Scotland’s longest-serving manager, Jim McInally, says lower league clubs are left feeling like they don’t matter to Scottish football.
Earlier this week it emerged Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack wants to investigate the possibility of finishing the Premiership season.
The Dons chief is prepared to conduct a feasibility study in a bid to finish the top-flight campaign and has written to fellow Premiership clubs, the SPFL board and SFA.
Last week a motion finally passed which ended the Championship, League One and League Two seasons – 10 Premiership clubs, including Aberdeen, supported the plan.
Peterhead boss McInally had been keen to investigate the possibility of finishing the lower league campaigns and reshaping next season’s schedule to suit, something he felt was dismissed by the authorities.
He said: “Everybody in the Premiership, Dave Cormack and everybody else, are the same in that they’re not interested in the smaller teams.
“Whether it’s Ann Budge, Peter Lawell, Dave Cormack, whoever it is at Rangers – they’re only interested in themselves.
“That’s also why I think the reconstruction thing is a waste of time, because they all want to keep the money where the big teams are.
“There’s one rule for the Premiership and one rule for the rest of us.
“At lower league level we don’t get any voting power and there’s always that feeling of ‘we’re just here to make the numbers up’.”
That the Premiership clubs were able to vote on whether the lower league seasons finished was something that also rankled with McInally given that the outcome of the vote didn’t determine the top-flight clubs’ season.
He added: “I’ve said the vote we had was wrong. The Premiership clubs shouldn’t have been voting on what was right or wrong for Partick Thistle, Raith Rovers, Falkirk and Stranraer.
“It was a terrible vote and it was a vote geared up to release money, and it’s the lower Premiership teams and Championships teams that were needing the money more than us in League One and League Two.
“There’s been this myth developed since that us in the bottom two leagues needed the money, which is just rubbish.”
Dons chairman Cormack said the financial repercussions of the shutdown was one of the primary reasons why the Dons voted in favour of the SPFL resolution.
After the vote, he said: “Crucially, this means that the lower league clubs can get the cash they urgently need, while a premature decision on the Ladbrokes Premiership can be avoided.”
