Chairman’s Diary: SFA’s £8,000 payment to Stenhousemuir - are we all in this together?

Every day seems to bring a fresh challenge. Like many others, I have the news on all the time, and patiently await updates from both the Scottish and UK Governments. As a football club, we also patiently await updates from our various governing bodies. It seems we’re waiting, always waiting.

While there is no football at Ochilview, Stenhousemuir FC have organised a volunteer force who are helping vulnerable people during the coronavirus crisis. Picture: SNS

We’ve had our hopes raised over the past few days with a few predicted big events that would possibly provide some decisions and answers on the way forward for football. But it seems like every time we ascended the mountain and we’re approaching the top, it proved to be nothing more than a false summit and we find ourselves still climbing with no end in sight.

First, we had the Uefa meeting on Tuesday. This was billed as perhaps the big one that would give 55 nations a direction they urgently needed on how and when we will end the seasons and the mechanism for agreeing who, if anybody, wins championships or falls victim to relegation.

Unfortunately, the big decision from that meeting was nothing more than a stated desire to finish playing the campaigns. No proposals as to how, or when. No answers to the many questions this throws up regarding contracts, timescales, impacts, finances, etc etc etc.

Almost immediately after the decision was sent out from Uefa towers, the Scottish FA was conducting interviews saying that playing the season out was most likely not going to happen.

So, we are no further forward, and the posturing over league positions, relegations, and null and void scenarios continues indefinitely.

We then had the announcement from the Scottish FA that they were advancing club payments that would have been paid in the next financial year. Putting aside the robbing Peter to pay Paul argument, our need is immediate, so this was to be welcomed. A very healthy £1.5 million was identified with immediate payments to be made. We’ve now received our share… only £8,000. Are we all in this together? I’ll leave that there.

Finally, we had the SPFL League meetings on Thursday, by video call of course in these social distancing times. “Underwhelming” was a widely reported comment from a Premiership club. While I would say that I welcomed the opportunity to talk with colleagues at other clubs and within the league bodies, and I would hope that these meeting continue, my own take on it is a feeling that clubs are basically on their own.

In that regard, we held our own Board meeting on Thursday night at Stenhousemuir FC where we looked at the options facing us and did our best to model the financial impact from this current shutdown. Bear in mind, all our significant revenue streams have been stopped for the foreseeable future.

As a club we will need to make some tough decisions. We want to protect our people, but we will all need to shoulder the burden. We know we simply cannot continue to operate in the same way when we have no football and no revenue.

We’ve run a huge community programme for many years, and we hope to keep this going. We think sport and healthy activity can play a role at this time and in the weeks and months ahead. In the meantime, we want to support parents, guardians and carers of young people in our programme, and of course the young people themselves.

We’re developing an online programme, video game tournaments and live events, and as much activity that keeps routine, structure and teamwork in place.

To leave things on a positive, our Community Help Initiative is well up and running and bearing fruit. We have a number of vulnerable people linked up with volunteers who are phoning, videoing, picking up shopping and just being there.

Every call that I take in which someone says how much this lifeline means to them makes me realise just how lucky we are, despite the problems we face on the pitch or in the boardroom.

l Stenhousemuir FC Community Help hotline is 01324 466563