as he left it.

When Celtic Park’s redevelopment was completed in 1999, I’m sure Fergus McCann expected that the people he handed the club over to would be the ones to take it to the next level?

One wonders what his perception of the club is right now?

I sincerely doubt he expected it would become what it has in the 21st century.

Then again, neither did we, Fergus.

Neither did we.

Choose Read Celtic as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.