Breaking up is hard to do for the rebels with the SPL2 cause

Talks are to take place on the possibility of a breakaway league, but there is still a lot of convincing to be done. Stewart Fisher reports

FOOTBALL is always an easier game if you have learned to walk before you start to run. The Scottish Football League meets for its annual general meeting at Hampden this Friday, but there will not be so much as a whisper from the first division clubs, or anyone else, about the topic of SPL2, a Scottish version of the English Championship, nor breakaway leagues in general.

Under SFL rules, 14 days’ notice is required to outline proposals for the meeting and there are no avenues by which the topic could arise via the back door. After a week which began promising revolution, but ended only with rancour and recriminations, it will be business as usual this Friday.

Before then – either tomorrow or Tuesday – the 10 first division clubs with varying degrees of disaffection will finally have talked turkey with league secretary Peter Donald. It promises to be instructive. “If you have people expressing disquiet about something,” Donald said, “then they will have to tell us what the disquiet is before we can come up with a solution.

“Just now they are in the traditional football huddle. They are talking about matters – I don’t know what – apart from apparently they would rather have an independent organisation. But we have already got three, and I haven’t seen too many people suggesting that another one is the best way forward.”

It was way back in January when the Sunday Herald first revealed embryonic moves were being made to establish a modified second tier of the Scottish game, although details were at best sketchy and at worst non-existent.

When matters finally came to a head this week, confusion still reigned as it became clear a schism was developing amongst the first division clubs.

Whilst Livingston chairman Pearse Flynn and Hamilton Accies’ chairman Ronnie McDonald led the charge towards a breakaway league, others such as St Johnstone chairman Geoff Brown and Airdrie chief Jim Ballantyne – who had affirmed their intention to work within the SFL as recently as April 7 – were quietly appalled by the way talks had been hijacked. In this context, the agreement to hold face-to-face talks with the SFL is a significant step back from the belligerence of earlier in the week.

But the SPL, having originally floated the idea, had suddenly gone to ground. Buoyed by a record 3.7m coming through the gates, and with a new bumper TV deal to divide out, the original proposal from Inverness CT chairman David Sutherland has quietly been kicked into the long grass. When a couple of clubs met SPL chairman Lex Gold with their concerns two months ago, they were told to take it up with the SFL. The SPL insist they remain open to ideas, but will not discuss it until their annual strategy meeting this summer.

Ironically, Livingston and Dundee are both markedly keener on the scheme now than they were 18 months ago, when they were both in the SPL and a straw poll of bosses revealed insufficient support for the idea.

The suspicion amongst some in the SFL, therefore, is that it is all merely sabre-rattling designed to allow first division clubs – many of whom struggle with the demands of full-time football – to receive a greater share of the £1.5million annual sum agreed in the settlement with the SPL.

A by-product would be the chance for the SPL to get a workable voting majority to phase out their own split, which is unpopular with fans and directors alike, and return to a 10-team top division, with a subsidised second tier offering a softer landing for any of their relegated clubs.

If the talks remain rational, the likely outcome is reassurances on sponsorship, PR and increased revenues to cover the £20,000 shortfall from the expired Bell’s deal. But if the ambition to establish a new, independent version of the Coca-Cola Championship in time for next season is genuine, it involves chasing shadows and ignoring pitfalls as great as that of the hackneyed old ‘Old Firm to Premiership’ saga.

First, the rebels would have to overturn the numbers game and ensure they can persuade enough clubs to join them. Secondly, they would only be permitted to give their two-year notice period a bodyswerve if they can persuade a total of 20 (two-thirds) of all the SFL’s clubs to endorse the proposal at a special general meeting.

Considering they are unlikely to be showered in extra funding from the SPL, and with no guarantee of greater sums in sponsorship for a 10-team league than three leagues totalling 30, what could they offer to persuade the other leagues to let them walk off into the sunset? Rebels could not simply resign from the league and refuse all co-operation as they’d have nowhere to go, and the SFL would regard that as a breach of their regulations and call in the SFA.

“It wouldn’t be a legal matter,” Donald said. “It would be a football matter. They would be breaching our regulations, and I would need to report it to the SFA. You couldn’t set up an independent league without the blessing of the SFA. The association have our rules, approve our rules, and if there was a breach they would have to assure the SFA what they were doing was acceptable and I don’t see how they could do that.”

We have been here before, of course. Back in January 2001, then Livingston chairman Dominic Keane and Ross County chief Roy McGregor first went public with the idea of an SPL2, only for the idea to crumble when it became clear the SPL were not proposing significant cash to make it happen.

“The idea of creating a league out of fresh air, just add water and give it a stir and there you go, is absolutely daft,” said Ballantyne.

“But there is no dispute to arbitrate, the legal agreements are all in force, the only thing to change it is a combination of making the first division stronger, and having two up two down. But the timescale, and who does what first – the chicken and the egg – that is where it will die.”

Taken from the Sunday Herald