Ross County chairman Roy MacGregor insists he had no option but to put the wishes of his club's supporters ahead of the rest of Scottish football after vetoing league reconstruction plans.
The Highland outfit and St Mirren opted against backing proposals to revamp the game north of the border at a meeting of Scottish Premier League clubs yesterday.
A majority of 11-1 was required to take the issue to the Scottish Football League.
The outcome of the Hampden summit was met by anger and disappointment from other clubs, with McGregor admitting he had a tough call to make.
"It's a two-pronged thing," he told Talksport. "You are put onto the board as a representative of your club but you're also a representative of the league system.
"I'm as sad as anyone with the result because I have another 11 chairmen who are my colleagues and I have to take a look at both the league structure and the club structure.
"If the shareholders, my fans, my staff and directors vote that this was something they didn't want for the club, it would have been absolute suicide to vote against that, no matter how I felt.
"Yes, there is a bigger picture but if your supporters don't trust you, and they don't see fairness in how they're trusted, why are you there as a football club?"
The plans included a merger of the SPL and the SFL into a 12-12-18 structure, with the top two divisions splitting into three sections of eight after 22 games.
The package also included extended play-offs and money spread from the top flight to the second tier.
MacGregor added: "I have every sympathy, particularly, for the First Division clubs, where the redistribution was going to offer them some more money.
"But, on the other hand, this is a fans' game and if the fans can't understand what they are buying into at the start of the season, and there is no clarity there, I think you're doing the game a disservice and fans a disservice.
"It was a bridge that was too big for Ross County to cross."
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