SCOT Gardiner, the Inverness Caledonian Thistle chief executive, has described the SPFL proposal to end the 2019/20 season as "fundamentally wrong".
And he has his back at claims the Highland club, who were second in the Ladbrokes Championship and on course for a play-off spot when football was suspended last month due to the coronavirus pandemic, voted against it out of self-interest.
Gardiner felt the SPFL could have released funds without declaring the league positions on March 13 when the shutdown was introduced final and backed Rangers' bid to table an alternative resolution.
"We thought it was fundamentally wrong to conflate the two things or promotion and relegation with receiving funds which are after all the clubs’ funds, they are our fees," he said.
"We did not see why that had to be conflated. I am still flabbergasted by the arguments. We could not countenance a situation where we could take a vote that we believed would lead to redundancies at Hearts on Monday morning and redundancies at Thistle on Monday morning and who knows what to Stranraer. We could not do it.
"We have heard it said from other clubs, from other individuals, from other pundits, saying that this was self-serving because we were in second place. That is a valid position for anyone to take.
"They think that Inverness are doing this because we are looking after ourselves. We are furloughing all our staff, we have had an EGM this year, we have worked very, very hard to turn around Inverness in the Championship.
"We are not on our knees, but I promise you we have one knee down. If we voted yes we would have received £330,000 next week. So this was not an easy decision. We voted out of principle. I would sleep easier if we had that right now."
Gardiner added: "This was presented to us as ‘take it or leave it, this is the only way this can be done, it is the only technical way, it is the only legal way, it is the only way we can distribute funds’.
"All we have said is ‘is there a mechanism to release the funds? Are the funds in the bank? Yes. Can we disperse those funds to the clubs, who are pretty desperate just now'. We were presented with this on Wednesday and given until 5pm on Friday to vote on it.
"A number of us have asked that question and we were, I’m trying to pick my phrase here, told the rules wouldn’t allow it. I didn’t believe that to be the case and I said it. That is why we put our name to the Rangers/Hearts resolution to change the articles (of association) to allow for the dispersement. We didn’t see why the two things had to be conflated."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel