Summer of Madness

First published July 2004

Winning Division 1 was one of the club's greatest achievements in its short history. If only the promotion issue could have been settled without the chaos that soon ensued. Welcome to the lunatic world of the SPL...

Medal presentation

We won the First Division. Then all Hell broke loose.

Once our board had decided to go for promotion by ground sharing with Aberdeen, we were faced with an anxious wait to find out whether we would be accepted into the Premier League. In the meantime, Partick Thistle, last season's SPL back markers, did their level best to make themselves unpopular, with threats of legal action and general complaints, left, right, and centre. When the date of an SPL meeting to discuss and decide on whether our promotion bid was acceptable, Partick tried even harder to alienate us by lobbying other SPL clubs to try and gain support and avoid relegation. In the midst of Partick's constant bleating and threats of litigation our board was conspicuously quiet and dignified.

Tuesday June 1st saw one of the most ignominious days in the history of Scottish football. For us to be promoted, our ground share plan required the approval of at least eight Premier league clubs at the SPL's meeting. We got seven, meaning that promotion was denied. Immediately this happened, anger erupted across Scotland. Our application had been legal, our board had bent over backwards to accommodate the SPL's ridiculous requirements and the meeting to approve the plan should only have been a formality, with no need for the issue to be put to the vote. Within hours of the decision an online petition was set up to protest the SPL's decision and it's lousy running of Scottish football geenerally. Eventually over 16,000 people from all over Britain, Europe and even America would register their disgust on the petition.

Caley Thistle immediately launched an appeal against the decision with the SFA. However, two unexpected allies appeared in the form of the chairmen of the Edinburgh clubs, Hearts and Hibs. Led by Chris Robinson, who smelled a rat, Hearts and Hibs, backed up by some of the other SPL clubs demanded another vote on the issue of promotion and relegation. As details of the meeting began to emerge, it transpired that the SPL clubs, possibly confused by Partick Thistle's habit of banging on about the SPL's March 31st stadium deadline, had been mightily confused over which deadline we were actually supposed to be working to. It also turned out that Livingston's administrator had cast their vote for them, and, as he doesn't know anything about football, he had abstained. Pearse Flynn, who by then had climbed into the Livvy hotseat, backed the call for a second vote, and vowed to vote in favour of our groundshare as, in his words, "promotion and relegation is part of the football I grew up with". Another bizarre consequence of the vote was the incredible confusion about who had actually voted for and against us, with nearly every SPL club claiming that they'd voted in our favour. What a mess!

The second vote was held about three weeks after the first. Partick Thistle had unsuccessfully tried to gain an interdict to stop the meeting happening, but had their case thrown out of court, just hours before the meeting was due to start. This time, once it had been clarified that our deadline to submit a ground share application (May 31st) was NOT the same as the deadline by which clubs had to make their own grounds SPL-compliant, we were accepted by 10 votes to two. Celebrations, however, were short-lived. Partick Thistle chairman Tom Hughes had stated immediately after the second SPL meeting that his club would not appeal. However, two days later, he was over-ruled by his own board who decided to press on with an appeal to the SFA. The sensible world heaved a heavy sigh, fed up to the back teeth with the saga. The players and management of Caley Thistle suppressed a scream, finding their pre-season preparation seriously hampered by yet more uncertainty. The Partick Thistle staff and players were none to pleased, either.

Eventually the SFA ruled that Partick Thistle had no grounds for appeal. We could now get on with our belated preparations for a season of top-flight football, although we were at a disadvantage as our ability to sign new players had been severely restricted by the uncertainty of not knowing what league we would be playing in.

It is to be hoped that what happened to us in 1994 can never happen again to any club. The SPL has reduced their seating requirement to 6,000 (five years too late) and now knows, from the slaughtering they took in the national media and from many football fans, that any more nonsense of this sort will not be tolerated. However, as long as three seperate organisations are controlling Scottish football, there will never be peace. Change is needed, and FAST!