Rangers Must Accept the Consequences of Rule Breaking

If you were asked to name 10 Michael Douglas films it's unlikely you would mention 1983's The Star Chamber.

It's about a group of judges who are fed up of having to acquit obviously guilty people on technicalities, so they get together to hear the cases in extra-legal 'trials' where they go over the evidence together and then hire assassins to kill them. Justice is served. Or so they think.

Douglas plays a judge who hears the case of two men who are accused of raping and killing a 10 year old boy.

They were discovered when two police officers who suspected them of being drug dealers ran their license plates through the police computer and discovered a number of violations and pull them over for expired paperwork.

On pulling the van over, the officers discovered a bloody shoe. From there their investigation leads to the murdered boy and it looks like an open and shut case.

The only problem was, the paperwork was not expired. It had been delivered on time but there was a delay processing it. This meant that the officers had had no right to pull them over so any evidence subsequently discovered could not be presented to prosecute them and they walked free.

Douglas' character takes the case to the Star Chamber where they are found guilty and a hit man despatched to kill them.

Then the detective in charge of the case visits Douglas and shows him conclusive proof that the two men were actually innocent of the crime they were accused of (they are scumbags but they didn't rape and kill the boy).

Douglas then tries to stop the hit, almost getting himself killed in the process before being saved by the detective at the last moment.

The film ends with Douglas and the detective bugging the latest meeting of the Star Chamber.

I suppose the moral of the story is that rules are in place for a reason and they must be adhered to, even when we don't like the outcome.

Which brings us to the question of title stripping.

But first of all, let's look at the doping scandal rocking the athletics world right now.

It seems the Russian athletics federation has been systematically doping its athletes for years and there are mounting calls for Russia to be expelled from the IAAF, or at least banned from next year's Olympic Games in Rio.

No one is considering for a moment whether Russian athletes would have won medals without doping programmes anyway. They have been breaking the rules for years and it doesn't matter whether it helped them win anything or not. The fact of their rule breaking is all that matters.

In Scotland on the other hand, we're being told by Rangers' defenders in the media that even if they hadn't been cheating via making illegal payments to players for over a decade, they might still have won anyway.

They're telling us that as Celtic still won titles in the EBT era that Rangers couldn't have gained any sporting advantage.

On Radio Clyde last night one of the panel actually said that if Rangers had gained a sporting advantage they would have won every title in the EBT era. That's the mentality we're dealing with.

They're telling us that even without paying players via illegal EBT's, the players might still have signed anyway.

They're telling us it was still 11v11 on the park and Rangers still had to go out and win matches, which they did so 'fairly and squarely."

Don't engage with this kind of talk because it is a huge red herring.

Rangers broke the rules of all competitions they entered in the EBT era by making illegal payments to players which were not declared in their SFA registrations as required.

They did not abide by the rules, therefore their wins are voided. It's a simple as that.

They were not playing to the same rules as every other team and as a consequence were able to pay players far more than would otherwise have been the case.

Nowhere else in the world can you cheat and expect to keep your ill-gotten gains unless someone can prove you wouldn't have won anyway.

No one said Ben Johnson still had to go out and win the 100m in Seoul.

No one said Lance Armstrong still had to go out and win his 6 Tour de France titles.

They took performance enhancing drugs so therefore forfeited their titles.

Legia Warsaw made much of the fact that the suspended player they put on against Celtic had zero effect on the outcome of the tie. They were right too, it did have no effect.

But that cut no ice with either UEFA or the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The player was suspended and the rules were clear - the match must be forfeited 0-3.

Rangers fielded players who were paid illegally, the full details of which were not registered with the SFA, therefore they were not registered properly.

There should be no question of those titles being allowed to remain on Rangers' historical record.

It's irrelevant that they might have won anyway, or that they still had to go out and win it on the park.

Rules is rules. They broke the rules and must accept the consequences.