Doncaster worried by prospect of a new crisis
NEIL DONCASTER has never been a great one for hyperbole.
At times, when it seemed the whole world was gunning for him during lockdown, Hampden’s Teflon Don somehow managed to keep his emotions neither up nor down.
The game being stopped in its tracks by a global pandemic, the foamymouthed furore that followed over dishing out championships and relegations, Dundee’s flip-flopping, legal challenges, claims of top-level corruption and coercion, demands for his suspension?
Doncaster shrugged his way through all of it while sticking unflinchingly to his rulebook, often to the added infuriation of those who wanted dearly to see him take a fall from the sixth floor.
So when a man who managed to remain largely unruffled during what has already been the single biggest crisis in the history of the Scottish game starts to talk of the landscape-changing catastrophe that could be coming around the next corner? Well, it does feel like a warning worthy of some considerable attention.
Scottish football, he says, is now one more of Nicola Sturgeon’s yellow cards away from a disaster like no other in history.
“There is a very real possibility, were the Scottish Government to decide to close down the entire league for any length of time – based on a very, very small number of infringements – that a number of our clubs will go under,” warns Doncaster as he speaks exclusively with Record Sport.
“We’re talking about clubs that have been in existence for well over a century. They’ve survived the Great Depression and two world wars. But they would be in very real danger of ceasing to exist were the league to be shut down for any length of time.”
It’s little wonder he hasn’t managed much sleep since the Aberdeen Eight and Boli Bolingoli brain-farted the coronavirus all over Scottish football’s big restart – forcing the First Minister’s urgent intervention and almost getting two full rounds of top-flight fixtures tossed in an office bin inside St Andrew’s House.
Doncaster came as close as he may ever have done to breaking out in a cold sweat during the frenzied back channelling which went on between Hampden and Holyrood just to keep the entire game from being forced back into lockdown.
After St Johnstone finally get round to hosting Aberdeen tonight, the three other top-flight matches which were postponed by government demand still have to find dates in a fixture schedule that is already crammed to bursting point.
Aberdeen and Celtic, he says, will almost certainly be forced to play four games in eight days if both qualify for the group stage of European football.
“There are no more available slots this side of March,” he stresses in the kind of way that makes you wonder if some at the House on the Hill haven’t been paying attention.
“If our clubs are successful in Europe then there are no slots.
“And that position will clearly deteriorate further if there are any further postponements. We have one slot in March so Celtic and Aberdeen are already facing the potential prospect of playing four games in eight days if they progress into the group stages of European competition.”
And that’s the best-case scenario.
Because just one more breach of Covid-19 protocol could effectively push pro football in this country into a new ice age.
Doncaster said: “This is not scaremongering – it’s real. To date we have carried out 7543 swab tests and only three of those have come back positive – and all three of those came from transmission within the community not from within football.
“That shows that all of our clubs and the vast, vast majority of players are exercising great responsibility and great caution.
“The cost of those swab tests is now well over half a million pounds just to cover the small period of time to get the game up and running for the last few weeks. So there has been a huge amount of investment by the clubs to get these games under way.
“But what is absolutely vital for the economy of Scottish football overall is that the games are now allowed to continue.”
What he would like, at this point of