FUTURE NOW LOOKS BLEAK
It’s horrible if you have nothing to fall back on
DESPITE being 35 and very much in the autumn of his career, Ryan Stevenson considers himself to be one of the lucky ones.
Some 18 years spent at clubs including Ipswich and Hearts allowed him to chisel out a decent living from the game. As the owner of a factoring company, he has both an interest and an income independent of football.
Notwithstanding the lonely nights spent pounding the pavements in the hope Stranraer somehow resume playing football at some stage, the striker appreciates that, in these hugely uncertain times, he has a degree of certainty in his life.
Ordinarily, players at his stage would give their right arms to be transported back ten years to their playing pomp. The havoc the pandemic is beginning to wreak means wild horses couldn’t drag him there now.
‘I feel more for the boys who are 24 to early 30s whose lives are completely football,’ he said.
‘If you are close to going out of contract and the club isn’t going to extend your deal, you still have bills to pay and a family to feed. Where do you actually go as a footballer? Jobs are scarce.
‘I was 28, 29 when it hit me it wasn’t going to last forever. I’d concerns about what I was going to do after football, how I was going to survive. You live in such a bubble. It crippled me.
‘At least back then I thought I could go and get a job as there were plenty of avenues to go down. But now, people are losing jobs left, right and centre.
‘These boys have just been thrown into this all of a sudden. They were going along and then suddenly everything was in lockdown. At first, we all thought we’d be back in maybe four or five weeks but it just got worse and worse.
‘Now the majority of boys are out of contract. Where do you go after that? If football is all you know, you can’t go to a job centre.’
The month of May is a time of year lower-league players tend to dread. Usually contracted to a club for one season at a time, they stand or fall by the annual chat with their manager. If that seemed like a precarious means of employment at the best of times, try it now.
Not only is there no clarity over when football will restart, the prospect of fans being allowed into grounds seems even more remote.
Starved of any foreseeable income, and talk of Leagues One and Two being mothballed until the new year, even one-year deals are beyond the reach of most.
The implications, both for individuals and the game at large, are impossible to quantify.
‘There will be monumental changes across the board for the foreseeable future,’ said Stevenson.
‘If you are a footballer and you’ve got nothing else to fall back on, it must be a horrendous time.
‘Full-time boys at clubs like Falkirk and Partick Thistle won’t be earning the kind of money that will allow them to rest up for six months or a year. They’re then faced with having to get jobs. That’s easier said than done just now.
‘When football does restart, will they want to take the risk of going full-time again? Probably not. At best, you’d maybe go part-time.’
Although the Premiership is likely to start behind closed doors on August 1, no club is sheltered from the harsh economic winds.
Reduced squad sizes are likely to become the norm. That inevitably throws more players into the lower-league job market.
Combined with the drastic cuts in income part-time clubs are anticipating, the upshot is likely to be an army of out-of-work footballers with no bargaining position.
‘What’s the money going to be like at full-time?’ asked Stevenson. ‘I don’t see it being anything like it is now. All clubs simply won’t be able to pay what they used to. Now everybody will understand the game is going to be on its knees.
‘Clubs like Aberdeen or Hearts, for example, with such big wage bills, how do they survive until January if there are no fans?
‘Throughout the leagues, the money is going to halve or more. It’s a major turning point for Scottish football.’
Ten weeks ago, when the safety curtain came down, the hope was it would be a brief interruption.
Those painting a bleak picture of the medium-term outlook were only articulating the new reality.
For all the lockdown is likely to be eased a little next week in wider society, chinks of light are hard to discern for the national game.
‘I read Neil Doncaster warning next season will be even harder than this,’ said Stevenson. ‘It could be two or three years at least before this situation repairs itself.
‘Clubs need to first survive and then they will take a while to get themselves back on an even keel.
‘How many players will take the chance of going full-time in case this happens again? What are full-time teams even going to be paying? You might end up with boys playing for free.’
The streets have been awash with players trying to keep themselves in shape. But few know when — if ever — they will strap on the boots for real again.
‘I’ve spoken to the manager regularly,’ added Stevenson. ‘They’ve offered me a new deal (in principle) but they can’t really commit to it until they know what money they’ll have or when we’ll be back in. It’s the same for everyone.’