No good deed goes unpunished by the BOA Brit Nat zealots

To return briefly to the subject of the GB Olympic football team, some rather startling choice of language from the Mail -

"The British Olympic Association have confirmed the GB teams will be run by the English FA but can include players from any home nation. However, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland remain implacably opposed to a Great Britain team, claiming their separate nation status could be under threat and there are fears their players might be intimidated into declining.

Those fears were not allayed by an SFA spokesman saying it would be viewed as 'treachery' for a Scot to play for Team GB. The managerial appointments will put Pearce on a collision course with the FA of Wales over the probable selection of Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey, and with the Scottish FA over his goalkeeping choice and possibly other players."

Heaven forbid that the SFA should concern itself first and foremost with defending the interests of Scottish football, rather than "allaying the fears" of fretting London journalists that it might do something untoward like...well, defending the interests of Scottish football. The SFA is called the Scottish Football Association for a very good reason - it's supposed to be the governing body of football in a country called Scotland. That means it shouldn't have to "intimidate" players into not participating in the Olympics - it should be able to, you know, decide. If the BOA and English FA choose to play cynical and legalistic games to circumvent that "problem" and get what they selfishly want, they and their cheerleaders in the London press are in absolutely no position to moan if the SFA respond in kind by playing hardball to protect Scotland's football autonomy as best it can in difficult circumstances. This wasn't a fight of the SFA's choosing - they entered into a compromise deal that everyone should have been able to live with (to allow an English team to nominally represent GB), but their good faith has been betrayed. No good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes.

I even saw a journalist the other day who described the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish administrators as "traitors" - a curious form of treason it is that basically consists of NOT selling out your own countries.

Incidentally, it's amusing to spot in the Mail article that the English FA will not consider Euro 2012 players for selection in the GB team. Since it was the BOA's supposed zeal for non-discriminatory selection policies that was the pretext for breaching the deal with the Celtic associations, I trust they'll be coming down on the FA like a ton of bricks...