Stewart Regan has been accused by Queens Park of putting misleading information into the public domain.
Almost as soon as Scotland failed to qualify for the World Cup Finals the subject of where international matches and cup finals should be played was put in the spotlight.
Moving to Murrayfield has been given favourable coverage despite having a number of drawbacks including taking a sizeable chunk of money out of football.
As well as providing a stadium to host matches in Hampden houses both the SFA and SPFL with the rental considerably below Edinburgh prices with the income from that reinvested in the game by Queens Park.
Queens Park aren’t known for rocking the boat but with the future of Hampden up for debate they decided to speak out about the inaccuracies being pushed around.
A club statement read: “Stewart Regan has been quoted, by BBC Sport Football, as stating “We know it will cost many, many millions of pounds to stay for another term of a lease similar to what we have now”. This causes Queen’s Park, as owners of the National Stadium great concern.
“We have to date had no detailed access to any evidence to substantiate this statement and would seek confirmation from the Scottish FA that they have fulfilled their responsibilities, under the present lease, to maintain the stadium and further detailed evidence to support Mr Regan’s statement.
“Whilst Mr Regan has stated it would take many many millions of pounds to remain at Hampden, he has not clarified how much it would cost the Scottish FA to leave Hampden. For the past 17 years the stadium has been successfully operated by Hampden Park Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Scottish FA, with many areas of revenue generation, including sponsors, naming rights, third party rentals and concerts.
“The present lease arrangements allow the Scottish FA to work independently with a vast degree of flexibility and the ability and freedom, for example, to bid and be awarded matches from the UEFA 2020 EURO’s.
“The decision to remain or leave cannot be based purely on cost, the City of Glasgow and indeed Scotland could be greatly affected by the loss of the iconic Hampden Park, recognised worldwide as the home of Scottish Football.
“Queen’s Park would further like to clarify that recent reports of rental of £800K per annum, being paid to Queen’s Park are incorrect. Under the present lease agreement, a confidentiality clause prohibits us from making public the rental amount, however we can say it is much much less the £800K per annum paid directly to Queen’s Park. The vast proportion of the rental is retained by the Scottish FA to maintain the stadium.”
While Murrayfield offers much better viewing than the majority of seats at Hampden the logistics of getting large crowds in and out of the stadium were a major drawback when Celtic played two Champions League qualifiers at the rugby stadium in 2014.