BARRY HEARN, the man who rejuvenated both darts and snooker, has insisted that he would not consider replacing recently-departed SFA chief executive Stewart Regan, who resigned earlier this week.
Just over three years ago, at the SFA Convention, Hearn gave a no holds barred speech in which he excoriated the SFA, describing those running Scottish football as “lazy and set in their ways”.
And the Englishman revealed that ever since his take-down of the governing body, he has had regular requests from football fans north of the border to take the reigns at the SFA himself. And following Regan’s departure, those calls for his to step in to save the day have grown louder but he has quickly put an end to any suggestion he will take up any job at the SFA.
“I gave a speech a couple of years ago slaughtering the Scottish football people for being useless and ever since then, whenever there’s a problem, I get inundated with people asking me to come and take over Scottish football,” the 69 year-old said. “But you can’t do that – you need to own things before you can really make structural changes.”
Hearn transformed both darts and snooker and breathed a new life into them just at a time they looked like they were getting towards a point of no return. But as chairman of Matchroom Sports, which owns, promotes and manages sporting events, he was able to take over these sports entirely, something he would be unable to do with Scottish football.
“As a company, we deal in ownership, we don’t do jobs,” he said. “When we went into snooker and when we went into darts, we went in as owners and the effort we’re putting in is for the long term, there’s no short-term fix.”
But having overall power would not be an option in Scottish football which means, for Hearn, he would not even consider joining the SFA in any capacity. “It’s not achievable because you have individual owners,” he said, speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live.
“You probably could do it if you did it the right way but it takes the whole of you – it’s not a token with us (Matchroom Sports), that we’ll sign something, take a fee and give a couple of words of advice. With us, projects take over and it’s all embracing.
“I always operate on the basis of a benevolent despot because someone has to take responsibility and someone has to take the power. Someone with substance has got to give the guarantees and they don’t exist unless you have control, it’s as simple as that. Players and club owners have different opinions because they’re looking at how does it suit them and their club and their player. The same happens in snooker and darts but I have to look at how it affects the whole sport.
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