SPL won’t use power to probe Hearts saga

Published on Tuesday 22 November 2011 01:08

SPL chief executive Neil Doncaster insisted last night that the league could not step into the dispute over Hearts players’ unpaid salaries, despite a clause in their rule book which gives them the power to investigate any financial matters involving clubs and their employees.

Doncaster was responding to a call by Dundee United player Willo Flood for the SPL to take action over the Tynecastle issue, which has seen Hearts fail for the second month running to pay the senior members of their squad on time.

Flood said: “I think it has to be only a matter of time before the league steps in and starts doing something about it. If this was down south, and it had happened this amount of time, I can’t imagine them doing nothing about it down there.”

The chief executive said the SPL could only take action if they had received a complaint, and said that in this case they had not done so.

Under the heading “Power of Inquiry and Determination”, the league’s rule book gives considerable scope to the SPL’s board to look into a range of cases. The first part of Paragraph G1.1 reads: “The board, and, where appointed by the board, a commission, shall have the power of inquiry into all financial, contractual and other arrangements within, between and/or amongst clubs and players.”

However, Doncaster said that the power of inquiry did not mean the league had the ability to make binding rulings. “It gives us the power to investigate, but doesn’t give us the power to take action,” he said. “We have the power to adjudicate on a player’s contract if we are notified by a player.”

While accepting that the power of inquiry might be useful in theory, Doncaster implied that in practice there was no point in exercising it if there could be no end product such as a ruling. “It’s not for the league to make moral judgments on a particular case. It’s for the league to apply the rules, and any change to the rules has to be applied by the clubs.”

PFA Scotland, the players’ union, is in a similar position. Without a complaint by one of their members, they cannot take formal action against a club such as Hearts.

Flood also suggested that a similar situation would not have arisen in England, where the Barclays Premier League adopted new rules two years ago designed to ensure that clubs did not get into the difficulties which appear to have led to Hearts’ non-payment of salaries. These new financial criteria stipulate that, before the start of each season, clubs have to satisfy the league that they have the funding in place to ensure the successful implementation of their budgets.

Taken from the Scotsman