ST MIRREN chairman John Needham has been charged by the SFA for inappropriate historic comments he made about Rangers.
A number of social media posts from Mr Needham were investigated after being unearthed ahead of St Mirren's 2-1 loss to Rangers last month.
He was appointed in July after St Mirren became a fan-owned club.
The Buddies chief previously apologised for social media comments about Ibrox fans.
Those comments were probed by the SFA for a potential breach of rule 77, which requires any "football body, club, official, team official, other member of team staff, player, match official or other person under the jurisdiction of the Scottish FA" to always act in the best interests of Scottish football.
Now, the compliance officer has called on the St Mirren chair to attend a hearing on December 2 after being charged for bringing the game into disrepute and another for potential discriminatory comments.
Needham's apology read: "On Friday 22 October a number of Tweets I created in the past referring to Rangers fans were highlighted on Twitter.
"As a club chairman I have extra responsibility for the conduct and example I show.
“These posts are completely inappropriate and do not reflect my character or beliefs as a person and I very much regret them.
"I apologise unreservedly to the directors and fans of Rangers and to everyone at St Mirren. I am acutely aware of my responsibilities. This won't happen again.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel