Wednesday 6th January, 2021 at 3:27pm
When this review piece was started, we weren’t in lockdown – but now we are. Against that backdrop and all that entails, we did consider whether we should say anything when minds and priorities are rightly focussed elsewhere. But we believe it’s still important to reflect on what has brought the Club to where we are today and what that means for 2021.
At the start of 2020, Covid-19 meant very little to any of us yet, within weeks, our lives were turned upside down by the virus which has come dominate every aspect of how we’ve lived since.
Overnight, in the first lockdown, we lost the majority of our income. You, our fans, immediately swung in to action to provide us with much needed funds through fundraising, direct donations and season ticket sales – incredibly generous and practical ways to help us.
However, we still faced a large financial hole so we cut costs and identified how to bring in other income to get us through the rest of the season and beyond. The CEO and Club staff have our gratitude for the way they tackled this with great success. We continue to review budgets regularly and to reforecast with every change in our income.
Yet even as we fought to maintain the stability of the Club, Scottish football compounded our difficulties by ending the season prematurely leading to our demotion to League 1. There followed a summer of uncertainty as various restructuring options were considered and court action pursued only to come to nothing. Regardless of the legal outcome, the demotion is arguably one of the worst injustices that could have been inflicted on a club when there should have been common cause to do no harm in a national emergency.
A return to football, while great to be competing again, added to our costs but little to our income. Some clubs called for a return of fans, which we all want to see. But we want our supporters back first and foremost when it is safe to do so and without potentially incurring further losses.
In the meantime, we were delighted and grateful to see, despite the pressures on the public purse, Scottish Government make £30m available to football. We are sincere in our thanks for them doing so.
In advance of this we provided, on two occasions, details of the impact of COVID-19 on Thistle to the footballing authorities. We believed that the distribution model for the government money would acknowledge the difference between full and part time teams, if not the scale of loss Thistle has suffered through both demotion and not playing in front of fans for a considerable period.
But, again, we were shocked and let down as one of only two established full-time teams in Scotland who didn’t receive £500,000, instead receiving less than a third of this figure. This, combined with demotion and no fans at games, means we now face the double challenge of survival while fighting to get back to the Championship. Missing out on accessing the same monies available to other full-time clubs is a huge blow for us financially for 2021. If football was to be stopped for even part of the season, the thoughtless distribution of these funds could prove to be even more significant for the Club.
However, we are Thistle. Once again, it is up to us what happens next, so we fight on. The year ahead will be challenging, our finances are stretched. The careful financial planning will continue but the Board also has a development plan that lays out a way ahead. The prize remains promotion to the Championship and, as a Board, we are doing all that we can to support our manager and management team to achieve that objective.
The biggest loss for 2021, however, isn’t just financial and will only be felt when we can all return to Firhill. We know that we have lost a number of fans and each one will be sorely missed. We thank you for your ongoing support and look forward to a day – hopefully in 2021 – when we can all be together, safely with football the only thing on our minds.
Until then, Happy New Year from all at Partick Thistle to you and yours, please take care, stay safe – and stay at home.
Jacqui Low
Partick Thistle Chairman
