Hamilton Accies have seemed to lurch from one crisis to another in recent years, with relegations, points deductions, fines, eviction from their home stadium and the folding of their successful youth academy, but Graeme McGarry says the fans can still come together and be the ones to save the historic club.
Coming as I do from the other side of the Clyde, you may think I would take some pleasure in witnessing the unrelenting shambles that Hamilton Accies seem intent on inflicting upon themselves, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Any football fan, particularly one of a club who has had their own experiences of financial mismanagement and brushes with potential extinction, can only feel sympathy for the Accies support, to whom this whole mess will cause a great deal more pain than those who are responsible for it.
A couple of years back, when Accies lost out to their other local rivals Airdrie in The Championship playoffs and plummeted into League One, I wrote a piece contending that this storied old club seemed to be one which was at war with itself from top to bottom.
Some of the main players have changed since then, with Seref Zengin replacing Colin McGowan as owner of the club, but the mood music has lamentably remained the same. In the here and now, comparing the goings-on at Accies to shuffling the deckchairs on The Titanic may see you sued by White Star Line for reputational damage.
At that point, in the summer of 2023, it was tempting to think that it couldn’t possibly go on like this. But to paraphrase the immortal, fatalist words of Mick McCarthy, it could. And it has.
Since then, Zengin and his on-the-ground lieutenant, director of football Gerry Strain, have presided over an era where Hamilton have won promotion to The Championship, but then been relegated straight back down to League One, in huge part thanks to a 15-point deduction imposed by the SPFL for breaches of their rules around alleged player remuneration defaults and a failure to comply with club licensing requirements. An ignominious way to mark Hamilton’s 150th anniversary, which incredibly, wasn’t really commemorated in any other meaningful manner by the club’s custodians.
Read more:
- Inside the rise and fall of the Hamilton Accies academy
- SFA strip Hamilton owner and only director of fit and proper status
- Hamilton handed six-point deduction and hefty fine after SPFL hearing
Accies were then forced out of New Douglas Park amid a dispute with former owner McGowan, who holds the keys the stadium, and they now no longer play their matches in their hometown. Instead, the small rump of loyal fans they still have are forced to travel to Cumbernauld to see their team play at Broadwood.
They were also hit with a transfer embargo – extended into this season for the club’s ‘failure to settle tax obligations’ - and have since been hit with a further six-point deduction and a fine from the SPFL for nevertheless paying players who were registered as trialists or amateurs.
As if all that wasn’t bad enough, they also lost the jewel in their crown, the youth academy that was synonymous with their name, and the cornerstone of any sort of positive reputation they still enjoyed.
They initially ‘paused’ their youth teams up to under-15 level, before they then lost their Club Academy Scotland (CAS) Elite status, leading to the folding of their under-17s and under-19s in August and leaving scores of young players in limbo with the season already underway.
At every turn, and every fresh, jaw-dropping development, the club’s hierarchy have expressed surprise and an intention to appeal these punishments in public statements, before mostly thinking better of it and accepting their fate. And all the while, fans have been left feeling that despite repeated claims of taking full accountability for these issues and increasing transparency, that they have been led up the garden path.
On the academy alone, Strain said back in June: “Keeping our Academy in Hamilton has been an absolute priority.
"It’s not just about geography — it’s about identity, pride, and continuity. We are a club built on local roots, and being able to retain our Elite CAS status right here in our community means everything to us.”
While then chairman, Jock Brown, who has since resigned on health grounds, wrote to the parents of young players with similar guarantees.
“I would like to assure you that the future of the Academy is secure and there is no risk to the continuation of our CAS Programme, or to your child’s participation,” Brown wrote.
“The Board of Directors would like to apologise for this short-term issue and I would trust you will feel reassured that all appropriate action is being taken to ensure the ongoing success of the Academy.”
We all know what happened next. It is little wonder then that grand plans of a new stadium in Hamilton with a hotel attached were taken with a hefty pinch of salt. Hats off, it has to be said, to manager John Rankin for somehow holding it all together.
Now, finally, the Scottish FA wrote to Hamilton last Tuesday to inform them that they deemed neither Zengin nor Strain to be ‘fit and proper to hold a position within the game’, leaving Accies without a director, and giving them seven days to find replacements who could ensure they weren’t being left up the proverbial without a paddle. By the time this column was being filed late on Tuesday afternoon, there had been only radio silence.
It would be remiss not to also mention an interview with Zengin published last week, where he seemed intent on blaming everyone but himself for the position the club finds itself in, while hitting out at the SFA as one of their 'disinterested' appeal panel members once attended a meeting wearing a Hawaiian shirt and clutching a can of the energy drink, Monster. As you do.
A titillating read for those of us on the outside, of course, but simultaneously cringe and rage inducing for the Accies fans, no doubt. Because while there seems to have been an attempt by Zengin to paint himself and the club as victims of some sort of witch hunt, the only real victims in all of this are the fans who will remain after he is long gone. Hopefully, having left some semblance of the club they all used to know and still love - despite everything - behind.
The true role of Zengin and Strain in all this, whatever their intentions, will no doubt come out in the wash. If history will judge them as harshly as the fans have, remains to be seen. In the here and now though, the future of Accies is the far more pressing issue.
To that end, it is heartening to see that a fundraiser launched by the Accies Supporters Association had raised over £20,000 at the time of writing.
As with just about any matter these days, if you judge it solely by online discourse, then you would be forgiven for thinking the Accies fanbase is riven with cavernous divisions that will prevent them from ever coming together to save their club.
Those points of contention that do exist though will have to be put to the side, because the priority right now is the preservation of Hamilton Accies in some way, shape or form. The people who care about the club most, barring a white knight riding to the rescue, look to be its last and final hope.
It seems, thankfully, they are answering the call.
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