Hamilton chairman backs solidarity payments for relegated clubs
- Published
Hearts face relegation if the Scottish Premiership season cannot be completed
Clubs relegated from curtailed leagues should receive solidarity payments, says Hamilton Academical chairman Allan Maitland.
Scottish league reconstruction has been all but ruled out after Premiership clubs showed a lack of support for altering the current model.
It means Partick Thistle, Stranraer and- effectively - Hearts face relegation.
Asked if he would support payments for such clubs Maitland said: "Absolutely."
He told BBC Radio Scotland's Sportsound: "It's terribly unfortunate for Hearts, it's terribly unfortunate for Thistle and it could just as easily have been us.
"It's unfair for somebody to be penalised in this situation. However, this is where we are."
After football was suspended in March because of coronavirus, SPFL clubs passed a resolution in April to end the Championship and Leagues One and Two and give the SPFL board the option to also declare the top flight over.
As a result Partick Thistle and Stranraer face the drop from the second and third tiers while Hearts will go down if the Premiership ends as things stand.
A league reconstruction panel assessed changing the current 12-10-10-10 model to either a 14-14-14 or a 14-14-16, with the latter option including the Highland and Lowland League champions.
However, at Friday's meeting of the top-flight sides - plus Championship winners Dundee United - it emerged the majority were against changing the current format, meaning it would not gain sufficient support were all 42 senior clubs to vote on it.
Under government measures to tackle the virus pandemic, football will not resume until June at the earliest and Uefa want leagues to decide by 25 May whether they will continue their season or not.
French and Dutch league seasons have already been declared over but England and Germany are planning to restart football this summer.
Maitland, whose club is in favour of a bigger Scottish top flight, believes finishing the 2019-20 Premiership season is "impossible" and says he would like to see it ended "as soon as possible".
"Come 31 May, I've lost 11 or 12 players who are out of contract," he explained. "I can't possibly put out a team that's going to be resembling the team that's competed this season. I don't see how the league can be completed.
"There are other teams that have got more players out of contract than us.
"I can see the new season starting behind closed doors. I don't think we're going to have much choice. I presume that we're going to get the new season started as soon as possible and I can't see how crowds are going to be allowed into the grounds."