What's In A Club?

There is a weeping, Rangers-shaped sore festering on the body of Scottish football today.

Like a gangrenous digit that should have been long since amputated, The Rangers Football Club has been allowed to infect the game with the stench of corruption and intimidation.

Refusing to take tickets for a Scottish Cup game at Tannadice because of perceived slights to their predecessor club, demanding apologies from clubs like Falkirk, Stirling Albion and Montrose whose fans refuse to recognise them as a club founded in 1872, The Rangers FC certainly looks and acts like Rangers FC.

It could all have been so different, if only the Scottish Football Association had applied its own rules when The Rangers Football Club applied to have the now-defunct Rangers FC’s membership transferred to it.

The SFA claimed at the time that The Rangers Football Club did not need the requisite three years’ worth of audited accounts, on the spurious excuse that it was seeking a transfer of Rangers’ membership, not a new membership.

It was an inconvenient truth that Rangers had not lodged audited accounts for the previous two years either. So inconvenient, it was ignored entirely.

The Rangers Football Club was allowed to join Division 3 when they should have been told to apply for the West of Scotland League.

Having given membership to a body which did not meet their own requirements for membership, the SFA have now allowed this new club to promulgate the myth that they are actually the dead club they replaced.

A fiction has been allowed to grow that in the case of Rangers FC, the “club,” and, “company,” are separate, and that only the company is in liquidation. The club, apparently, carries on, exactly as it did before.

In assessing the accuracy or otherwise of this claim, it is necessary to establish two thing:

1)      What, in law, is a, “club?”

2)      Given the requirement for holding a UEFA club license for our top-flight team, how do UEFA define a, “club?”

Information on the legal status of clubs in Scotland can be found here:

Clubs must be properly constituted.

They must have written constitutions which set out their purpose, how they will be run, how a committee is elected etc.

It must have a written record of a meeting at which it was decided to form a club, or a Memorandum of Articles of Association.

Clubs must hold at least an Annual General Meeting, and have a mechanism by which meetings can be called by members outside of this.

Finally, clubs must have adequate insurance to cover all of their activities.

If Charles Green’s “Rangers,” was founded in 1872, it should of course be an easy matter for Charles Green to produce records of the club’s agm’s going back to 1872.

He will be able to produce records of the club’s committee members going back to 1872.

He will be able to produce records of the club’s membership lists going back to 1872.

Of course, these will not be records pertaining to Rangers Football Club plc or Rangers Football Club Ltd, because the club and company of course are separate…

We all know Charles Green would be unable to do this, because such records do not exist.

Charles Green’s claim to have purchased Rangers FC (the club) though, rests on his having purchased the business and assets of Rangers Football Club plc.

He bought Ibrox Stadium, Murray Park, the Albion carpark, and the Rangers “brand.”

Clearly, Rangers FC (the club) as defined by Charles Green is NOT a club as defined in Scots law.

 

 

UEFA are very clear what a club is.

Article 12.1 of UEFA’s Club Licensing and Fair PlayRegulations states:

“A licence applicant may only be a football club, i.e. a legal entity fully responsible for a football team participating in national and international competitions…”

Under this definition, Charles Green’s, “club” cannot be a football club.

Charles Green’s, “club,” is not a legal entity. It is some real estate and a brand.

The Rangers Football Club Ltd (Charles Green’s “company”) on the other hand DOES fulfil the requirement for a UEFA license of being a, “legal entity fully responsible for a football team.”

Unfortunately, it is also a legal entity which is only some six months old.

The Rangers Football Club Ltd does not at this moment qualify for a UEFA club license, which is why it cannot at this moment compete in UEFA competition, or the SPL.

It does not qualify because it does not yet have the required three years of audited accounts.

When it does meet this requirement, The Rangers Football Club Ltd, as a legal entity fully responsible for a football team, will be able to apply for a UEFA Club License.

It will not though, be a legal entity founded in 1872, with a 140+ year history behind it.

Contrary to misleading reports emanating from STV journalists on twitter, UEFA have not, “confirmed,” that they regard The Rangers Football Club as a continuation of the club formed in 1872.

UEFA does not issues club licenses to the owners of “brands.” They issue club licenses to legal entities responsible for football teams.

Due to a mixture of avarice and cowardice, the SFA has allowed the fiction of the separate club and company to spread.

They have refused to either confirm or deny that they regard The Rangers Football Club as the same club as was formed in 1872.

For the record, none of our “clubs,” have actually been clubs for many years.

They started out as clubs in the late 19^th/early 20^th centuries, but as the game turned professional our clubs incorporated in order to facilitate the paying of players and protect members from becoming liable for debts incurred.

This means our clubs BECAME companies many years ago and ceased to be “clubs.”

Rangers Football Club was formed in 1872 and incorporated (became a company) in 1899. This year it entered liquidation.

The Rangers Football Club Ltd was formed in May 2012 as Sevco Scotland and purchased the business and assets of Rangers plc. It did not buy a single share in the legal entity that was Rangers Football Club.

With The Rangers Football Club bullying fellow Division 3 clubs who dare to state they are a newco, it is now time the SFA showed some leadership for once and put this argument to bed.

The Rangers Football Club cannot possibly be the club formed on Flesher’s Haugh in 1872 because the “club” and the “company” are one and the same, and the club formed in 1872 is now in liquidation.