Hearts broken and lessons to be learned from sorry saga

SPFL should be braced for fallout from vote

ASHAMEFUL act of self-interest by clubs more concerned with the health of their own bank balance than the greater good of Scottish football?

Or an inevitable if unfortunate consequence of the unprecedented crisis into which the global game has been plunged by the coronavirus pandemic?

Opinion on the unwillingness of 26 of the SPFL’s 42 members to support league reconstruction – a proposed move from a 12-10-10-10 set-up to a 14-10-10-10 structure – yesterday is sharply divided.

Those who have lost out – and Hearts, Partick Thistle and Stranraer will, despite the fact they could all have survived in their respective divisions when football was suspended back in March, be relegated as a result – are disgusted and incensed.

Others are able to view the situation slightly more dispassionately and feel, while having sympathy with the Tynecastle, Firhill and Stair Park outfits, this outcome was unavoidable.

There were impassioned pleas from both the Gorgie and Maryhill boardrooms over the weekend to “right the wrongs” of the contentious vote on the end of the 2019/20 campaign and consider the grave implications of sticking with the status quo.

But it required 11 of the 12 Premiership clubs, 17 of the 20 Premiership and

Championship clubs and

32 of the Premiership, Championship, League One and League Two clubs to back the move for it to succeed.

If just one of those targets wasn’t reached, the plan would founder. It was, then, always likely to fail. The only real surprise is the SPFL endeavoured, after several proposals had been rebuffed previously in recent weeks, to revisit it.

Adding another two teams to the top flight – so allowing Hearts, Partick and Stranraer to stay up and Inverness Caledonian Thistle, Falkirk, Edinburgh City, Brora Rangers and Kelty Hearts to go up – might have seemed fair, logical and simple enough.

In fact, it would have been an almost perfect solution.

But the predicament the sport in this country finds itself in – clubs are having to shell out small fortunes for Covid-19 testing for players just to train and are facing their teams playing games behind closed doors for the foreseeable future – meant there were many directors and owners who were wary of going down that road.

As Dave Cormack, the United States-based software entrepreneur who took over as Aberdeen chairman at the start of the year, previously stated, the worst time to make permanent change is during a crisis. Ross County supremo Roy MacGregor, another canny and respected operator, was certainly wary of making any knee-jerk decision.

Hearts have now vowed to take legal action. The SPFL executive, who have taken expert advice from QCs at every step of the process, will be quietly confident they can win any court case. They will

argue they have followed their guidelines to the letter of the law throughout and the clubs themselves ultimately took the decision.

Yet, Ann Budge, the Hearts chairman, is a successful businesswoman and isn’t taking this course of action lightly. She is convinced the capital club have been wronged and are deserving of millions of pounds in compensation. It promises to be a showdown to rival any Edinburgh derby.

The governing body should also be concerned about the impact the lingering resentment caused by this episode will have on football going forward. They need everyone involved in the senior game to work as one to meet the considerable challenges caused by the Covid-19 outbreak in the 2020/21 campaign and beyond. Schisms will be costly.

Will they be able to repair their damaged relations with some of the country’s most prominent and powerful clubs, not least Hearts and Rangers, and ensure the Premiership and other leagues prosper during an economic downturn? There is much bridge building to be done in the weeks and months ahead. It could prove impossible.

Partick Thistle chairman Jacqui Low gave an indication of the lack of trust some, not all, clubs have in chief executive Neil Doncaster, chairman Murdoch MacLennan, legal adviser Rod McKenzie and secretary Iain Blair as well as the board in her statement yesterday.

“As a member of the

SPFL, we feel badly let down especially by its board and chairman,” she wrote. “In allowing harm to be done to some members, as they have done, can the SPFL really still be regarded as a membership organisation that works in the best interests of all its members, one that genuinely acts on behalf of the membership as a whole?

“In all of its actions of recent months, the SPFL has shown it is not fit for purpose. That must be addressed, claiming to only do what members tell them is an assertion that has now worn thin.”

Many clubs, in the lower leagues especially, have felt that they have been dictated to, that there has been no discussion over the best course of action, that they have been treated with disdain throughout this whole sorry saga.

They were given just days to digest the resolution on the end of the season back in April. Any alternative suggestion was given very short shrift. The way in which any dissenters were dismissed was off-hand.

It was, of course, a fraught time. Lockdown was in place, personnel had been furloughed and time was also of the essence. Procrastinating could have delayed the payment of final placing money and caused untold problems for their member clubs.

When the dust has settled and some kind of normality has returned the SPFL must make sure that lessons are learned and they conduct themselves in a less confrontational and more inclusive manner.

But even that may not be enough to heal festering wounds and for peace to break out in Scottish football.