What has Rod Petrie ever done at the SFA to deserve UEFA’s golden ticket?

THESE are exciting times for Rod Petrie. First of all, there’s the novelty of being involved in a run for office that, unlike his last two crownings as president of the Scottish FA, will feature candidates other than him.

It’s quite some prize at the end of it all, too, if he’s successful — a place on UEFA’s executive committee.

Going by the 2020-21 financial report from European football’s governing body, a member can expect to pick up 160,000 euros a year. And that’s before expenses.

Nice work if you can get it. Particularly when you are just about to turn 67 in an era in which most people of state-pension age are getting into a flap about their winter gas bill rather than which of Lake Geneva’s Michelin-star restaurants it’s best to take tiffin in.

Of course, there’s the small matter of having to convince the continent’s great and good exactly why someone from the madhouse of Scottish football should be voted in to bring the SFA’s reverse Midas Touch to a wider audience.

Helpfully, Petrie put out a mission statement of sorts on the association’s website on Friday. Most interesting it was, too.

To some eyes, he has been a cold-eyed master of backroom politicking down the years. He got

in the door at the SFA in 1998 and has been on the board of that organisation or the ill-fated SPL pretty much ever since.

According to his statement, though, the power he is really interested in these days is ‘the power of football’.

Coincidentally, the very title of a strategy document published in 2021 that the SFA put together with the help of a special programme from UEFA called ‘Grow’ and a London-based consultancy firm.

In Friday’s mission statement, he talks about para-football, youth congresses, social returns and equality and diversity.

It might come across to the tired cynic as Petrie telling UEFA: ‘Look, look how we’re doing all the things you told us’.

Has anyone considered, however, that it could just be a welcome byproduct of SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell’s amusing admission when Petrie became president in 2019 that he needed to be ‘humanised’?

‘I want UEFA to continue to lead European football with strong and transparent governance; to grow our finances through balanced competitions and to ensure a sustainable, diverse and inclusive game for all — not just for today, but for future generations,’ says Petrie. Magnificent. Perhaps he can set about establishing this oasis of diversity and inclusivity after the SFA have sorted out the legal case brought by Scotland’s women’s team over equal pay and conditions, which kicked off at the end of last year with team captain Rachel Corsie accusing Hampden’s hierarchy of ‘years of iniquity, disrespect and, in some cases, abuse’.

Looking after future generations is vital, too. After years of kicking the can down the road over clubs holding children to long-term contracts and failing to detail where all the money for the grassroots game had gone — a document on the issue, called Improving Youth Football in Scotland, was the longest-running public petition in Holyrood for years — the SFA finally got round to making some changes at the tail-end of 2022. They came two years after a report from the Public Petitions Committee which concluded youth football in Scotland needed ‘external, independent regulation’. Although a number of concerns have been addressed, the fact so-called ‘elite’ clubs can still sign 15-year-olds on 30-month deals elicited a firm response from Nick Hobbs, head of advice and investigations at Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland.

‘It has taken the SFA two years to reach these proposals and they still do not fully protect the rights of all young players,’ he said, as recently as November. ‘Once again, clubs’ interests will be put ahead of children’s human rights.’ It’s never easy, of course, when political sorts of any hue get involved in peering behind the curtain. For some inexplicable reason, they have long been uneasy over discord, sectarianism and terrorist singing among fans — with the SFA doing nothing meaningful about any of it.

Back in 2016, then cabinet secretary for justice Michael Matheson warned the government would intervene if the SFA did not introduce strict liability — or something similar — in the wake of a riot at the end of the Scottish Cup final between Hibs and Rangers.

Yes, the same final which saw Petrie, then Hibs chairman, describe the sight of fighting on the Hampden pitch as ‘overexuberance’.

Last year, Conservative MSP Russell Findlay stood up in Holyrood and put forward the claim that Scottish football is ‘contaminated by drugs money’.

During the Covid pandemic, former First Minister Henry McLeish, author of a review into the national game in 2010, suggested politicians were ‘suspicious’ of the SFA and SPFL because they are ‘secretive’.

Listen, it is good that Petrie seeks transparency from UEFA in the week in which they apologised to Liverpool fans over last season’s Champions League final — after initially blaming them for crushing outside the Stade de France.

For those of us who spent decades as beat reporters hanging around the foyer at Hampden, usually being custard-pied by Petrie when trying to gain some insight into important meetings, it is just hard to shake off the words of the former Hibs manager John Collins.

‘Hibs have a chairman, I am afraid, who, in my opinion, does not have any real passion and love for football,’ he said.

Collins, of course, left Hibs after chairman Rod had held a meeting with players behind his back.

Even though he has never done much to promote the game in public, all the issues with the SFA are not the fault of Petrie. Others have been paid handsomely to lead. He has also had ill-health to deal with.

It’s more how the governing body he represents comes across. The whole bowling-club mentality likely to see vice-president Mike Mulraney rise to the top unopposed when Petrie’s four years are up in June. The fact there are so many issues historically and in the present that rankle.

VAR, for example, is a sorry mess. The SFA were years behind in implementing it and it is now exposing how awful so many of their part-time officials really are along with a jobs-for-the-boys refereeing set-up that can’t survive.

Meanwhile, Hampden — bought at a cut-price £5million thanks to help from Lord Willie Haughey and Sir Tom Hunter when it looked like the SFA would end up renting Murrayfield — has been slaughtered over the state of the pitch in the Viaplay Cup semifinals. The Scottish Cup, meanwhile, hasn’t had a sponsor since 2020.

In Petrie’s Friday statement, he also made mention of Scotland recording the biggest attendances per capita in Europe. The SPFL have been crowing about it, too — but that’s in spite of those in charge rather than because of them.

There is no marketing. Telly deals are dwarved by the cash hauled in by comparable competitions. The game descended into civil war in 2020 in murky farce when Dundee voted against the league’s plan to end the season through Covid, insisted said email had gone missing in cyberspace, then duly went on to change their minds.

Let’s not even go into what happened in 2012 in the wake of Rangers’ meltdown. Indeed, it’s better not to dwell too much on any of the multitude of rows, failures and embarrassments from the last decade or two.

Petrie’s been on the block for all of them. It’s understandable he’s looking elsewhere, keen to see what the gravy train might offer next.

Less clear is why anyone studying the organisation he presides over would give him a ticket.

He’s looking elsewhere, keen to see what the gravy train might offer next