Clydebank chair Grace McGibbon has revealed that the club is on track to receive its Scottish FA licence this season.
The Bankies are in the process of applying for the licence that would see them granted status as a professional side, allowing them promotion from the West of Scotland League into the Lowland League.
A series of obligations, including changing facilities for referees, disabled toilet access and a medical room, need to be met by the Holm Park side for the application to be approved.
Work has been taking place behind the scenes for several months now as the club strive towards their target and McGibbon has promised that the club’s officials will continue to work towards their goal despite the temporary pause in action on the pitch – and that in fact the suspension of West of Scotland League action hasn’t proved a hindrance to their off-the-field work.
Speaking to the Post, she said: “Not playing at the moment has actually helped us a little bit in terms of being able to focus on getting stuff done on that side of things rather than dealing with the day to day kind of footballing side.
“We’ve had the initial audit from the SFA, someone was in last Friday to do the first inspection of the facility, and then we had a Zoom call in the afternoon with the findings from that.
“There wasn’t a lot that we still had to do, and I think virtually all of those things are at the completion stage.
“What we’re dealing with now is dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s as far as documentation and paperwork is concerned. We’re not a million miles away.
“We’ve got another couple of weeks to get things completed but we’re fairly confident that we’ll do everything we can at our side, it’s then with the gods to see what happens at the SFA side.”
Clydebank currently sit top of the West of Scotland Football League, but have been out of action since the turn of the year due to the pandemic, with only Premiership and Championship football allowed to continue in Scotland.
The suspension was originally in place until the end of January but looks set to continue as the country remains in lockdown.
The WoSFL released a statement at the weekend confirming that all fixtures for the remainder of the season have been withdrawn, but they do still hope to crown champions this season – even if they have to return to the “average points per game” method used to decide the final placings in 2019/20.
WoSFL match secretary Kennie Young said in a statement: “The fixtures have been rescheduled and recast in such a way that our aim is to get to a point where a minimum of 50 per cent of games will have been played, and where all teams will have played each of the other teams in their division at least once.”
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