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St Mirren were forced to postpone today’s Scottish Cup visit of Spartans due to a frozen pitch after chairman Gordon Scott admitted that their undersoil heating is broken.
The Buddies yesterday announced a profit of £30,489 for the financial year to May 2016 but in his chairman’s report, Scott conceded that investment is needed to fund major repairs.
The third round visit of the Lowland League outfit was called off following a pitch inspection at 12:30pm on Friday, with the icy weather showing no sign of relenting.
The club are planning to meet with their insurers next week to see if the repairs are covered under the terms of the policy.
But Scott, who took over St Mirren in July as part of a supporters buy out, admits cash is required to make vital improvements.
He said: “This year has been the most rewarding financially for a long time due to a number of factors; the parachute payment received from the SPFL Trust, the rental of the ground to Celtic in pre-season, the sale of John McGinn, reaching the semi-final of the Petrofac Cup at Ibrox, the decision to let Rangers fans have additional capacity of the last game of the season at our ground, allied to the continued prudent running of the football club.
“While this prudency has seen the club remain financially stable, it has left us with some major infrastructure requirements over the next year as there is no contingency fund for maintenance and repairs
“The astro pitch at the academy requires to be replaced as it only just passed the testing procedure this year, the undersoil heating does not work and the first team buildings at the academy are in need of major repair work.
“Unfortunately there is no quick fix for any of these problems but we are working on ways of financing all of them.
“There will be a need for investment in 2017 to cover cash flow issues but we were aware of this prior to our takeover.”
As well as turning last year’s losses of £266,000 into a profit, the accounts also show that turnover was down nearly £500,000 to £2,481,429.
St Mirren’s wage bill has been reduced to £1.2 million from £1.9 million.
