Mark McLaughlin
Edinburgh Evening News
July 30, 2009
IT ALL started with a spark for Livingston FC when the club began life 66 years ago as the works team of an Edinburgh electronics company.
Today, the club - winners of the Scottish League Cup just five years ago - look to be fizzling out, killed off by unpaid rent and electricity bills.
While the GBP 32,000 owed to Scottish Power paled in comparison to the GBP 330,000 they owed their landlords, West Lothian Council, it was the electricity bill that provided the first dramatic signs of trouble when the power company turned out the lights at Almondvale Stadium in June.
There was plenty of heat outside Almondvale yesterday, though, as fans confronted chairman Angelo Massone, angrily demanding he sell his controlling interest in the club and allow them to survive.
Massone arrived at 12.30pm - half an hour past the midday deadline set by administrators for the Roman lawyer to respond - waving a wad of cash which he told the fans that he was going to deliver to "save the club".
"He told us it was GBP 17,000 that he was going to use to pay the players," said a sceptical 16-year-old Whitburn Academy pupil Kieran Tennant, who said he had cancelled a holiday in Spain to come and implore Massone to see sense.
"I just wanted to explain to him that it doesn't matter what he does, that the only way to save the club is to walk away."
With administrator-appointed interim manager Donald McGruther starting to lay off non-playing staff, only a Roy of the Rovers-style intervention can save Livingston now.
That plight marks the end of a 66-year roller-coaster ride that started at the Ferranti electronics factory in Crewe Toll, passed through several Edinburgh grounds before settling on a permanent home at Meadowbank Stadium, before taking a step into the unknown at Livingston.
A succession of unlikely white knights have stepped in to keep the club on course, ending with a stubborn Italian lawyer whose refusal to accept the administrator's token fee of GBP 25,000 for the debt-ridden club looks set to finally consign Livingston to history.
Formed as Ferranti Thistle in 1943 by a team of non-conscripted wartime electronics workers, within ten years the team were playing in the East of Scotland League.
The demise of Third Lanark in 1967 would eventually open the door to the Scottish Football League, who granted Thistle entry with league reconstruction in 1974 - on condition they remove Ferranti from their name to meet strict league anti-advertising rules.
Several names were considered and rejected,
but with admission to the league coinciding with a move to the city's new Meadowbank Stadium, the name Meadowbank Thistle was chosen.
In September 1974, a crowd of 4,000 turned out to watch Thistle play their first match as Scotland's newest league club at Meadowbank Stadium, but by the late 1970s the crowds had dwindled.
Just 80 people turned out for a league match against Stenhousemuir in 1979, and attendances remained poor, prompting the move to Livingston.
Meadowbank peaked in 1988 when they finished Division One runners-up, but by the mid-1990s the club was in crisis, with falling gates and a financial black hole.
The solution put forward by then chairman Bill Hunter was to move to Livingston, a plan that was met with stormy protests. Despite the opposition, the move went through in 1995.
Their first game at Almondvale saw a sell-out attendance of 4,000 but this soon settled to an average of about 1,800.
"I was the last manager at Meadowbank and I remember standing at Almondvale watching the steel framework of the new stands being erected - and what a vision that was," recalls the club's first and most celebrated manager, Jim Leishman.
"The first game was a sell-out and there were people standing outside that couldn't get in, and while the attendances did go down slightly we finished that year as Third Division champions which was quite an achievement."
However, behind the scenes things weren't so rosy and in 1997 the club revealed GBP 400,000 of unpaid rent arrears.
Stadium landlords West Lothian Council threatened to close the ground over the unpaid debt until the chairman, struggling with angina and unable to shoulder the debt any more, handed the club to the trio of Dominic Keane, Willie Haughey and John McGuinness.
The former were ex-Celtic FC directors keen to have a flutter in West Lothian, largely financed by lottery millionaire McGuinness who decided to invest part of his GBP 10 million fortune.
The sale was to herald a boom time for the club, as Livingston stormed into third place in the Scottish Premier League and sealed themselves a spot in Europe, while the board embarked on ambitious plans for a GBP 14m hotel development and leisure complex, a GBP 1.5m extension to the club's Nitespot nightclub and an expansion of its conference facilities.
While Leishman - now in his second stint as manager - wasn't kept abreast of the backroom dealings, the figures were certainly adding up on the park.
He added: "We sold David Fernandez for GBP 1.25m and I think we got somewhere in the region of GBP 1.1m for finishing third in the SPL. We went from nowhere to gaining a spot in Europe in the space of seven years, which is a singular feat that no club is ever going to match.
"I remember fans telling me how they were already saving their pennies ready to go and see them play FC Vaduz, which is amazing considering we had to build our fanbase up by going round the schools and getting the kids interested."
One of those schoolgirls was Claire McBey, now a 25-year-old printing company director, who still lives in Livingston.
Claire was 11 when she watched the first game at Almondvale, and yesterday stood outside the ground to watch the potential demise.
She said: "I got a free ticket for the game that day and I was hooked. I can't believe this might be it for the club.
"I know three people who work for the club and they were all told that it was going out of business at the same time as the fans, and now they're going to lose their jobs. Most of the staff are fans of the club as well so they're all devastated."
The events are the culmination of a torrid five-year spell which saw the club's bankers withhold the credit funding its stadium expansion plans in 2004, leading to a buyout by Irish entrepreneur Pearse Flynn.
Flynn again failed to steady the ship and sold his stake to Angelo Massone's Livi Dream company for GBP 1 in June 2008, but the club's finances remained precarious and last week the Court of Session appointed administrators Mazars after West Lothian Council took legal action to reclaim GBP 330,000.
"The club has a grand total of GBP 35 in the bank," said McGruther, who is expected to confirm the club's demise at a meeting with the SFL this afternoon. "I had to contribute some of my own money this week to pay for the team bus.
"Meanwhile, the total debt that the club owes is around GBP 1.8m. I have an interested party who is willing to step in if Mr Massone decides to relinquish his share, who is willing to pay an amount equating to 10p in the pound to clear the club's debts.
"However, this money is dependent on the club being allowed to remain in the First Division, as it is a large amount of money to invest in a club that will be cast down into the Third Division.
"If the only way that the club can survive is to start again from the bottom, then the interested parties will simply walk away and the club will cease to exist."
Shock cup win was finest day
FOR most fans, the club's finest hour was when, against all expectations, they beat Hibs 2-0 in the CIS Cup Final in March 2004.
Hibs had beaten Celtic and Rangers on their way to the final, but Livi had proved resolutely stubborn in their previous league meetings that season.
Livingston had already beaten Hibs twice that season without conceding a single goal.
Just five minutes into the second half on cup final day, Derek Lilley scored the first, followed by another by wing-back Jamie McAllister just two minutes later.
Instead of the cup being paraded down the antique splendour of Princes Street towards Easter Road, it made its way to Almondvale Stadium, framed by its new-town shopping centres and fast-food outlets.
THISTLE THAT BLOOMED THEN DIED IN THE DARK
1943 Ferranti Thistle formed by workers of the Crewe Toll Ferranti electronics plant.
1953 The club joins the East of Scotland League.
1969 Move to City Park, Ferry Rd.
1974 Joins the Scottish Football League, moves ground and becomes Meadowbank Thistle.
1986/87 Division 2 champions.
1987/88 Division 1 runners-up.
1995 Moves to Almondvale, becomes Livingston FC.
1995/96 Division 3 Champions
1998/99 Division 2 Champions
2000/01 Division 1 Champions
2001/02 SPL third place.
2004 League Cup Champions.
2004 Irish entrepreneur Pearse Flynn takes over.
June 2008 Club sold to Italian lawyer Angelo Massoni for GBP 1.
June 2009 Electricity cut off by Scottish Power due to an unpaid bill of GBP 32,000.
July 2009 Administrators called in over unpaid GBP 330,000 rent bill Liquidation proceedings begin.
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