MORTON chairman Crawford Rae says the club will not pass on parent company Golden Casket’s £2.5m debt to new potential owners.

Rae told supporters last night at a Q and A session that the Ton’s current debt to its parent company would not be a barrier in selling the club and would essentially be written off.

The comment received a round of applause from the 150 fans in attendance at the Gamble Halls in Gourock.

He said: “It did say in the accounts that the loan wasn’t going to be recalled anytime soon.

“It’s at around £2.5m, we’re all realistic that there’s not £2.5m sitting in Morton’s bank account.

“In fact today another payment had to go in towards the club and that’s just the way it’s been and that’s what we need to try and get away from.

“We need to try and be realistic, it’s not going to be something that’s going to be called back because there’s nothing there and the club wouldn’t be there if that happened.

“You’re asking me to speak for the other shareholders here, if you came to me tomorrow and said ‘here’s an investment, I want to buy Greenock Morton Football Club’, I think we would lose that.

“We’ve been advised to keep it [the loan] in there for now, it’s not something that will be held [against investors].

“If someone came in and wanted to take a big stake in the club or to buy the club we will stand in no-one’s way and that debt certainly wouldn’t be called back then.”

The chairman joked if a big player sale was to happen, they might look to recuperate some of the money from that.

He added: “Just to qualify that, if Reece Lyon gets sold this year for £3m we might take some from that.”

Rae also revealed the club’s finances for this season looked set to be worse than last year, where they posted a £285,000 loss.

He reiterated that Golden Casket would continue to prop up the club with loans this season, but a break-even approach would be taken from the start of the 2019/20 campaign.

He added: “My late father was not only the chairman of the club but he was a Morton fan, and he had Greenock Morton’s best interests at heart at all times, and unfortunately at times he did allow his heart to rule his head and this just can’t continue.

“The accounts for the club last year were poor.

“We went out of two cups very early, we had a poor end of the season and ended up dropping down to seventh place in the Championship, which resulted in us posting losses of more than £285,000.

“The club is going to show a greater loss due to reduced gates despite an offer to try and get some fans back down to the club, but unfortunately that didn’t work either.

“We’re putting budgets together for next season that will be working towards a break-even position.

“Golden Casket are going to continue to support the club for the remainder of this season.

“However, we need to ensure moving forward that the club operates like any other business and it needs to live within its means and we unfortunately need to cut our cloth accordingly.”