The patience of Dunfermline Athletic's beleaguered players has finally snapped with first-team players preparing to lodge a formal complaint with the Scottish Football League regarding unpaid wages.
Staff are currently in the midst of a fourth successive month of delayed salaries while sources suggest unpaid bonuses could stretch back as far as October 2012.
PFA Scotland, the players' union, have been in regular dialogue with players from Dunfermline for several months, however with no end to the problems in sight, matters have come to a head.
The union now looks likely to lodge a formal complaint on behalf of the Dunfermline players.
Gavin Masterton, the club's majority shareholder, said this week: "It's tough, it's embarrassing but it's not the end of the world. It's not as though they've been paid 15%. It's better than than having no job at all."
Chairman John Yorkston addressed staff at the club's Pitreavie training base on Thursday afternoon, but has failed to alleviate the concerns of the players.
SFL rule 127 states a club cannot "breach any term of a player's contract or agreement". However, unlike the Scottish Premier League, there are no automatic sanctions for contract defaults and a complaint must officially be lodged with the league before the case is judged on its individual merits.
Speaking recently, Dunfermline goalkeeper Paul Gallacher summed up the frustration regarding the financial situation at the club.
The former Scotland internationalist said: "The uncertainty is the problem, if we were being told things then we could accept them and plan but we have no idea what is happening at the club day-to-day, let alone at the end of the month."
Dunfermline plan to launch their delayed share issue next week which they hope will raise between £300,000 and £500,000 and alleviate the financial pressure on the club.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article