Football: Stewart Fisher finds club directors ready to test the mettle of the SPL council
EXCAVATION work eventually began on the fourth and final stand at Clyde’s Broadwood stadium on Friday, but the club’s directors must privately hope they are not merely digging their own hole. When finished, the £1.5 million North Lanarkshire council development will bring the Cumbernauld stadium’s capacity above the 10,000 mark, but as ever in Scottish football, nothing is quite that simple. As work will not be completed in time for the March 31 deadline, and the club will also have to install undersoil heating by the start of next season, their promotion aspirations could ultimately come down to a decision of the SPL council.
The club have agreed to a groundshare deal with Airdrie United at New Broadwood, but given that the SPL threw out a similar bid by Falkirk last season, such a move may be in vain.
This new uncertainty must, of course, be placed alongside the club’s central assumption: that the 11 players put on the park by Alan Kernaghan can continue to win matches at the top of the first division.
Even this chance of a team actually gaining promotion into the SPL represents a refreshing change to the moribund state of the Scottish game, but some of the Lanarkshire club’s fans may also have fears that the club will sell something of their soul in the process. Clyde – whose top-of-the-table clash with Inverness Caledonian Thistle was postponed due to a frozen pitch at Caledonian Stadium this weekend – have confirmed that the next few months will see new investment to the club in the form of Glasgow businessman Lawrence Ihle and former Raith Rovers chairman Danny Smith. One of the two is almost certain to replace William Carmichael as chairman before the club enters the SPL.
On the field, meanwhile, the game of risk extends to the futures of player-manager Kernaghan and club captain Jack Ross, both of whom become free agents in the summer. The pair plan to wait until the result of their promotion challenge is known before making any decisions. The club is still waiting to hear the outcome of a bid – along with some of their first division rivals – attempting to push the SPL deadline back for installation of undersoil heating until winter.
For a team with a relatively paltry support, based in one of Scotland’s New Towns, the parallels with over-ambitious Livingston are obvious. But club director Gerry Dunn insists that the new investment was required precisely to ensure that the club enters the SPL on a sound financial footing.
“The whole aim of the discussions with the new investors is that if the club does go up, they will be going up in good financial shape,” Dunn said. “I am sure that all clubs will be looking at their outgoings very carefully and making sure they cope in the future.”
If they do persuade the SPL to the rights of their case, there is a strange symmetry in the fact that it will be their spartan Glasgow rivals Partick Thistle who seem fated to travel in the opposite direction.
In any case, the Clyde board has another case study in mind when it comes to persuading the vested interests of the SPL – the leeway given to the Marr brothers when allowed to complete their stadium rebuilding work in pre-season. “Obviously it is not going to be finished by the March 31,” director Dunn told the Scottish Sunday last night. “But we have made initial approaches and kept the SPL informed. The rule is that if the criteria are not met by March 31, the SPL council will vote on every individual case.
“We will use the Dundee case as a precedent, and I think also just the fact that relegation and promotion is very, very important for the supporters’ interest in the game,” he added. “We would like to think that the members of the SPL would support that if we can provide them with documentary evidence of the criteria being met.”
The SPL clubs will also take the role of kingmakers should their closest challengers, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, take the title. Caledonian stadium will not have 10,000 covered seats in place for the March 31 deadline, nor do they yet have undersoil heating, but the club can provide assurances that both a pitch heating system and temporary seating similar to that used at military tattoos will be in place for August. Funding is guaranteed for the projects, but the club will monitor on-field goings-on before starting to invest in the temporary seats.
“We have to leave it until the end of the season basically,” business manager Les Kidger said. “We certainly wouldn’t want to erect this seating unless we really needed to.”
Of the chasing pack, only St Johnstone’s McDiarmid Park ground is currently fully compliant. Construction work at Falkirk’s new Westfield stadium is progressing, but the club will still rely on temporary seats to hit the 10,000 mark. Ross County has previously pledged to endeavor to meet all the criteria should they be in a position to challenge, while St Mirren’s Love Street ground requires only undersoil heating to satisfy SPL chairman.
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