DUMBARTON FOOTBALL CLUB FINANCES AT ROCK BOTTOM AND WILL GO INTO ADMINISTRATION TOMORROW

By Bill Heaney

DUMBARTON football club will be plunged into administration tomorrow and then sent tumbling down to the bottom of Scottish football’s League One.

The Sun newspaper revealed exclusively tonight (Monday) that the Rock Stadium-based club  have been “dogged by financial trouble in recent months”.

Lack of money is said to be the reason for Dumbarton, one of Scotland’s oldest clubs which was  founded in 1872, calling in administrators.

Not only will they be struggling to keep the club alive off the field but their troubles on the park will grow exponentially as Scottish Leage rules state unequivocally that they will be docked 15 points from their current miserable total, which has them sitting second bottom of the league table..

SunSport journalists who were first to break the bad news understand the likelihood of redundancies amongst the playing staff are unlikely as the squad is already so small.

Sons have a crop of promising young players on their books, including the teenage son of former Celtic and Hibernian manager Neil Lennon.

Manager Stevie Farrell could be asked to stay on and lead them through the troubled spell.

Dumbarton have not had their troubles to seek in recent years.

Most recently, they were bought over by a Norwegian businessman and his associates who appear to be more interested in the money side of the business than the football.

This became clear when their future plans for the club included a hated plastic pitch.

Much of the land near Dumbarton Castle, which the Rock Stadium takes its name from, has been sold for a housing estate which has forever been encroaching on the club car park.

The club, which moved some years ago from its ancient home at Boghead to the Rock was embroiled  even at that time about ownership of the ground.

Boghead had been sold by a previous owner, Neil Rankine, to a so-called fans group headed by Dumbarton-born businessman man Calum Hosie, pictured left, but the behind-the-scenes goings on never looked pretty with the Sons Trust,  a supporters’ group, and the directors frequently in conflict about the future.

Dumbarton FC had an application for planning permission to build a new stadium on the Dumbarton-Renton road, near Dalreoch railway station, turned down by West Dunbartonshire Council.

All the time Scottish Enterprise has been hanging around in the background and there have been ongoing discussion about the so-called “golden share” which came into being when Boghead was being sold and was supposed to give the club’s shareholders a major say in the club’s future.

Like most plans associated with Dumbarton FC, that has not happened.

More on this story later …