BLUEPRINT
Findlay proposal for merging lower league teams in a one-off competition has a certain amount of logic
COWDENBEATH chairman Donald Findlay has asked the SPFL to construct a temporary third tier for clubs from Leagues One and Two to play in next season.
Lower-league chairmen are wrestling with the financial dilemma of whether they can afford to spend £5,000 on coronavirus testing in order to let players restart the league season.
Sportsmail understands Partick Thistle, Falkirk, Airdrieonians and Cove Rangers from League One, plus Queen’s Park and Stenhousemuir will tell the SPFL that they can commit to playing 36 games without gate income.
With many clubs from the Championship downwards in favour of truncated, 18-game lower-league seasons being mothballed until January, league chief executive Neil Doncaster is grappling with huge logistical headaches.
And last night Findlay urged Doncaster to use today’s Scottish Government summit with SFA counterpart Ian Maxwell to form a firm plan for what happens next.
‘If it turns out they decide that Leagues One and Two are not to be played or the competitions are to be suspended, then that would be a decision for the SPFL,’ he told Sportsmail.
‘My suggestion to them — and it was only a suggestion — was that we should look at having a competition involving League One and League Two.
‘We could organise it on regional lines with home-and-away games and play-offs, with a trophy at the end for the winners.
‘We need something like that just to give players and supporters meaningful football. It was simply a thought that I put to the other guys in the league.
‘I think that until we know what is happening — or what is
not happening — it would be better than nothing.
‘Testing is going to be very, very expensive. I don’t think there is an appetite for anyone other than the Premiership clubs for playing games behind closed doors. And if we cannot play football under the present format and it is decided that League One and League Two should be suspended, then what do you do in that event?
‘If they say: “We don’t think you can play”, why could we not wait until January or February and see if we couldn’t have a competition then?
‘There are various formats. It could be 18 games, one home and one away, with play-offs and a final at a neutral venue where someone gets a ‘Screw the Coronavirus Cup’ at the end of it all.’
The readiness of clubs like Queen’s Park — fifth in League Two — to fund testing protocols for games behind closed doors threatens to pose the SPFL a major headache.
Warning that Scotland’s oldest senior club can’t be permitted to use the cash from the sale of Hampden to the SFA to leapfrog their way up the leagues or join an expanded Championship, Findlay argued: ‘No, you can’t do that. That would be ridiculous.
‘I’m sorry, but that would just be beyond contemplation.’
Of the view that a wartimestyle league featuring teams from the two bottom tiers is the most practical way of averting potential legal challenges to the league’s authority, Findlay acknowledged that any makeshift, truncated alliance of the lower leagues would make it impossible to relegate or promote clubs next season.
He argued, however, that an expanded, reshaped third tier can still be imbued with a competitive edge, adding: ‘It might be better just to have a one-off meaningful competition where someone could win something at the end of it.
‘I’ve been in this game long enough to know that supporters primarily want their team to win games and win something. They are less concerned with what the something is.’
A Hearts proposal to reconstruct to three leagues of 14 teams faces certain defeat at divisional meetings of the SPFL on Monday.
Championship clubs are likely to deliver the coup de grace by formally rejecting the proposals on Tuesday or Wednesday and Findlay admits his impatience with political posturing is growing.
He said: ‘Right now, we are wasting time on pointless discussions about reconstruction when what we should be doing is trying to work out what we can do for the benefit of the clubs, the game and primarily the players and supporters.
‘That’s what matters to me and the people at Cowdenbeath. And I, for one, am weary of the fact that we cannot get a decision.
‘We need to know when we are going to start and in what way they are proposing that we start.
‘Once we know that, we can work around it. Everything else is just vague and non-specific.’