Enough is enough. The Scottish Football Association have taken a step back to the dark ages with the expulsion of Ross County, Dunfermline and Dundee from their Youth Football Initiative programme on a technicality. The Scottish Premier League should hang their heads in shame, too, for their part in the carve-up that will deprive children outwith the privileged cartel the best chance to fulfil their dreams.

The delayed submission of forms adhering to the Disclosure Scotland Act, a legal prerequisite to ensure child protection, was an administrative oversight that merited a warning, not the arbitrary decision to banish three Scottish Football League clubs from the performance league.

After years of bickering, back-biting and childish, petty squabbling between the three - yes, three - organisers of our shambolic national game, this represents the most diabolical and pointless abuse of power yet. With the matter now in the hands of the Scottish government, who fund the SFA's youth football programme via Westminster hand-outs, it can only be hoped that common sense will prevail and the men responsible for this shameful decision, borne out of sheer self-interest, are reminded that they are not beyond reproach themselves.

Do not hold your breath. The Scottish government's negligence has allowed football in this country to fragment at supposedly elite level and stagnate all the way down to the kid who can no longer kick a ball in the street but who can drink himself horizontal without a hint of an ASBO.

George Peat, the president of the SFA, used his casting vote to effectively weed out three of the four SFL clubs in the performance league.

That he took the opposite view to his chief executive, Gordon Smith, hardly sends out a positive message on the decision-making synergy between two of the most influential men running our game.

Peat has been a positive influence alongside Smith at Hampden but has badly compromised the integrity of Scottish football at hierarchical level with his casting vote.

Did it really require a four-man emergency committee to take the equivalent of a machine gun to a few helpless flies? Little wonder George Adams, the director of football at Ross County, and David MacKinnon, the Dundee chief executive, were compelled to condemn the exasperating expulsion over the weekend.

The clubs have credibly preserved their youth systems despite their immediate governing body, the SFL, being squeezed out to the point of becoming obsolete. County, in particular, would put many an SPL club to shame with the productivity of their Highland academy. But that is not what this is about.

The four men who sat in judgment gave not a thought to those who would be affected most by the demotion to the initiative league. Kids who had overcome the inferiority complex of not being affiliated to an SPL club and who had been protected from the pitiful politics at play will now suffer all because a piece of paperwork was not submitted on time. A piece of paper that would have been given a cursory glance and filed away until another was required in three years' time.

As a consequence, the three teams will lose out on in the region of £30,000 in grants. Some will simply not sustain the loss and give up on their youth development. Then the SPL and SFA can really be proud of themselves. Stenhousemuir are now the only non-SPL team in the performance league. Publicly, the SFA promote inclusion and then are complicit in decisions that simply widen the chasm between the haves and the have nots.

Brown McMaster, the SFL vice president, voted against the expulsion with Smith, while Lex Gold, the chairman of the SPL, looked after his own boys. Peat's stance is the most worrying. As profound an issue as disclosure is in Scottish football after the child abuse case involving Jim Torbett at Celtic, is the failure to submit a document on time really deserving of demotion? It should be remembered that holding on to an administrative document, as well as a grudge, ultimately cost Jim Farry his secretarial seat at the SFA.

If Peat and Gold have any moral fibre, they will reverse the decision with a full public apology. All three clubs already adhere to child protection criteria in compliance with the law of the land yet nobody at the SFA has been able to explain why a simple time extension could not have permitted. The SFA are unable to make a decision on a friendly match against Argentina without consulting the nation, while the SPL continue to live in fear of the big bad Old Firm. What a cheek they have to punish Dundee, Dunfermline and Ross County for incompetence.

And another thing . . .
It has been an eventful summer for STV's sports presenter and bon viveur, Rahman Bhardwaj. A cricketer of some renown, a dip in form prompted his team, Hillhead, to demote their celebrity batter to the twos. A fit of pique, a period of introspection, and some modification to his West End carousal resulted in Rahman blasting back with an impressive 98 runs in the stiffs, albeit against Glasgow University's geriatric staff. Saturday's big comeback lasted all of 11 runs in a hefty defeat to East Kilbride. He was unavailable for comment last night.