CONFUSION AND CALAMITY REIGN SUPREME AS CLUBS AWAIT A HINT OF CLARITY
Inverness chief Gardiner declares his club and others are now in the dark after Dundee’s vote on poll whether to end the season went ‘missing’ in an untimely manner
SO conspicuous was the silence emanating from the Highlands that the first instinct of many was to falsely identify Inverness Caley Thistle as keepers of the lost, casting vote on whether to end the SPFL season. It didn’t take long for that myth to be debunked as Dundee, previously forthright in their commitment to a no vote, were quickly outed as the Championship club whose submission had gone missing around the league’s arbitrary 5pm deadline on Friday.
Caley Thistle’s omertà would last a few hours longer but was broken in dramatic fashion as the club’s chief executive, Scot Gardiner, issued a live radio address outlining a detailed timeline around the vote.
On a day of intense political drama, Gardiner’s appearance on BBC Radio Scotland was merely the warm-up for an incendiary statement from Rangers, calling for an independent inquiry into the voting process and the immediate suspension of SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster.
Earlier in the week, Inverness had thrown their lot in with Gardiner’s former employers Hearts and Rangers in tabling an alternative resolution that sought to distribute prize money without ‘calling’ the season finished.
The proposal failed and the clubs reorganised ahead of Friday’s poll.
Gardiner admitted that Inverness had made an informal pact with Dundee and relegation-threatened Partick Thistle to vote together and sink the league’s proposal to promote, relegate and award titles on a points-per-game basis in the bottom three tiers.
For reasons that have still to be made clear, Dundee’s vote was never registered. Last night, the Championship vote remained balanced on a knife-edge at 7-2.
‘Our position at Inverness Caley Thistle is that there was no way we would countenance a vote that would cause financial harm to another Scottish football club in the middle of this pandemic,’ said Gardiner (below). ‘We could not stomach the thought of that.
‘We could not countenance a situation where we would take a vote that we believed would lead to redundancies at Hearts on Monday morning and at Thistle on Monday morning. We could not do it.
‘We were clear of that in every position since Wednesday when this proposal was first brought and our position did not change.
‘(Friday) afternoon we had a situation where Partick Thistle, ourselves and Dundee were pretty solid. We had all spoken openly and said we could not vote for this resolution.’
Central to what follows is an alleged WhatsApp group containing, but not exclusive to, the three Championship clubs in question who had gathered on the social-media platform to exchange views and information. Representing Inverness was Gardiner, with Partick Thistle’s Gerry Britton and Jacqui Low contributing along with Dundee secretary Eric Drysdale, who was operating under instruction from the club’s managing director, John Nelms.
That morning, it had emerged that Nelms favoured an alternative proposal for concluding the season, which would see promotion and relegation scrapped, thereby keeping the club’s city rivals, Dundee United, in the second tier. With that plan already in the public domain, no one expected Dundee to vote any way other than no. Gardiner picks up the timeline. He continued: ‘There was discussion earlier in the day about whether we would vote at the same time to show solidarity but that was going to prove problematic for me, as I needed to go into the stadium to print out the documentation and send in the voting slip.
‘We agreed we would just send in our vote and then circulate that vote (on the chat) so that everyone could see it.
‘Thistle were the first club to vote. Gerry Britton sent his voting slip to all of us, at 14:52. I have it in front of me, signed and dated.
‘At 16:24, we received Dundee’s voting slip signed and dated by John (Nelms) and, at 16:29, I signed and dated our voting slip and published that to the group.
‘At 16:52, we then got a message from Dundee’s club secretary (Drysdale) and the final line said DFC vote submitted.
‘Those are the facts of the matter as far as we were all concerned. Thereafter, I think we went through (sic) the rabbit hole.
‘We received text messages from various clubs saying that, apparently, Dundee’s vote hadn’t been received. I thought there must be a communication glitch because I had the vote in front of me.
‘We then received the message at 18:07 from the Dundee secretary saying that their vote hadn’t been received but he gave us his solemn word that it was sent. At that stage, it was quite alarming.
‘I replied with a question at 18:12 and we were told he’d been instructed to hold off from resubmitting Dundee’s vote by John.’
The obvious suspicion is that Dundee have been made an offer to change their minds. The situation is clouded and may not necessarily be resolved quickly as the Dens club’s American owners have a 28-day window before they are compelled to decide one way or another.
At the point coronavirus caused the suspension of the Scottish football season, Inverness sat second in the Championship table, 14 points adrift of leaders United but four ahead of Dundee in third and looking good for a play-off place.
Under the SPFL proposals, the play-offs would be scrapped, thus denying Inverness a shot at promotion to the top flight.
However, Gardiner insists that Inverness’s position is not driven by self-interest.
‘If we had voted yes, we would have £330,000 next week for second place,’ he said. ‘So this was not an easy decision.
‘We are furloughing all of our staff. We had an emergency general meeting earlier this year and we have worked really hard to turn round the football club.
‘We are not on our knees right now but I promise you we have one knee down. I would sleep easier if we had that money now and so would my chairman and the board.’
Gardiner firmly believes that a mechanism could be found to
release prize money now and help impoverished clubs without making a decision to call the season early.
‘The reason we voted against this was because we thought it was fundamentally wrong to conflate promotion and relegation with receiving funds,’ he said.
‘I have asked this question more than once in meetings and been told the rules and articles would not allow it.
‘We asked were there funds in the bank? Yes. Were we beholden to UEFA? No. So our next question was can we disperse those funds as quickly as we can to the clubs who are pretty desperate.
‘That’s why we at Inverness put our name to the Rangers and Hearts resolution. This was presented to us as take it or leave it.
‘I don’t think anyone in the Championship voted because they wanted to relegate Thistle, Hearts or Stranraer. They voted because they were told if we don’t do this, we won’t be able to get our money.’
Until Dundee cast their vote, nobody is sure what will happen next but the Dens Park club find themselves in a powerful position.
Gardiner added: ‘We have no idea what is going. Only one club knows. And the people who spoke to Dundee on Friday know, too!’