THE hotel lobby is a strange netherworld. The piercing brilliance of the sun outside is forgotten; a few scattered sofas and chairs are illuminated by dull electric candlelight. It is not even lunchtime but you wouldn’t know it in this twilight zone. The warm, gentle light of the fireplace gives the impression of a snug winter’s eve.
When Jacqui Low walks in, she explains that this cosiness is why she has chosen the venue as the location for our interview. It feels lost in time, tucked away in the middle of the night, a welcoming refuge from the outside world and all its problems.
The Partick Thistle chairman’s preference to meet in such a place is understandable. Back in the real world, she herself is in the midst of a cold, long night; eagerly anticipating the breaking of the dawn and the promise of a new day.
All is not well at Firhill. A dreadful run of form that saw the Jags plummet from first to fifth in little over a month appears to have been arrested with a 3-0 win over Arbroath just over a week ago, but the team’s fortunes on the park are not the primary concern in Maryhill these days.
Thistle’s move to fan ownership has been controversial, to say the least. The process started back in 2019 when the late Euromillions winner Colin Weir bought a 55 per cent stake in the Glasgow club, with a view to gifting the shares to supporters. Weir’s untimely death a month later, coupled with the imminent outbreak of the Covid pandemic, would ensure that it would not be concluded in a speedy fashion.
After two and a half years of negotiations, Three Black Cats (Weir’s company that held the shares, where Low serves as one of two directors) announced in August that The Jags Foundation (the fans’ group set up with the express purpose of receiving the shares) wouldn’t be getting them. Instead, another group claiming to represent supporters, the PTFC Trust, was named as the preferred recipient. It has been in existence for seven years, and already held a 19 per cent stake in the club, but had effectively been lying dormant for years. Five fans – Richard Beastall, Ali Campbell, Neil Drain, Fergus Maclennan and Randle Wilson – offered to assume control of the Trust, reform it and use it as a vehicle for fan ownership.
There were a couple of problems, though. Firstly, the Trust had conducted their talks in secret, without informing the wider fanbase. They have also acted in a unilateral fashion and have not meaningfully consulted their beneficiaries to ensure their interests are being represented. At the time of writing, they do not even have the means to contact their own beneficiaries to ask them what they think about their actions.
The dispute has gathered pace in recent weeks. TJF –comprised of over 900 paying members, the largest fans’ organisation the club has ever seen – say that the Trust have accepted a diluted form of fan ownership and that Thistle’s new majority shareholders do not represent supporters. They say the unconventional model in place at Firhill was conceived by the club board and believe themselves to be the victims of a conspiracy – a theory that Low and the Trust emphatically reject.
Concerningly for Low, they are not alone in their disgruntlement. The recent 3-0 win over Arbroath in the league saw banners unfurled calling for her removal with 10 minutes to go and ‘sack the board’ chants aimed at the directors’ box from a significant section of the John Lambie Stand. TJF called for the current board to be removed at last week’s AGM and that Low be ousted from power. Saturday’s 3-0 win over Kelty Hearts was the subject of a boycott organised by another group of fans – the attendance of 1484 was the lowest ever recorded for a Scottish Cup tie at Firhill.
It has been a difficult period for the club’s leadership. Naturally, Low is disheartened by the events of the past few weeks but, while she may not like it, she believes that supporters are entitled to express their views – but warned them not to damage the club.
“It is a group of people in one bit of the ground,” Low said of the protests at the Arbroath game. “They are entitled to an opinion. I may not like the way it was done because I do think it causes a distraction at an important time when we are trying to get performance back on track. It should have been a really happy day for everybody, including the team and the management. It was a distraction.
“We live in a democracy. I might not agree with them and I may not like it but I will defend their right to be able to do it. But what I would say is there is a Trust there that’s going to be talking to us in the next couple of weeks, so why don’t they direct their concerns – because there must be concerns if you’re shouting for the board and me to go.
“That [the boycott] makes me sad because what it does is it takes money away from the club. And it damages the club. I don’t think even the loudest critic in the fanbase wants to damage the club. But by calling for a boycott, it means money comes out the budget.
“It’s up to them. If damaging the club is what you want to do then it’s sad. It’s disappointing.”
The protests have been aimed at the club’s handling of the move to fan ownership and concerns that the model being implemented leaves them sidelined. Low rejects that notion, insisting that the unconventional form of fan ownership – the PTFC Trust own 74 per cent of the club, for instance, but only has a solitary seat on the board, while the two bodies will rely on board-to-board meetings (where some subjects will be subject to confidentiality clauses and therefore cannot be discussed) to communicate directly with each other – is innovative in the most positive sense. There are concerns that rather than a Club-Trust agreement, as is the industry norm, the two bodies are governed by a legally unenforceable Memorandum of Understanding. So why did Low think it was a good idea to reinvent the wheel?
“I think, in part, because of our experience of having one director on the board from TJF,” Low explained, referencing Gavin Taylor, a director from the initial iteration of TJF who spent a few months as an observer on the club board before resigning shortly before talks initially collapsed in April. “They hear everything and then they can go back and they can tell a lot of it.
“I think it worked – until I got all the criticism afterwards about ‘TJF didn’t know anything about what was going on at the club’ when we actually had a body in there. The bottom line is having one person in, there is a potential for conflict – especially where we have signed an NDA with a commercial sponsor.
“I don’t understand why it would be [a diluted form of fan ownership]. It is more people talking to the board and hearing directly from the board, and being able to put all their questions – not filtered questions – to the board. I’m not sure how that’s not fan ownership. I actually think that’s an enhancement on having one person.
“We thought about it [using a MoU] carefully because there are things in there that are over and above our own Articles. Sharing the forecast – in our Articles, we are not obliged to give any financial information to any shareholder, majority or otherwise. But we’re doing it. So the Memorandum of Understanding takes us beyond what they have got by way of rights in law, beyond what the Articles then add on to those rights.”
There are concerns, too, over the undemocratic nature of the Trust. The Trustees have promised to elect a further three fans to the Trust board by the end of this season, although the trio will still be in a minority so there is something of a democratic deficiency. Essentially, given the five current Trustees effectively appointed themselves, they have no mandate.
Low points out that the same charge can be levied at the first iteration of TJF, who were not democratically elected, as she called for Thistle fans to show the club’s new custodians some patience. Given the stakes – and the Trust’s poor track record when it comes to meeting their own promises – it is a sizeable leap of faith they are asking for.
“It is my belief, having seen how they are doing things, that they will do what is asked of them,” Low said. “They will reflect the fans and it won’t just be a group of them doing their own thing. They will do what fans ask them to do.
“I can [understand why fans feel the Trust are acting unilaterally] but then I think that’s unfair given that it’s such an early stage. They will come into their own. I would encourage them to get out and speak to fans, to look for support from fans, to look for help from fans.”
Part of the distrust felt by some supporters is due to the clandestine manner in which this process has unfolded. A month after being announced as the preferred recipient, the Trust – who had negotiated the deal in secret with no consultation of supporters – had become majority shareholders as the share transfer was concluded.
You could have been forgiven for not realising. An insubstantial statement a few sentences long was the sum total of Thistle’s celebrations for that momentous September day in the history of the 146-year-old club.
Low says this was due to a combination of the team’s struggles on the park at the time and a reluctance to celebrate the deed until everything was finalised. When the share transfer got the green light from the Scottish FA, Thistle were mired in a dreadful run of defeats. No media conferences were held, no TV cameras were set up and no press were invited – neither when the club announced the transfer had been completed subject to SFA approval, nor when they got it. If anything, it appeared to be something the club was embarrassed by, something it wanted to put out with minimal fuss in the hope that no one noticed.
“I’m sorry if it came across like that and I apologise to fans if it came across like that,” Low said. “I think it’s more to do with being caught up in the whole football side of things, where there were issues, and not wanting to distract from that.
“The club did put out a comment when the SFA decision was made but it was against a backdrop of things not being good. We have accused in the past by fans of being tone-deaf when things aren’t looking so good, so maybe we are too cautious. It is a criticism I’ll take on board and we will reflect on. Because there will be things that we need to learn from this.”
They will need to learn fast. They were re-elected at last week’s AGM but this remains a challenging time for Low et al, make no mistake about it. The protests, the boycott, the opposition from TJF – none of it is going to go away overnight. Low remains hopeful that the old adage remains true, that the night truly is darkest before the dawn. Only one thing remains certain. No one – not the club board, not the fans, not the Trust, not TJF and not even Low herself – knows what awaits on the horizon.
