Turnbull Hutton: the riled Rover

Hutton, the Raith Rovers chairman, is still no wiser as to who sent him the gifts, other than that they were dispatched from a pottery in Northumberland. But he acknowledges it was a moment of much-needed light relief amid the shipwreck that had become Scottish football.

Hutton emerged as a supporters' hero when he bluntly and disparagingly criticised the blundering, and sometimes mendacious, efforts of the Scottish Football Association and the Scottish Premier League to parachute the newco Rangers into the first division of the Scottish Football League. Speaking on the steps of Hampden during a highly charged summer, he made the "dead parrot" remark which, to many, summed up the SPL and its hopelessly fudged reaction to the financial disaster at Ibrox.

"It wasn't my intention to be a mouthpiece for Scottish football, or to be seen as taking on the establishment," he points out. "I just want a quiet life. But I suppose you reach a point where worrying about being diplomatic becomes less important. You're better telling it as it is; at least folk know where you're coming from."

For Hutton, events got personal in April when one of his directors, Eric Drysdale, was subjected to death threats. That was followed by Fife police foiling a plot to torch Stark's Park. Small wonder Hutton was burning with indignation by the time Stewart Regan and Neil Doncaster had fanned the flames of Scottish football's summer of discontent.

Four months after these initial events in Kirkcaldy, and with Rangers having started their new life in the third division, Hutton is holding court at his house. He and his wife Margo have just returned from holiday to discover their home has been broken into. It appears, however obviously distressing, to have been a criminal act with a financial motive rather than the more sinister connotation of being connected with the events of the summer.

It would, one suspects, take a lot to disturb Hutton's equilibrium. Born and brought up in Burntisland, he is not the hick from the sticks some of his detractors might like to portray him. Before retirement he was joint managing director of Diageo Operations Scotland, and in that capacity he helped pave the way for the Bells sponsorship of Scottish football. At one time an employee called David Longmuir, now the SFL chief executive, reported to him.

Throw in a degree from Harvard, and Hutton might just know what he's talking about, even if he admits that keeping Raith Rovers solvent would tax the combined wisdom of the world's top accountants and entrepreneurs. Like the other directors, he bails the club out with short-term loans when required, so he is only too aware of how football finances work in this country.

He's not so sure the SFA's chief executive knows what makes Scottish football tick. Hutton's disdain for Regan is evident. It is withering. But the Raith chairman is also critical of a wider cast, including Doncaster, Ally McCoist and Walter Smith.

The chairman accuses McCoist of "grandstanding" in demanding to know the names of the three-man judiciary panel, including Drysdale, who handed Rangers their original 12-month transfer ban. Their identities were already known to the Ibrox club. "That was quite serious for Eric. Then the police contacted us to say there was a credible threat of our stadium being torched because of Eric's involvement. They had information that two guys in Kirkcaldy had already been paid to do it."

If McCoist, who quickly condemned the threats, had been the unwitting catalyst for Hutton being sucked into the Rangers crisis, it was the later attempts by Regan, in cahoots with Doncaster, to manhandle the newco into the first division which really raised his hackles. "People were lied to," he maintains. "All the doomsday and Armageddon stuff was silly in the extreme. They don't understand what Scottish football is about.

"I'm not a fan of Stewart Regan. Nothing he has done has given me any assurance that he's the right man for the job. Whatever was wrong with Scottish football in the past, and there was plenty, Ernie Walker and Jim Farry were at matches up and down the country. You got a chance to speak to them and they were happy to talk about the issues. Now we have a guy running Scottish football and he's never at a game on a Saturday.

"It was a bad judgment call for him to come wading into this issue. When did the SFA ever weigh into an SPL row before? Regan saw it as an opportunity to show he was in charge, but he messed it up totally."

Hutton was in the room when a motion of no confidence in the SFA chief executive was proposed and seconded, only for SFL president Jim Ballantyne to veto the vote. He believes that Regan was vulnerable in the week that followed but has survived to fight another day. "He was under serious pressure, but then the SFA board closed ranks," Hutton points out.

Regan insists that reconstruction of the leagues is still on the agenda and on this issue, at least, Hutton has no argument. "Most clubs would welcome that, but what was being proposed prior to the Rangers situation was an effective SPL takeover of Scottish football," he says. "If the SPL admits their experiment hasn't worked, and that we all move forward together, I can buy that, every club can buy that. What we don't like is the arrogance which says: 'We are the SPL and we are going to take over the SFL we broke up and left behind.'"

Asked if an outbreak of democracy would merely mean the tail wagging the dog further, Hutton responds: "I could say that every club other than Rangers and Celtic is the tail. In that case why not have them playing each other every week? There has to be a weighting for the big clubs, but equally there has to be a recognition that below that there are clubs striving to progress, move upwards and grow.

"Everybody knows that if Rangers and Celtic had been given the nod two or three years ago they would have gone to the English Premiership and never looked back. Nobody gave a toss about the rest of us then, and suddenly I am supposed to be lectured to by Walter Smith and others about how bad it is for Scottish football that Rangers are where they are now. Why should I even listen to that? They would have left us, saying 'get on with your diddy league'. There has to be some consistent argument in all this and I've not really heard it.

"The difference between this summer's controversy and all the ones that went before it is the internet. The footballing establishment totally misjudged the public mood. As soon at they put up an argument it was blown apart on supporters' forums. There's something deep down in the Scottish psyche, if you scratch, which says that if something is not right people recognise it is not right. That's what happened, it is as simple as that."

And so, to public approval, Hutton launched his attack on the parrot. Even Rangers supporters, he claims, were 70-30 in favour. "I've said my piece and will now slip back into semi-anonymity," he laughs. "It's time for my wife to be seen with me in public without having to wear a burkha."