Bouyant Raith Rovers disprove the theory that the only way is down

THEY were ambitious, they built a new stadium or greatly improved their old one, they paid players vast sums of money - they went bust.

It’s a sadly familiar story in recent Scottish football history, as fans of Airdrie or Motherwell will tell you, but one club has bucked the trend and stayed in business despite massive financial problems which meant they were once within days of closing down.

Raith Rovers should not be in existence. Three years ago they owed banks and other creditors 1.5m and had just posted an annual loss of 564,000.

Wages accounted for a suicidal 94 per cent of turnover. The Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise were on the point of going to court to wind up the Rovers and only 200,000 from the enforced sale of Paul Hartley saved them.

New chairman Danny Smith and his backers bought the dying club. Being businessmen from the West coast and with no obvious link to Stark’s Park, they weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms by the Fife fans.

Things did not improve. Managers came and went - Jimmy Nicholl, John McVeigh, Peter Hetherston - and bright starts to successive seasons fizzled out. Court actions over debts and a breach of contract legal suit by McVeigh unsettled the new regime, several of whom dipped into their own pockets to keep Raith Rovers going.

The biggest blow came at the end of last season, when even Jocky Scott’s wiles failed to keep Rovers in the First Division, the manager paying for the failure with his job.

Yet even as Raith plummeted on the field, something mysterious was happening backstage at Stark’s Park. Against all the theories of football economics, Raith Rovers made a profit for the second year running, dredging up a surplus of 56,000 last season.

Add more than 100,000 from the sale of Nacho Novo to Dundee - the only six-figure sale by a Scottish Football League club over the summer - and Raith are no longer candidates for a visit from the receivers.

And over the past month there has been incredulity within the SFL at the news that Raith Rovers are to stay full-time this season, albeit on a vastly-reduced budget.

Eyebrows have been raised throughout the league because the accepted wisdom is that relegation to the Second Division should have seen them become part-time immediately.

Instead, new manager Antonio Calderon has been given a full-time squad to work with and on Friday evening the players showed they at least have the attitude for the job, coming back from 3-1 down to snatch a 3-3 draw against First Division opponents St Mirren.

Calderon says being full-time will be a significant plus in the months ahead: "We have had tremendous support from everybody at the club from the chairman to the groundsman, and having full-time players means we can work with them all the time, which will give us a real advantage."

It’s a giant leap of faith for the Fife club, according to lifelong supporter-turned-secretary-and-director Eric Drysdale. His background as a banker has given him a unique insight into the problems of Scottish football in the recent era of downsizing.

Drysdale said: "The main reason we got into difficulties as a club was because we spent so much on wages - it wasn’t building the new stadium that really caused the problems.

"We were certainly close to going under. Before the present board took over we had 92 creditors, but now that figure is down to single figures, and thankfully our creditors have been patient, as have our fans. We have a strong and loyal support and we very much want to keep our fans informed and involved and build up our base in the community.

"Yes, we have had to sell players such as Novo and we may have to do so again when we find and rear new talents. We have also had to cut the wage bill to something like 400,000 from 1.4m three years ago, but we remain ambitious and that’s why we’re staying full-time. It will be difficult but we’ll manage."

Drysdale added: "Scottish football has had a reality check. This close-season has shown that there isn’t the money for transfer deals that used to keep some clubs going, and I don’t think there will be too many big moves before the transfer window closes at the end of August.

"We have moved into a new era for football clubs. You used to find that successful businessmen would make a lot of money then move into the boardroom of their clubs and throw it all away - those days are over, and we all have to live within our means."

The loss of Airdrie and Clydebank has been an excruciating lesson for Scottish football, and certainly there are several other clubs still deep in crisis. But the endurance of Raith Rovers, even in reduced circumstances, shows that our clubs can adapt and survive.

More importantly, the lesson to be learned from Rovers is that only if you adapt can you survive.