Small clubs take a stand

By Chick Young BBC Scotland football pundit

They once called Chris Robinson the Pie Man, and it was more suitable than Mr Bun the Baker.

Somehow I can't see Happy Families being his favourite card game. But poker maybe...

Certainly the Hearts chief executive and his chums in the SPL gang of ten played a fair hand when they announced their intention to quit the current set-up in two years and wave a not-so-tearful farewell to the Old Firm.

It was, I have to admit, an excellent wheeze. Perhaps inspired from teenage days of romance when you thought you had a sniff of the fact that your girlfriend was going to chuck you. So you binned her first.

Actually this whole affair is full of schooldays parallels because what has happened here is that the ten clubs have strode into the big boys' playground and stolen their ball back. And they matched the bully boys by doing it mob handed.

Celtic and Rangers were surprised by the move

It was brilliant in its simplicity. "Here," they said to Rangers and Celtic, "we're fed up carrying this baggage. You have it."

And with a simple act they transferred all the grief of their domestic troubles to the Glasgow giants who were patently stunned by the manouevre.

In the days leading up to the drama the SPL Ten were criticised for not having a plan B, never mind A, but they sure machine-gunned that.

I dare say the ten chairmen/chief executives took a real deep breath before plunging into all of this but they had one major factor working in their favour. The Old Firm, you see, have nowhere to go.

They want to go to the Premiership...but they can't get an invite to the party. They have tried Atlantic Leagues, Phoenix Leagues and, for all I know, all the leagues under the sea, but still they are trapped within these shores.

I perfectly understand where David Murray and Dermot Desmond are coming from, because were I in charge of Rangers or Celtic, I too would be driving forward in search of the bigger stage.

Currently they look like great white sharks in a front room aquarium.

But within the current set-up they have shown greed and a blatant disregard for their colleague teams in what is, after all, a league.

Strike one

It was always going to be impossible to clinch a television deal when the 12 couldn't have spelled unity far less produced it.

It's a mess, that is for sure. But in a sense it is less of a mess than it was before.

Sometimes a decision, even the wrong one, makes you feel better and that is exactly how the Break for Freedom Mob feel right now.

Most fans feel that way, especially those of the ten who have for decades been fed up by what they perceive to be outrageous bullying by the citizens of the south side and east end of the nation's biggest city.

I don't think it is quite that simple, but I do catch their drift.

Except beware one thing. David Murray has gone strangely quiet and that is when the fox is thinking.

It is strike one to the rebels and the big boys have been left mugged in the playground.

But watch this space...