Macgregor now ‘open’ to backing Budge league reconstruction plan
● Ross County chairman prepared to switch support from Premiership 12-team status quo as fears grow over Championship season delay
Ross County chairman Roy Macgregor says he is now “open” to league reconstruction as Hearts owner Ann Budge prepares to take her place among Championship clubs in a video conference meeting today.
It will be the first time since the Tynecastle club’s controversial relegation that Budge has been involved in official Championship talks. Rather than reconstruction, the agenda, in the first instance, is when second-tier clubs can realistically return to playing football amid the Covid-19 crisis.
Beginning a new season in 2021 is becoming an ever more likely scenario for clubs outwith the Premiership. It is understood that as many as six clubs in the Championship believe football will be impossible until early next year due to the costs involved in returning earlier, as Premiership clubs intend to do. Estimates have put the cost of testing around 30 players and staff at least twice a week for the virus at between £4,000£6,000 per week. Streaming closed-doors games will also likely contribute to losses. Such details are making clubs refocus on what’s important ahead of Budge’s revamped reconstruction proposal following the initial collapse of talks earlier this month.
Macgregor, a self-proclaimed advocate of a 12-team top flight, is one of those who are prepared to be swayed if it becomes clear only a few Championship clubs will have the means to start a new season in August, as has been proposed.
Such a scenario helps make Budge’s case for a 14 or even 16-team top-flight become an even more compelling one if more than 12,000 Hearts season tickets holders are not able to watch any football until 2021. Macgregor said he was “horrified” by a mooted plan to cut the Championship season down to only 18 games.
“These things do worry me because I think we have a responsibility as 42 clubs to stick together and try to make sure everyone gets through this traumatic period,” he said. “We are in a health crisis. I think the worst is yet to come.
“I think we’re going to have a tsunami of unemployment and mental issues
“I think we have a responsibility as 42 clubs to stick together and try and make sure everyone gets through this traumatic period”
ROY MACGREGOR
and big things to deal with, and lack of disposable income.
“I think the challenges ahead are more than the challenges we’ve had up to now.
“I’m not being negative there, I’m just being realistic. I think this season is going to be a very different season to all the time I’ve been involved in football.”
“I think Ann is naturally looking at her own club and a really important club to Scottish football,” added Macgregor, in an interview on
Radio Scotland’s Sportsound programme.
“Hearts are a major institution. They’ve got a major fan base there. And I think they are unhappy, in that fan base, whether it’s about the football or anything else.
“They’re just expressing themselves, the fan base. As a responsible club, we need to listen to that.”
Macgregor admitted that circumstances and views have altered since a group of Premiership clubs vetoed reconstruction talks just over a fortnight ago.
“I think there was a view among the premiership clubs that it needed time and the time to do it wasn’t in a crisis,” Macgregor continued. “But I suppose if we have a Championship season that doesn’t happen, or doesn’t happen until Christmas, that would further dent Hearts’ position.
“I think we just need to see what the paper is and whether it’s permanent or fixed. It is difficult.
“I’ve been through this before and worked six months on it and there still wasn’t unanimity on it after six months.
“But we have to be open and open to everything because I think the reality of where Scottish football is going to be is beginning to hit home.”
Macgregor said he had been a proponent of the current 12 club set-up in the top flight. However, the County chairman added that he could be convinced to change if a reasonable model was put forward and given the current uncertain circumstances.
“I was always for 12 in the top flight,” he said.
“In the last round of voting, I was one of the renegades who went for 12.
“I think in the time that it’s been 12 clubs, it has been really successful. But we’re in strange territory and I’m keeping an open mind.”