Hibs' Leeann Dempster on sniffer dogs, undercover spotters and the Scottish game's lack of leadership

It might be a difficult concept to comprehend, but the last time Hibernian went through a league season without losing to Rangers, Rod Petrie was still a teenager. That was 44 years ago.

Such is his ferocious stoicism we may never have the chance to ask the Easter Road chairman if he was a bit of a mover back then, an Earth, Wind & Fire man, but if Hibs can leave Ibrox on Sunday with a point, or three, then they'll have emulated the boys of 1974-75.

That would be four without loss against Rangers - and five without loss including their epic 5-5 draw at the end of last season. Rangers are on good form with four wins on the trot, but as it stands, Hibs, on a 10-match unbeaten run in the Premiership, are the only team that Steven Gerrard's side have failed to beat in the league.

And yet, when you sit down with Hibs chief executive Leeann Dempster, there is so much other stuff to talk about along with the football. This has been a turbulent season at Easter Road.

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The summer loss of three hugely-influential midfielders in John McGinn, Dylan McGeouch and Scot Allan - and the January recruitment, on loan, of two gems in Marc McNulty and Stephane Omeonga. Can Hibs hope to hold on to them next season? "We've managed to make signings in the past that perhaps supporters thought were out of the realms of possibility," she says. "They're two magnificent players. Would we like to keep them? I'm certain we would. Will it be difficult? It will.

"I'm realistic about how things work. We're going to have to be creative to make it work for everybody, but we're quite creative people here."

'Want to be the voice for football's good stuff'

Back to the turbulence. There were the tremors surrounding manager Neil Lennon's mid-season exit and all the gossip that flew around the game in its wake. Hibs were wobbling back then. The appointment of Paul Heckingbottom has brought order when chaos threatened.

Off the field, it's been one fire-fighting exercise after another. Fans of other clubs have been at it, too, but Hibs have been at the epicentre of the fan misbehaviour saga. A Hibs fan punched Hearts goalkeeper Bobby Zlamal, a Hibs fan threw a glass bottle at Celtic's Scott Sinclair, a Hibs fan accosted Rangers captain James Tavernier.

"Through no want of the club, we have been involved in incidents of unacceptable behaviour and we need to take responsibility for that," Dempster says. "I want to be a club that is seen to be facing up to its responsibilities, but equally I want football to be recognised for the brilliant sport that it is.

"You want people to stand up and be a voice on unacceptable conduct, but I also want to stand up and be the voice for the good stuff that goes on in the game. I don't want to be the poster girl when it comes to talking about unacceptable conduct.

"The word 'sectarianism' - everybody is frightened of it. The narrative in the background now is that football doesn't do things well, so let's point the finger, let's get a boot on the throat. Some of it is deserved, I won't pretend it isn't. It's fair to say that there is a perception that nothing is being done because clubs are doing their own thing in isolation. At the minute, there is no voice. I think that, for me, is where the clubs are weak and where football is weak.

"Do we need a leadership voice in the Scottish game? I think we need it for a number of things. Not just that issue. It's about what football does well. We don't talk about it, we don't talk about the value of the game, not just the financial value but the enrichment of people's lives.

"What we have is competing voices to take credit but nobody standing up when things are tough. That statement is probably not going to make me entirely popular."

It isn't, but it's true. Looking at the big picture, there are more observations and criticism of the way football carries out its business. Given that Dempster's boss, Petrie, is one of the main men at the Scottish FA, and will soon be the association's president, her comments are noteworthy.

"The Scottish parliament is really progressive, but I just think we don't ask them the right questions," she says. "We should be asking what role does sport and football have in the lives of people in Scotland, can football help deal with the issues around things like diabetes? Why can it not? Of course it can.

"We can reach so many people, we can connect so many people with healthy living messages. Be bold, have big ideas for the game. How does football make civic society in Scotland better? I don't think it's that hard."

'I might put myself forward. The czar of football'

Whose job is it to talk up football? "I might put myself forward," she laughs. "The czar of football. I rattle on about this all the time. People are fed up hearing me talking about it. 'There's Dempster off on one again'. It's the board of the SFA, but I just think this gets put down the order of priority when it ought not to. For me, it's a missed opportunity.

"In the past, when the game was talking to government, it was so obviously asking for money. Yeah, we need money, but we need to build that relationship first in order to show we can deliver, to show how good we can be.

"One in 49 or 50 people in Scotland will pay through the turnstiles this weekend. That's quite a lot of folk. When I worked in the media, you'd pay a lot of money to have an audience like that. It's an audience that wants to consume - they're running towards you."

The image of the game has been damaged this season though. Leadership has been in thin supply. Right now, football fans who engage in sectarianism are free to chant what they like in the full knowledge that the football authorities will do nothing in response. When a manager, Aberdeen's Derek McInnes, is goaded into a gesture after being subjected to discriminatory chanting, he gets brought up on an SFA charge and receives a ban, which he served yesterday at Pittodrie against Celtic.

The bigots won - an example of the twisted morality at play at times in the Scottish game. Kilmarnock's Steve Clarke, Rangers' Steven Gerrard and, above all, Lennon have been targeted and nothing happens to the those doing the targeting.

Hibs, like the vast majority of clubs, are against strict liability. "To say that I'm against strict liability would be accurate, but that might imply that I'm not interested in improving and taking responsibility," Dempster says. "Strict liability was suggested a number of years ago by the Scottish FA, but it wasn't consulted on. It was almost foisted on the clubs, so the clubs said no to it. We were asked the question in the wrong way. There was no real information.

"It was very black and white. I was at Motherwell at the time. 'If your supporter misbehaves on a train on the way to Dundee, you will be liable for it as a club'. That's a stretch. And what's the sanction? 'We don't know. It might be, it might be, it might be...' I'm sorry, clubs can't agree with that."

Dogs 'found substances' at Hearts game

Sniffer dogs have been used outside Easter Road

In fairness to Dempster, she has followed up her talk about fan disorder with some action. "I don't think people understand enough about what clubs do to deliver the matches," she says. "The new CCTV system at Easter Road, undercover spotters, sniffer dogs. You will have seen the GoPro cameras in dugouts. We introduced them in Neil's time because Neil was taking verbal abuse from supporters directly behind dugouts and it was important that we tried to evidence that, to support him as a person and to show that this is the narrative that Neil deals with.

"I said to our safety team here that we have to live this, if we're doing it at other grounds, we're doing it at our own ground. At the weekend, the cameras were at the Hearts dugout. One person [a Hibs supporter] has had a season ticket removed on the evidence of the GoPros.

"We wanted to trial the sniffer dogs. They've been at two games now. These dogs can detect drugs and whatever's in pyros. We had a number of indications at the recent Celtic match but with no finds. At the Hearts game, we had 15 indications and had nine finds. When dogs make an indication, the fan is searched to the level that they can be searched. They found substances, let's put it that way.

"I think the fans are supportive because they see us properly dealing with some of the behaviour in the stands. Supporters are becoming much more vocal. They're fed up with what individuals getting the club into trouble."

Last week, Dempster railed against a Hearts fan who broke a seat at Easter Road, tweeting a video of him in the act and condemning him. Now she says that she doesn't want a repeat from Hibs fans at Ibrox today. "It's all so self-defeating," she suggests. "We all need to do better to promote all the good things that are going on."