Chairman of Scottish League Two club accuses SFA of offering 'bribe'

Stenhousemuir chairman Iain McMenemy has accused the SFA and SPFL of offering 'grubby backroom deals' in a quest to shoehorn Celtic, Hearts and Rangers B teams into next season's Lowland League.

Plans to admit the Premiership trio to a divided fifth tier were waved through after a casting vote by the league chairman.

Asked to change their rules to accommodate all three in a 19-team division, SLFL sides recently voted against the proposal by a margin of 13 to three.

The preference of the Lowland League sides was to accept two of the three — and reject one.

Faced with an ultimatum to either admit all three or none at all, however, teams from the fifth tier held another vote on Monday night. And, after an 8-8 split, Lowland League chairman Thomas Brown voted 'yes' in return for the promise of a review of the pyramid structure by the pyramid working group.

Celtic, Hearts and Rangers are willing to pay £40,000 each for entry, with the £120,000 split evenly between the other 16 clubs.

Rejecting accusations of money-grabbing, however, a club source told Sportsmail that the Lowland League teams hope to secure the abolition of the promotion play-off against the bottom team in League Two as their price for accepting the three B teams.

And that prompted McMenemy to accuse the SFA and SPFL of offering a 'bribe' to the Lowland League teams certain to be rejected by teams in League Two.

The Stenhousemuir chairman said: 'Reconstructing the pyramid was not on the agenda, so you have to ask what's changed? Why now?

'It seems pretty obvious that this issue has been hastily thrown into the negotiations at the 11th hour. We knew nothing about it.

'Those at the negotiating table have offered to look at relegating more League Two clubs from