Lay off Maxwell and Doncaster... the best scientists in world don’t know when this will end

Stop the bickering during corona crisis

CELTIC chief executive Peter Lawwell has had his say about the situation facing Scottish football.

Rangers managing director Stewart Robertson did the same thing earlier this week.

Fair enough. Whether you agree with their viewpoints or not it’s good to have major figures at the respective clubs speaking out to supporters and giving some information.

Same goes for the 40 other clubs in the country. Employees at Hearts may not have been so thrilled to hear what was coming out of Ann Budge’s mouth in terms of pay cuts but it’s reality.

However, with every passing day during this coronavirus nightmare you have to say these comments are getting less and less relevant.

It shouldn’t take tragedy to stop the bias and bickering. When legends such as Billy McNeill and Sandy Jardine pass away, divides evaporate. People come together and stand strong as one.

I’ve got to be honest, this is one of those times.

It’s not often myself and my old sparring partner Barry Ferguson agree 100 per cent on anything but I read his column in Record Sport yesterday about his attitude towards things changing over the past week and I felt myself thinking the same way.

Britain has been slower to grasp this situation than some other countries.

But if you didn’t realise the seriousness of this situation beforehand, and how little the handing out of trophies and titles really matters, the footage over the past 24 hours from the hospital ward in the Italian town of Bergamo must surely have brought it all home. It is absolutely horrendous.

The sight of staff fighting to keep people alive while they are lying stricken brought this all home.

The importance of football and sport in all of our lives is simply overpowering.

Opinions, debate, supporting our team. It’s part of the fabric woven into most of our psyches. It gives us our joy and pain in equal measure and it isn’t just football that is having to sit and suffer.

There may be other sports out there which you don’t like that much but they are suffering just as much.

The entire global sporting arena is on virtual lockdown and there’s a gaping void.

You don’t know what you have until it’s not there. You turn the TV on and there is nothing to watch.

Coronavirus is hitting every sport hard and it’s scary.

For all the talk of when the football season is going to resume, look at golf. They have had to postpone The Masters and the knock-on effect is going to cause chaos.

Formula One have lost their flagship race in Monaco and their calendar has been thrown into carnage. The Olympic Games may not even happen this summer and everyone is having to sift through this and try to work out plans.

The biggest problem with that is, how? Myself and other ex-players and pundits are talking in the hypothetical.

We can all have opinions on when football should start again, what they should do when it does, how titles, promotions or relegations should be decided.

It’s good debate. It’s giving us something to talk about and it shows the power of sport. Even if these awful times, it means a lot to supporters of football and all sports.

But the talk is completely uninformed. That is the bottom line. And that is the major problem facing the SFA, SPFL and other governing bodies across the globe.

You can understand clubs