TEN months ago it was trumpeted as the most emphatic victory of this or any other season.

It was held up as Stewart Regan's finest hour. The chief executive pushed for a revolution at the Scottish Football Association and, boy, did he get it. On June 7 it was proposed that they redraw the governing body from within, tearing it down and building it back up. There were 93 SFA members in the room and when it was asked if there were any objections not a single hand went up. The various resolutions were carried 93-0.

One of them concerned the creation of a new Judicial Panel to handle rule-breaking, ie exactly the same panel which delivered such a stinging verdict on Rangers on Monday night. Ten months ago everything about the new Judicial Panel was explained to the clubs, every step of the procedures was outlined to them, every strength and advantage was presented and discussed. Three-man panels would hear any case and the individuals would be drawn from a pool of around 100 former players, managers and other football and legal figures. The panels would be independent and anonymous. It sounded sensible. Every SFA member at the annual general meeting inside Hampden liked the sound of it and agreed to it. Rangers, like the rest, had no objection.

Ally McCoist's primal scream against the verdict which crashed down on the club this week – a £160,000 fine and a 12-month ban on signing anyone older than 18 – went beyond anger at the outcome. It amounted to a challenge to what his club and all the others signed up to last summer. His language was confrontational. He talked of "this supposedly independent Judicial Panel". The use of "supposedly" said it all.

He didn't stop there. "Who are these people? I want to know who these people are. I'm a Rangers supporter and the Rangers supporters and the Scottish public deserve to know who these people are, people who are working for the SFA. Make no mistake about it, this is an SFA decision. They have appointed the panel so therefore they are working for the SFA, but who are they? I think we have a right to know who is handing out this punishment to us, I really do."

How could McCoist not have known who made the decision? Their names may not have been made public but there was no attempt to keep them a secret from Rangers. How could there be? Rangers' director of football Andrew Dickson represented the club at the hearing. It didn't make sense.

Throughout this saga McCoist has represented Rangers and their supporters impressively. He's put in endless hours and held firm as a real figurehead and presence when the club otherwise would be completely rudderless. But he has looked understandably stressed recently and on Tuesday it was as if he sat down for an interview and allowed his judgment to fly out of the room before he spoke. He is a good man, a decent guy, but his demand that the SFA "name names" was as irresponsible as it was out-of-character.

There is a perfectly good reason why the SFA's Judicial Panel has to try to work under the protection of anonymity. Scotland, or at least the west of Scotland, has not shown that it is mature or civilised enough in its thinking to take major issues involving Rangers and Celtic at face value. An obsession with finding an agenda, or allocating allegiances whether they exist or not, is applied to anyone involved in football's disciplinary process. It would be merely tiresome were it not for its potential also to be sinister and dangerous. Just ask Neil Lennon.

Names and details of "the Hampden three" were available on website messageboards and on Twitter yesterday. The argument for circulating their identities was based on the principles of transparency and accountability. Well, sadly thugs have made that impossible. Everyone knows that identifying those involved in controversial cases becomes a catalyst for threatening phone calls, emails and letters, or worse. It becomes far more hassle than it's worth.

It's only a matter of months since a campaign of intimidation, harassment and much, much worse disfigured Lennon in particular and Scotland by extension. Now football's senior figures – none more so than Old Firm managers who have the ability to mobilise and whip-up not only decent fans but a minority of fanatics – have a responsibility to ensure that targets are not painted on people's backs.

McCoist was fully entitled to lash out about the SFA's verdict. No-one could even deny his right to say it could "kill" Rangers. It's up to the SFA to decide whether the "supposedly independent" jibe is something they will want him to explain. But the demand to name names personalised a verdict which would have been made in good faith. If the three men who made the decision are to be named, is every Judicial Panel to be identified from now on – including the one which will consider Rangers' appeal? Is the agreement all 93 SFA members signed up to last summer to be ripped up because the verdicts aren't always "right"?

Nobody holds a gun to these panel members' heads and forces them to act for the SFA. They aren't kidnapped and ordered to deliberate on cases. They are unpaid and volunteer for it. They're perfectly capable of mucking up a decision, or misunderstanding the evidence, or acting with more leniency or severity than they should. But if they think they're going to be outed and hounded for unpopular decisions they'll simply walk away. If that happens en masse, Regan's much-heralded and universally-approved new system will collapse. Where does Scottish football go then?

What the panel members signed up for included anonymity. And one of the clubs who promised it was Rangers.