Lindsay was the first Sports Editor of this paper and a lifelong Portadown supporter turned club director until he was suddenly taken away from us too young at 44, nine years ago last week.

The reminders are constant because it happened the very day his other great football love, Man United, reached the 1999 Champions League Final in an epic semi-final win over Juventus in Turin.

And just as he was looking forward to cheering on the Ports in another Irish Cup Final against Cliftonville the following month.

Alas, poor Lindsay never did get to see his Old Trafford heroes spectacularly lift the European Cup on that 'name on the trophy' night in Barcelona.

Nor did he witness the Ports 'winning' the Irish Cup again in a way he wouldn't have wanted to see.

Won in the committee room after yet another of those endless administrative cock-ups that interminably blight our game.

No big day out at Windsor for the fans after Cliftonville's oversight in fielding the already Cup-tied Simon Gribben in their semi-final win over Linfield.

The whole of football here left angry, disappointed and with an awful sense of anti-climax, all because a piece of paper wasn't in order.

Lindsay would not have been surprised then and even less so now at the pickle his own club find themselves in.

Not long before he passed away, I asked him how he was getting on in his new director's role, remembering how proud he was to have been asked to make the step-up from terraces to boardroom.

And I'll never forget what he told me.

"As far as running football clubs are concerned, the less you know, the better.. stay on the other side of the boardroom door!"

Disillusionment was never in the vocabulary of the eternal optimist Lindsay, but I could sense him reaching for the dictionary.

And last week of all weeks, I couldn't help wondering what he would have made of the latest fiasco embroiling football in general and Portadown in particular?

For a start, his cut through the cr*p, journalistic mind would have quickly identified where the blame squarely rests.

Portadown can appeal their exclusion from the new all-singing, all dancing, 12-team Irish League til the cows come home to graze on Shamrock Park.

They can point to their ambitious new stadium plans and their track record of League and Cup success, the best outside the Big Two in Ronnie McFall's trophy-laden 20-year reign.

I bet he's fuming and all. Portadown bring plenty to the party, that's for sure.

But the bottom line is they failed in the most fundamental requirement for membership of the new League.

They failed to get their form in on time - by 14 minutes to be exact. End of story.

As Lindsay and I had drummed into us in our Portadown and Lurgan paper schooling.. if you can't get the small details right, how can people trust you to properly present the bigger story?

Portadown let down themselves, their fans and the whole new league concept of nailed-on professionalism, on and off the park, by leaving it til the last minute to go tearing down the motorway with the piece of paper that held the key to all their long term future hopes and dreams.

We all know what happens if you don't get to the airport early when you're going to catch a plane. It leaves without you.

There are businessmen on the Portadown board who wouldn't dream of doing anything other than putting in a tender for an important contract at the appointed time.

So what were they thinking of trusting their club's future to the chaotic contraflows of today's gridlocked M1?

To quote another Lindsay expression: Get real!

Portadown are going to have to take their medicine, I'm afraid.

Football here does not need any help to make itself look silly.

But if the IFA go back on this one - and they've done it before - they run the risk of holding the game up to further ridicule, not to mention even more legal challenges and wrangling.

The new league they've pinned their hopes on as a flagship for local football would be scuppered on the slipway.

There's too much at stake for Portadown to be banking on the IFA once again flouting their own rules. I fear they are about to discover that those who live by the old rules, perish by the new ones.

The proud, old Ports will be missed, there's no doubt about that.. and speaking as one of their number, nowhere more than down the road by the majority of Glenavon fans who relish the local rivalry.

Just as they missed us when we were down among the dead men. Our stadium and record didn't save us then.

But, like Glenavon, and Ballymena and Coleraine before them, they'll only be gone in the short term.

They'll win the lower division by a country mile, and certainly raise its profile. The downside is they could be there for two years, if as proposed, there is no promotion and relegation to and from the new league in the first season.

There'll be an impact, too, on revenue, playing personnel - will their stars want to play in the lower division - and maybe even their bedrock, Big Ronnie, so Portadown through and through, he regards winning trophies as a civic duty. How let down will he feel?

And what of Portadown's dismayed army of loyal fans?

When their anger at the decision subsides, they must surely look for answers from within.

If it was my club, I'd consider the position they've been put in a resignation matter.

I know my old mate Lindsay would have thought the same.

And nine years to the week after he left us, I now know, too, what he meant when he said the less you know about running a football club, the better.

These days it seems to be the criteria for boardroom membership.