They thought it was all over… but it isn’t yet.
Women guests are still banned from attending the Scottish Football Writers’ Association annual dinner after a technical foul at its extraordinary general meeting on 12 January when it voted by 27-14 in favour of scrapping a clause in its constitution preventing female guests attending.
The latest vote had been widely welcomed after the continued ban on women guests had been greeted with universal disapproval in Scotland.
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Tennent Caledonian Breweries, which sponsors the dinner, had threatened to withdraw annual funding of SFWA events of about £20,000, and the policy was condemned by the NUJ and Equal Rights Commission.
Now it has emerged that soon after the vote, it was discovered that two of the 10 SFWA members who had called for the EGM were not fully paid-up members of the association at the time the meeting was called last October, as required by the constitution.
The oversight has forced officials to invalidate the vote and members will now have to go through the whole process again, with 10 paid-up signatories calling for an EGM, and a further vote taking place at that meeting.
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This year’s dinner is due to be held at Glasgow’s Hilton Hotel on 9 May.
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