SPARTANS chief executive Craig Graham insisted today that his club has still got plenty to look forward to – despite missing out on a place in the Scottish Football League.
But he admitted that the Edinburgh outfit may have been victims of their own success after they, along with fellow Lothians sides Edinburgh City and Preston Athletic, lost out to Annan Athletic in their bid to replace Gretna in the SFL.
Sparta
ns had been one of the favourites to make the step up to the Third Division after successful Scottish Cup runs in recent seasons and a mountain of backing and publicity, however, they dropped out of the race after the second round after amassing just six votes.
With a minimum of 15 votes required for the successful club, the vote had to be taken three times before Annan were declared the winners.
In the final round, they received 17 votes with Cove Rangers their nearest challengers with 12 votes. While Graham was quick to congratulate the successful Borders outfit, Graham believes there are many positives on the horizon for Spartans.
He said: "Annan is a great club with some great people in it, but obviously we are disappointed because we felt that we put a lot of hard work in to our application and to the club in general.
"As far as the club goes, we have got a fantastic amount still to look forward to. Our Academy opens in mid-September or maybe even earlier.
"The Academy is about the community, it's about the businesses and the students who will use it, as well as the players and the schoolkids.
"Obviously yesterday's decision was a blow for us, but we know that there are a lot of positives to have come out of this for us as well.
"With a bit of luck we may even be playing against some of these SFL clubs in the not-too-distant future again in the Scottish Cup and that will maybe give us a little bit of extra motivation into the bargain."
And Graham added: "One of the main parts of our presentation was the fact that there is currently no SFL club in the Edinburgh area and Edinburgh is a massive market.
"Trying to get into the minds of the 29 representatives at the meeting though, is very, very difficult.
"We were at a slight disadvantage because our ground isn't quite ready and I think that we maybe upset a few of them because our presentation was quite trendy, visionary and modern and I know that didn't go down too well with some of them.
"We showed the work that we have been doing with the local community and with schoolchildren who have dropped out of school and we helped them pull through using football. Scotland is an interesting place. If people are successful, drive themselves forward and show a bit of initiative, half of the population congratulate them and pat them on the back – and indeed are inspired by them.
"Unfortunately, the other half ask how you managed to do it and say that it must just have landed in your lap and to a certain extent are maybe a bit jealous of it.
"We very much got mixed reactions this week but we've worked hard to get to where we are and we will keep going in that same direction. We're about the kids, about the local community and the schools and we will carry on doing that, whether we are in the SFL or not."
Annan Athletic applied unsuccessfully to join the SFL back in 2002 but chairman Henry McClelland was delighted with the decision this time round and said: "I can't keep the smile off my face. This has been a long time coming, this isn't just something which has happened over the last couple of weeks. We've been putting a package and projects together for a number of years to get us to this point.
"We have worked famously over the last eight years to make sure that we were ready to join the SFL when the opportunity arose this time around.
"Our whole season has been brought forward by two weeks, we were building a squad for the East of Scotland non-league football on August 9. Now we're playing in the Challenge Cup on July 26."
The full article contains 730 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
