Elgin City chairman Graham Tatters has painted a bleak picture for the future of the Borough Briggs club.
He believes the Black and Whites will struggle to survive if the UK Government’s job retention scheme does not continue beyond June.
The League 2 club have nine players contracted beyond the end of the season and, with no source of match-day income on the horizon, the Elgin chairman admits the finances won’t be there to pay those wages.
But while clubs such as Elgin are staring into the abyss, Scottish football has become embroiled in scandal and heated debate over reconstruction and Rangers’ quest for an independent inquiry into this month’s controversial SPFL vote to end the season in the bottom three tiers.
At a time when a health crisis is causing pain and suffering across the globe, people should be working together to find solutions to an unprecedented situation. Instead, Scottish football appears intent on ripping itself apart, while clubs such as Elgin look on helplessly.
The comments of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon should have raised alarm bells when she said football matches were unlikely to return any time soon and also appeared to rule out the possibility of starting the 2020-21 season behind closed doors.
Scottish football brings more than £200 million to the economy and helps support 5,700 jobs, but Sturgeon fears allowing games to take place behind closed doors could encourage supporters to congregate together to watch games and risk the spread of the coronavirus.
That is a divergence from the mood music south of the border where it has been reported that the English Premier League could return in weeks to boost public morale. The games could also be shown on free-to-air platforms to prevent people travelling to other people’s homes for satellite.
Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack has called on the SPFL to delay any decision over the season until a feasibility study has been conducted into the possibility of playing the remaining games, which could bring broadcast revenue.
The Dons chief admits that if Scottish football doesn’t get back playing games soon it is facing financial Armageddon.
He also claimed the reconstruction talks were like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic while it’s going down.
When you hear the comments from Elgin chairman Tatters, it is difficult to dismiss Cormack’s comments as hyperbole.
A temporary change to the SPFL’s four divisions may be the best compromise to ensure teams at the bottom of the leagues, such as Hearts and Partick Thistle, are not punished too severely.
But a prolonged discussion over whether Scottish football is best served by a 12-10-10-10 structure or 14-14-14 seems a moot point with a number of clubs facing a battle to survive.
