Caley Thistle have hit out at the SFPL, labelling the governing body’s handling of the vote to end the season as a grossly mismanaged process and revealed they will support Rangers’ resolution for an independent inquiry.
The Championship club issued a lengthy statement yesterday claiming they had reported bullying to chief executive Neil Doncaster, just an hour after Doncaster had been on national radio dismissing episodes he was made aware of as robust conversations.
The furious rebuttal from Caley Jags comes on the eve of Tuesday’s extraordinary general meeting where clubs will vote on whether to support a resolution from Rangers to carry out an independent investigation into the events surrounding the SPFL’s management of the voting process.
The statement, attributed to chairman Ross Morrison and chief executive Scott Gardiner, makes clear the Highlanders support an investigation into the events surrounding the vote and Dundee’s decision to change their vote from no to yes after it went missing.
It read: “Without going into the specifics at this time, please know that we will testify to the bullying and threats made against our club on Friday, April 10 by an SPFL board member and the threats against others by the same SPFL board member.
“These threats were “reported back to the centre” and to the SPFL chief executive directly on the day with evidence at any genuine independent investigation with the proper and appropriate scope, should there be one, or at any further subsequent action thereafter.
“These were threats and not robust conversations.
“We believe that serious questions remain over the actions of the managing director of one club during the now infamous vote on April 10 and what happened between the submission of their legally binding no vote before the fake 5pm deadline and five days later when they became the only club out of 42 to have negotiations with the chief executive and chairman of the SPFL and with “big hitters” or persons unknown, before being allowed to vote for a second time.
“This time to carry the SPFL board’s resolution with a yes vote. A genuinely independent investigation is the only possible route to try and uncover what happened and it may or may not reveal the reasoning behind their apparently contradictory statements since then.”
Following the vote an SPFL league reconstruction task force was set-up but Inverness believe the working group was doomed to fail before it began.
The decision of the Premiership clubs not to support league reconstruction on Friday means Caley Thistle will be playing Championship football next season.
The Inverness statement continued: “Friday’s announcement on the collapse of the reconstruction talks was in our eyes, as inevitable as it was depressing.
“We have been in close contact with key members of the inordinately large “task force” since it’s inception.
“The incredible numbers co-opted onto the group at the outset was one of the reasons why we believed, perhaps understandably cynically, that it was being set up to fail from the very beginning and nothing we heard from our colleagues did anything to really dilute that opinion.
“When people you respect openly state shortly after the process started that they believe they are wasting their time and predict what they think will happen and ultimately did happen, it was hard not to share their disillusion.”
