THE ''to do'' list of Craig Whyte has just increased by another task.

The Rangers owner has to write to the Scottish Football Association within seven days to tell the authority why he is fundamentally a pillar of the community and, presumably, why the SFA staff Christmas fund should be entrusted to him for safekeeping.

The situation at Rangers is deeply serious but its very intensity has produced an exhaustion among observers that has the side-effect of unwarranted flippancy.

How else is one of a certain age to react to the simple statement by the SFA that Rangers, once the unassailable power of Scottish football, face a charge of bringing the game into disrepute? How else to greet a further sentiment expressed by the SFA board ''that taking into account the prima facie evidence presented today, that Mr Craig Whyte is not considered to be a fit and proper person to hold a position within association football''?

Such are the concussive effects of the unfolding Rangers story that such beliefs are now taken to be statements of the bleedin' obvious. It is testimony to the scale of what is happening at the club that the SFA inquiry, conducted by the Right Honourable Lord William Nimmo Smith, is just another blow and not the most grievous.

This is a club fighting for survival. There may be more pressing matters for Whyte to attend to before he picks up his pen and writes that 'Dear Stewart'' letter to Mr Regan of the SFA.

Yet the swift and focused SFA inquiry carries some import. Specifically, areas of potential breach to be considered by a judicial panel include: obligations and duties of members, official return, financial records, division of receipts and payment of expenses (Scottish Cup).

The last refers to the £70,000 owed to Dundee United for the Scottish Cup tie on February 5. Almost incidentally, Rangers face a disciplinary hearing on this matter on Thursday, March 29.

That is another date for Whyte to pencil into his diary as he faces further inquiries from Strathclyde Police and the SPL over his takeover of the club. The day after the disciplinary hearing a court case will start at the High Court in London to determine who should have claims on £3.6m taken from the account of Whyte's lawyers.

The SFA inquiry could be deeply damaging to Rangers. Sanctions could range from a warning through fines to suspension of membership.

The findings will add to the pressure to remove Whyte from Rangers and bring questions about what constitutes a fit and proper person and why the SFA does not have such a test before a potential take over rather than initiating action as a result of painful experience.

Under SFA stipulations for Official Return, a fit and proper person ''should not be bankrupt or made any arrangement of composition with his creditors generally'' and should not be ''disqualified as a director pursuant to the Companies Disqualification Act 1986 within the previous five years''.

A Rangers statement in November last year read: ''Craig Whyte was disqualified to act as a director of Vital UK Limited in 2000 for a period of seven years.'' Whyte took over the club in May last year.

Under financial records, the stipulation calls for ''detailed financial records'' that can be inspected.

There will be loud and sustained calls for the SFA, SPL, SFL or whoever to install a ''fit and proper person test'' before someone can take over a club. However, experience in England suggests there is no fail-safe method. The Football League describes its test as a "series of objective criteria that defines sensible standards to be met by people holding senior positions at football clubs".

A spokesman added: ''What it is not, is a subjective judgment about the suitability of individuals that could potentially leave the league open to legal challenge every time an individual is turned down."

The crucial points therein are that, first, a test can allow ''dodgy'' owners through because it has to have limitations. Second, the legal bill for being the barrier to, say, a £30m bid for a club would be huge.

Imagine the furore, for example, last May if Whyte, who had survived a due diligence process by the seller of Rangers, then found the deal held up or scuppered by a lengthy SFA inquiry into his past.

The SFA, frankly, has not the resources to trawl the backgrounds of potential owners exhaustively and then to employ lawyers to keep such disbarred suitors at bay.

In the real world, far from the surreality that surrounds Rangers, the only way forward is to be more stringent about how clubs are run. The SFA, in effect, is fulfilling this criterion by instigating an inquiry and then acting on its findings.

An infallible "fit and proper person test'' is difficult to set up and expensive to finance. The experience in England suggests such tests are no barrier to owners taking clubs into administration and beyond.

The SFA inquiry is yet another indication of the scale of the problems facing Rangers and their owner.

However, it promises to be merely the first in a series of investigations that will be increasingly be more forensic, more revealing of the workings of the club.

The SFA was exclusively concerned with the fitness of Whyte. However there is much scope for an inquiry into how the businessman took over the club and how Rangers reached the stage where it had accrued not only a large debt but a tax case of calamitous proportions.