As the row between the SPFL and many of its member clubs over the league body’s handling of an Independent Governance Review rumbles on, the scale of the questions the SPFL executive have to answer continues to grow.

As the only non-Premiership club to raise their concerns publicly over the matter, though not the only one to hold those concerns, Stenhousemuir have more than a few of their own.

Their chairman, Iain McMenemy, for a kick-off, wants to know why the SPFL are looking to discuss the matter on Monday at a meeting with Premiership clubs, and not at a meeting between all shareholders later this month. But that's not his main concern.

READ MORE: Premiership clubs set to press on with full SPFL meeting

“All we are asking for, and certainly all I am asking for, is transparency,” McMenemy said.

“Transparency in the decision-making process and how our business is really governed.

“When those who are in power are arguing against transparency, and you could argue are putting up walls to keep things hidden from the shareholders, then that does raise new questions about just how we are going about our business.”

More questions than answers, to this point. To get to the bottom of it all, you have to rewind back to the end of the ‘cinch dispute’ between Rangers and the SPFL last summer, which only marked the beginning of this latest row to engulf the embattled league body’s leadership.

For McMenemy, the climb down the SPFL were forced into and the financial losses they sustained had to be addressed, and the lessons from the way it was handled had to be learned so that they were not repeated.

They would be, he was assured. But the fact that the findings are now being withheld from the SPFL membership has left him feeling that those assurances were hollow.

“The initial issue was the cinch sponsorship deal and how that was all handled,” he explained.

“At the meeting in July of last year when it had all been resolved, I stood up and said that we had to understand how we had gone down that road and arrived at a point where we had to make a public apology and pay money as a business.

“We had to understand how we got ourselves into that situation having pursued a course over a couple of years and then ultimately having to climb down, with a view that we don’t make a similar mistake in the future.

“That is good governance, and whether it is a good thing that has been done or a bad thing that has been done, you should be constantly reviewing to make sure that you don’t make any mistakes again in the future.

“We also had to know how much it had cost us, because this is the clubs’ money that has been used.

“I’m not aware of how much it has cost, but just doing a quick calculation in your head adding up legal fees, what we think has been paid to Rangers and what has been lost in the cinch deal, you are probably getting up to around a million pounds that has been spent on this.

“That is a million pounds that will not now be distributed among the clubs, and in challenging financial times, that is a huge sum of money to not then have the review and a second look at it to see if we could have done anything differently.

“That was the catalyst, and it was because of that issue that we have had this independent review of governance.

“I said at that meeting that we had to either have a separate review that looked at that issue, or it had to be included in this paper and this report. I was given verbal assurances at that meeting that through the review we would understand how we got ourselves into this position, and we would find out how much this had all cost.

“It doesn’t seem that that has happened. Assurances were made which at the moment, certainly don’t appear to have been lived up to.”

McMenemy is rather getting used to the notion though that what is said at these meetings can often not reflect reality.

He revealed that SPFL clubs had been told earlier on the very same day that SPFL chairman MacLennan released his statement on the findings of the governance review - saying they had made him ‘reassured, but not complacent’ - that the process was in fact still ongoing.

He said: “I think the way it was done was odd, in that we had a meeting of all the 42 clubs in person at Hampden Park [in January], and the only report that was made to us at that point was that the work in the Independent Governance Review was ongoing. That was it.

“A couple of hours later, that afternoon, we got the statement from the chairman saying that they had this and that they were, as he said, ‘reassured but not complacent’.

“Why they chose not to tell us that, that they had the first draft of the review or whatever had happened by that stage, well, that is a matter for them. But the annoying part was that we had that meeting, and we didn’t even get the opportunity to hear what stage it was actually at before this statement went out.

READ MORE: SPFL's seditious six should sound death knell for leadership

“The opportunity was there, and when it is something to do with governance and this is how they are governing the release of information, again, it just doesn’t seem it has been handled very effectively at all.

“The whole thing from start to finish, it just seems that at every turn, it’s been done in a way that is really poor governance, in fact.

“We had that meeting that very day, and the chairman came out with his statement that afternoon. The opportunity was there to at least give us an update, because we just didn’t know.

“We had no updates prior to that about what stage it was at, or where it was going, so just to announce it that way to the media rather than to the shareholders just wasn’t good governance.

“Since that time, there has been nothing. Nothing has come out to us regarding any of the recommendations, or anything contained within the report whatsoever. Nothing about the process, the way it was handled, nothing has come out to the clubs at all.

“We are just as in the dark as we were way back at the start of the process. We have had zero information.

“All we are aware of is what we have read in the press reports, there has been nothing else that has come our way whatsoever.”

Which begs the question as to why more clubs have not gone public with their grievances. But McMenemy understands their reluctance.

“These issues aside, for a number of years a lot of clubs have had general concerns about the way we do govern and the way we tend to act in silos at times,” he said.

“There is way too much that is done behind closed doors without real oversight and the knowledge of the clubs.

“I think there are real general concerns, but there is also a mix of clubs who are a bit browbeaten and think that because things have always been this way that they will never change, so a lot of those clubs won’t stick their heads above the parapet.

“There are others who might be concerned that if they make a noise then will that then affect them in the future.

“So, there are issues, but clubs are just concerned about coming out publicly and stating them.”