Lower league clubs 'offered up as sacrificial lambs' in wake of Celtic's Dubai trip - Iain McMenemy

Here we go again. Scottish football has been suspended by the Scottish FA. Only this time, it’s only some clubs that are to bear the burden of a temporary shutdown.

Stenhousemuir chairman Iain McMenemy has hit out at the SFA decision to suspend the lower league season. (Photo by Rob Casey / SNS Group)

The Scottish Premiership and Championship have been allowed to continue, but all tiers below have been suspended until the end of January… at least!

The reason that those two divisions have been allowed to continue is that they are full-time, as opposed to the clubs in the tiers below who are part-time. Only that’s not strictly true. There are part-time teams in the Championship as well as full-time teams in Leagues 1 and 2.

The reason given is that players who are part-time, and therefore have second jobs, pose too great a risk of spreading the virus wherever they go.

But as long as the teams in the Premiership and Championship agree to testing players once a week, they can continue to play. Everyone else has been shut out in the cold.

Have you ever had that feeling of déjà vu? These unfounded suggestions of COVID spread across part-time clubs are exactly the same arguments made last summer when it was argued that lower league clubs could return without testing.

Those clubs did return without testing, and put in place stringent measures to protect players and staff. In the end, it appears that the suggestion that the virus would spread more in the part-time setting was debunked. Some players have picked up the virus from external places, in roughly the same numbers as those in the full-time game. The number of games that have been postponed for COVID reasons are no higher in the lower leagues than they are in the Premiership.

There hasn’t been a long line of cases in the part-time setting where the virus has spread through the club. Most importantly, there haven’t been any cases where the virus has spread from one club to another due to teams travelling to play games away from home.

Therefore, there isn’t any evidence that I am aware of to suggest that there is more COVID in part-time clubs than their full-time equivalents.

In fact, just after the decision was made today, I asked the Scottish FA if they could provide me with any evidence that suggests that lower league or part-time clubs do in fact pose a greater risk of virus transmission. No evidence could be provided.

We’ve been training and playing matches since the summer, so surely there is data that tracks the spread across the divisions to be able to inform decisions like this? Apparently not. They simply think that there might be a greater risk, just like they did last summer, and those concerns were unfounded.

Their latest decision comes within 24 hours of the news that a Celtic player has tested positive following their recent trip to Dubai, and the news that up to 15 people are now having to self-isolate. We are being told that there is no connection between the two issues.

Do they really think we are that gullible?

The First Minister has been angry since news of that trip emerged over a week ago. The Scottish Government asked the Scottish FA to investigate. That anger turned to action today when the First Minister said that they Government would be reviewing the rules on travel exemptions for football clubs.

It seems pretty clear to me that the Scottish FA is attempting to appease the Government’s anger by offering up the lower leagues as sacrificial lambs in order to protect the teams at the top.

Let’s be honest, the Scottish FA has form here. Back in August, players from two Premiership clubs were found to have flouted the rules which brought an angry response from the First Minister, so much so that she spent a significant portion of her time at her daily briefing berating Scottish football. She asked the Scottish FA to deal with it.

Within days, the Scottish FA decided the best course of action was to offer up the lower leagues as martyrs to the cause and delay the start of the season for all lower league clubs. So to put that into perspective, before any lower league players had even kicked a ball, we were being punished by having our season start delayed.

Here we are once again. Every time the Scottish FA is asked to take action for issues at the top of the game, their eyes drift to the pawns at the bottom.

I accept that we need to keep the Premiership playing as that is tied to the TV broadcast deals that impacts on all clubs, but that in no way means that if they make mistakes then they are given a free pass whilst sanctions fall on those further down the line.

It’s also surely valid to ask why the Championship have been offered the chance to continue if they agree to test players whilst teams in Leagues 1 and 2 weren’t offered this as an option? League 1 and 2 teams don’t have a voice at the table where this decision was reached, and it is clear to me that little thought was given to teams outside of that bubble.

In fact the first we heard about this suspension was when we were emailed a copy of the press statement just seconds before it was issued to the media. What a disrespectful way for a members’ organisation to go about its business.

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