http://sport.scotsman.com/football.cfm?id=618512007

THE worst senior club in British football is set to make a bit of unwanted history next month by becoming the first team in living memory to be booted out of full membership of the Scottish Football League purely for footballing reasons.

Third Lanark, Clydebank, and Airdrieonians all left the SFL when they went bust financially, but East Stirlingshire FC will lose their full league status purely because they seem to be invariably and indubitably dreadful - note the word seem, for all is not as it appears on the surface at Firs Park, the club's downtrodden home in Falkirk.

For in a few months' time, East Stirling could be transformed from Scotland's Cinderella club, run on a shoestring and with players earning £10 per week, to the most affluent outfit outside the Premierleague, with possibly £1m in the bank, though that magical transformation depends on the local council and the club's expatriate owner, Alan Mackin.

Will Mackin, father of tennis star Alan Jnr, and his cohort shareholders pocket the profits from a lucrative property deal involving the sale of Firs Park, or will they bankroll the revival of the Shire? And even if they do, will East Stirling still have a place in the league?

After their defeat by Elgin City last weekend, East Stirling, as they have done in each of the past five seasons, will finish bottom of the Third Division. Two years ago the SFL clubs - voters "for" included the Shire, as they are nicknamed - brought in a rule that if a club finished bottom of the Third Division for two seasons in succession, it would be reduced from full membership to associate membership.

The club would then go "on probation" for two seasons, and be expelled if no improvement was shown. In two years' time, therefore, East Stirling could be thrown out of the SFL, though no one knows to which other league they would be sent or who would replace them.

Club chief executive Les Thomson attended an SFL management meeting on Thursday and was told that East Stirling must provide reasons at the league AGM on May 2 why they should not be reduced to associate membership status, which would mean the club losing its voting rights.

But the ruling is not definitive, and demotion and expulsion are not automatic. Indeed, Scotland on Sunday can reveal that the Shire have been thrown a lifeline thanks largely to the good work earlier in the season - at one time the Shire were nine points ahead of bottom-placed Elgin City - of manager Gordon Wylde and his squad, who are all on £10 per week plus bonuses which rarely accrue.

An SFL insider, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "There was a lot of sympathy for their position, and several clubs in the Third Division commented that East Stirling had shown a marked improvement in playing standards. It may be that the league decides to give them a stay of execution for another year."

There are other reasons for the Shire's fans to be hopeful of staying in the SFL. One of them is the league's own inability to deal with the hard facts of expelling a member club. As Thomson said: "The league still hasn't worked out what will happen if we have to be kicked out. Would we play in the East of Scotland league, the South of Scotland, the juniors - where? And would we be replaced? And if so, who by? There have been no answers to these questions."

SFL outgoing secretary Peter Donald confirmed that East Stirling have been invited to put their case to the AGM, and would make no further comment. Scotland on Sunday understands that, if the AGM decides to reduce the club to associate membership, the league management committee will be given the task of deciding what would happen should there be no improvement at Firs Park.

But it may be that by the start of next season, Firs Park will no longer be the home of the Shire. Stirling-based builders Ogilvie Homes have applied to Falkirk Council to demolish the stadium and develop housing. If the council grants permission, East Stirling will be paid £1.6m - this to a club whose share capital is £2,000 and whose accounts for the year ending 2005 showed they had just £480 in the bank, though the last AGM heard that the club had, as has been usual in recent years, made a small profit.

The planning application states that a mixture of flats and townhouses would be built, but the builders face massive problems getting permission. The stadium site is "zoned" for leisure and non-food retail development, so the planners will probably object to the land being used for residential properties. Council insiders anticipate that the Scottish Executive will have to make the final decision, and that could take months.

The presumption among fans is that the club would then either move to Grangemouth athletics stadium or ground-share with Falkirk or Stenhousemuir while a new base is found. There may be objections to the planning application from fans of East Stirling themselves, because they fear chairman and major shareholder Mackin will simply pocket the income from the sale. Members of supporters' group, the Shire Trust, estimate the disposal of Firs Park could net Mackin £800,000-plus profit after taxes and repayment of the money he invested in buying the club. According to their accounts, he and fellow director Alec McCabe are also owed a total of £25,000 which they loaned to the club to pay a tax bill.

There is nothing in the rules of the SFL or Scottish Football Association to stop Mackin, who is said to control nearly 80% of the shares, selling Firs Park and giving the profits to the shareholders - that is his publicly stated intention - even if it meant closing down the club which he acquired in 1999 after a vicious boardroom battle. Indeed, as a director of East Stirlingshire Football & Athletic Club Ltd, Mackin is bound by law to act in the best interests of shareholders and not supporters. But the Shire's fans may yet scupper the sale plan.

Mackin, a former professional footballer with Falkirk, at one stage managed the club and had ambitious plans to relocate to the athletics stadium at Grangemouth, but he became disillusioned with the Shire and its fans, some of whom may now attempt to stop the sale.

"We have heard that some supporters may lodge objections to the application, simply to try and stop Mackin getting the money," said supporters' trust chairman Ian Ramsay. "Our position is that we will not object as a body to the application but we respect the rights of individuals to make their own decision on the matter.

"We see the sale of the ground as a genuine opportunity to move the club on. It may well be that Mackin will take the money and leave the club, but if that is the price of progress then so be it, because we will get nowhere while he's still in charge."

The Trust is hoping that new director Spencer Fearns will be the man to take the Shire forward. The Yorkshire-based businessman has already pledged to invest £40,000 into East Stirling next season and has been given a seat on the board.

"He is young, enthusiastic and a genuine supporter who has admired what the club has achieved in adversity," said Ramsay. "He is prepared to take a risk, but then over the past ten years or so, everything associated with the club has been a risk. The real question is can we get time for the club to sell Firs Park and let Spencer's investment take effect before the league decides to act?"

The major problem for all concerned is that Mackin, who could not be contacted yesterday, has not told anyone at the club what he finally intends to do. Even chief executive Thomson is in the dark: "I last spoke to the chairman about a month ago, and I simply don't know what his decision is on whether the shareholders should get the money. He is the major shareholder and if he wants take his money he is perfectly entitled to do so. There have been a lot of people getting out their crystal ball and trying to predict what will happen, but I can tell you that I personally don't know what will happen.

"But everybody is getting ahead of themselves. The deal from Ogilvie is the same as it always has been, that the sale is subject to planning permission which has not yet been granted - and if it is not given, we will be struggling."

On May 2, East Stirlingshire FC will have to argue for its life as a full member of the Scottish Football League. Months later, the club could have megabucks in the bank, or its chairman and his associates might waltz off with six-figure sums in profit.

Will the SFL, Falkirk Council and Alan Mackin act as fairy godmothers and let Cinderella go to the ball? Or will they all be brothers grim and prolong the agony of the Shire? This tale is far from finished.

Why East Stirling are not the only club now vulnerable to property speculators
THE possibility of East Stirling's only real asset, Firs Park, being sold off to line the pockets of shareholders prompts the question 'could it happen elsewhere?'

It most certainly could. Once a person or group take control of a limited company - and most Scottish clubs have 'FC Ltd' after their business name - they also own the assets, which usually include the land on which the stadium is built. Some clubs such as Dumbarton and East Fife also own land around their grounds, and those two clubs have figured in reports that their relatively new stadia could be sold for housing.

In the case of Dumbarton, local member of Parliament, the Rt Hon John McFall, stepped in to prevent the sale of Strathclyde Homes Stadium. The Sons' seven-year-old ground is in the shadow of Dumbarton Rock and would be a potential goldmine for developers if the club's stadia and land can be sold for housing.

McFall, who no longer attends the club's matches, asked for a 'golden share' agreement in return for almost £300,000 of public money which went in to the building of the new stadium. These shares are held by the Dumbarton Community Stadium Company and effectively prevent the sale of the ground without the approval of the company, whose chairman is McFall.

The club's chairman and owner, businessman Neil Rankine, admitted that he had been approached by property developers. Last year, he tried to sell Dumbarton FC to Dubai-based investor Philip Mills, but Mills pulled out after a wrangle with McFall over the 'golden share' agreement.

McFall still fears new investors would want to capitalise on the club's only real asset, which could be worth up to £10m. "There is no suitable alternative site available for a stadium in the town, and no more public funding or assistance for them to develop a new site," said McFall in an open letter to the club's fans. "The golden share is no threat to anyone who wants to take the club forward on the Rock site."

With the deal to sell the club thwarted, Rankine has since resigned as chairman and director of Dumbarton. Club sources believe he is ready to sell his shareholding as well, but Rankine could not be contacted to confirm this.

McFall's experience has led him to believe that, especially when public money has been involved in building stadia or saving clubs, there should be some protection against possible speculators. "A football club is a treasured community asset," said the MP. "There should be a legal agreement like the 'golden share' drawn up to ensure that a stadium is not sold off to boost the assets of individuals who would like to sell the property without first putting in place essential safeguards to protect the football club's future."

There is a connection between the Sons and East Fife, whose New Bayview stadium and the land around it would be worth in excess of £4m if the nearby derelict power station was demolished and planning permission for housing could be obtained.

Former Stenhousemuir director Sid Collumbine, who owns a large funeral company in Falkirk where Neil Rankine was once a director of Coasters Arena, was on the board of Dumbarton for nearly four years until he resigned on April 4 last year. Shortly afterwards, Collumbine, a former council member at the SFA, offered £480,000 to buy East Fife, but contented himself by joining the board of a club whose major shareholders, curiously, included a young girl - no one at the club has ever adequately explained how that came about.

There is no suggestion that any director of a Scottish club came into the sport to make money from land deals - "there are a lot easier ways of doing it," said outgoing SFL secretary Peter Donald.

But until there are rules to ban the sale of club assets for non-football purposes, or until every club has a McFall-style 'golden share' arrangement, new club owners would be perfectly entitled to speculate to accumulate, and existing owners could simply sell up and pocket the proceeds, as Alan Mackin appears ready to do at East Stirling.

It's all coming into the open now. I know that we don't like the ground and would be pleaed to move as long as it will be in the right place. But what do you think will happen to the money if the ground is sold? Maybe we could get some assurances of what the directors are planning on this point. Maybe they intend to stay as there may be a possibility of an excellent development on the area.

I think this is the year that a decision on the power station is to be taken with all the implications that would be invoved so it would be nice to have an idea of what the directors think this would affect the club.

Maybe someone out there has an idea?