Hearts and Thistle court win ‘would damage game’
FOR Ayr United chairman Lachlan Cameron, the 5,000 miles between Scotland and his home in Southern California are both a source of grief and, from time to time, a blessing.
On a Sunday morning, a fourball on a sun-baked golf course in Pasadena offers the opportunity to recover from intense Zoom calls with rival SPFL chairmen in the middle of the night.
It provides time and space to understand why Hearts and Partick Thistle feel the need to pursue a joint legal action in Edinburgh’s Court of Session as they continue their battle against relegation by committee.
Yet, no matter how many swings he takes on the fairways, the Somerset Park owner and businessman still cannot comprehend how Scottish football ended up here. Staring down the barrel of a gun, clutching a £10million ransom note.
‘We are a members’ organisation and we should be able to handle all this stuff,’ he told Sportsmail yesterday.
‘Unfortunately, Hearts and Partick Thistle don’t feel that’s good enough and so they are suing for £10m.
‘Personally, I feel that Scottish football should do everything in-house — but they have every right to go outside and go legal if they feel they need to.
‘I can see their point of view on why they might do it. What I can’t do is agree with the fact they are doing it. I can’t say that I support them, because I don’t. I think it’s damaging for the overall game.’
At 10am this morning, lawyers acting for the two sides will address Lord Clark during a virtual hearing at the Court of Session.
Hearts and Partick Thistle argue that a members’ resolution proposing that relegation be decided by league standings when the season was suspended in mid-March was to ‘the extreme detriment’ of both clubs.
The two clubs want their relegations stopped, with the promotions of Dundee United, Raith Rovers and Cove Rangers reversed.
Should that fail, Hearts want £8m in damages and Thistle £2m. Lurking in the background is the threat of both clubs seeking an interdict to prevent the new Premiership season kicking off on August 1 — with the obvious menace that poses to a new £125m broadcasting deal with Sky Sports.
‘Listen, Hearts obviously have money and they happen to be in the city where most of the lawyers operate in Scotland,’ added Cameron.
‘I don’t agree with what they are doing but if they win this court case, then they win their court case — and there will be less money for every team in Scotland.’
Hearts and Thistle believe that rivals should have thought of all this before voting down repeated attempts to reconstruct the leagues so that no club suffered a painful and expensive relegation as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic.
Cameron was one of the members of the reconstruction group led by Ann Budge and Les Gray which was disbanded when Premiership clubs voted down their proposals.
Outspoken in his opposition to any temporary reconstruction designed to save Hearts, the Ayr chief branded the plans a ‘nonsense’ and ‘Hunger Games stuff’. He told Sportsmail: ‘I think the infighting was inevitable. People are not going to be happy if they are getting relegated.
‘But the thing that I find so difficult is that we were given all this information on ending the season by the SPFL, we took an informed view based on that information and by a country mile of 81 per cent — four out of five clubs — it was voted through.
‘Then right after we did that we said: “Okay, we will leave the teams that were promoted but we don’t want to relegate any teams, so we will look at league reconstruction”.
‘But we’ve been talking about league reconstruction since I first came over in 2005 and nothing has been done about it.
‘The fact is we are a members’ organisation and we made a decision about what made sense.
‘I understand why people are upset about swallowing what must be a bitter pill. But for the good of Scottish football I hope we can move forward and start playing again. And I hope the teams that got relegated will come back into the fold and that we can put our differences to the side and start the new season.’
By any stretch, it’s an optimistic view. An American born and raised in California, Cameron’s bond to Ayr United stems from his late father Donald.
The coronavirus crisis makes this the most challenging time of his 15 years in charge of the Championship club, yet he never allows events to consume him.
‘I’m lucky in that I am in Southern California right now. I can do other things,’ he said.
‘It would be very difficult to be in Scotland as a chairman because you are not only locked down but you can’t do much to keep your mind occupied.
‘There is no actual football going on for a start. You are stuck in this holding pattern. It has definitely been more interesting in the last couple of months because a lot more has been going on.
‘Unfortunately, there is a lot of bickering because of the situation, with some clubs going down and some getting promoted. But it’s certainly been interesting being a chairman in the last few months.’
For clubs at all levels, cutbacks have become a grim necessity. One of the areas suffering most is youth development, with the likes of Hearts and Motherwell looking at slashing costs to keep their academies alive.
By contrast, Ayr United made a conscious decision to ring-fence their academy from the football club in order to protect its independence.
‘The two organisations are aligned,’ said Cameron, ‘but the youth academy is protected from the football club raiding the coffers and taking all the money every time things get tight. It’s ring-fenced.
‘If coronavirus has shown us anything it’s that, the second things get tight, the first thing to go is the youth academy.
‘From a short-term point of view then, yeah, it would be useful to have a few thousand pounds kicking about by saving it from the cost of the academy.
‘But in real terms you’d be losing so much. Look at the amount of players who have come into the first team from our academy such as Alan Forrest and so on — we have a pretty good record.’