East Fife have joined the growing ranks of Scottish Football League clubs calling for the Rangers newco to be placed in the Third Division.
The Methil club surveyed more than 500 of its supporters and the board at Bayview appears to have taken the majority of those views on board, confirming the club will oppose any plans to put the newco in the Irn-Bru First Division.
Reconstruction proposals put to clubs last week suggested the Scottish game could lose £16 million a year if Rangers were to be relaunched in the Third Division.
Despite that, East Fife chairman Sid Collumbine has made his club’s position abundantly clear.
”We retain an open mind on the subject of league reconstruction and will carefully consider any proposal put to us in this regard,” he said.
”The board of directors of East Fife FC, however, is unanimous in its view that we shall not support any integrated plan that in our view compromises sporting integrity by involving the admission of any newco directly into Division One.
”Any newco must follow the normal application route into the bottom tier.”
A total of 271 fans said the newco Rangers should enter Division Three, while 219 said they should not be allowed to enter the league at all.
A further 33 were in favour of the newco entering Division One.
And an overwhelming 95% said the newco should not be allowed into the top tier if Scottish football was reorganised into two leagues.
And faced with the suggestion that East Fife would be ”financially secure” for the next two seasons if reorganisation of Scottish football allowed a newco entry into the top tier, 87.1% of fans said they would still not support the move.