REPRESENTATIVES of Scotland's current second-tier clubs spoke of their relief that the Scottish Football League had seized its window for change and insisted a 42-team solution was what they had wanted all along.
Hamilton Academical and Falkirk had been two of the prime movers in the contingency plan to break away and form a rebranded SPL2, but with the SFL essentially voting itself out of existence by a margin of 23 clubs to six yesterday it means that contentious course of action is no longer required. With a play-off place between Scotland's top two divisions to be restored in just 12 months' time, Martin Ritchie, the Falkirk chairman, said the landmark agreement would help safeguard full-time football and reignite a stagnant second tier.
"The first division clubs always wanted a single body and I think the spin-offs for the whole game are positive," said Ritchie. "It will be fantastic for the first division which was stagnating with only one team going up. Our fans have more reason than ever to buy season tickets because there is now a play-off route to the top division."
Scott Struthers, the long-serving secretary of Hamilton – at Hampden rather than the club's outspoken chairman Les Gray – was conciliatory afterwards at the demise of an 123-year-old organisation but admitted it was time for change.
"It was now or never," Struthers said. "The SPL has been good, it's been bad and it's been ridiculed and the media have been its biggest critics but everyone in the SPL and SFL felt that there had to be at some point a 42-club model under the one banner.
"The important thing is that we are now all back in the one room at the one time," he added. "We have the likes of Annan and Elgin, Rangers and Aberdeen all discussing what needs to be discussed and that's all that matters.
"It would have been wrong to wear a black tie to this meeting as we were all still representing our own clubs," he added. "But it finished on a sombre note as I've spent 30 seasons at Hamilton Accies and 27 of those have been in the SFL. I have countless friends who are on the SFL staff, so it is sad to see the body being wound up."
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