12 months, countless rows, no fans... yet still our game endures
Virus from hell unable to shake a national obsession
EVEN in the midst of this particularly bleak anniversary season, with every fresh page in the diary marking exactly a year since something baffling, terrifying or just plain dumb, March 13 stands out.
It will always be remembered as the day when the hammer fell on Scottish football.
Our national game was cancelled. And promptly set about proving itself a uniquely durable and adaptable branch of the entertainment industry.
How else do you explain the country’s most popular spectator sport managing to survive, touch wood, without the central plank of its business model?
Denied the opportunity to fulfil fixtures, our national obsession somehow kept punters grimly gripped in a permanently-enraged state of tension and fascination.
From the high farce of a missing ballot to public accusations of low crimes and misdemeanours at the very top of the game, the long spring and summer of general discontent boasted multiple villains and precious few heroes.
And, in an environment where grudges can be carefully nurtured for generations, it’s hardly a shock that many of the most heated arguments remain unresolved.
Here, Sportsmail looks back on a unique year in the history of Scottish football.
D-DAY: GAMES OFF
ON a cool but bright Friday morning, just two days before Rangers and Celtic were due to meet at Ibrox in front of 50,000 fans, the decision was made to suspend Scottish football ‘indefinitely’.
An earlier compromise by the Scottish Government, who had intended a ban on gatherings of more than 500 people to come into effect after the biggest derby in the country, simply could not stand.
Sporting events across the UK were falling like ninepins. With Scotland having recorded its first Covid death just 24 hours earlier, there was unanimous agreement that public health had to come first.
So we closed our front doors, padlocked the turnstiles and training grounds, watched every bulletin, started cold-calling medical experts in search of answers to impossible questions — and waited. For 21 long weeks.
THE ARGUMENTS BEGIN
ON the very day that SPFL and SFA announced the suspension, Neil Lennon began arguing Celtic’s case to be crowned champions.
Aware that many journalists were already on their way to Lennoxtown when the big news broke, the title holders did not cancel the pre-match press conference scheduled for the Friday lunchtime.
During that media event, head coach Lennon said all the right things about putting safety first. But he also made it clear that, while Celtic wanted to play season 2019-20 to a close, there could only be one fair decision in the event of the entire campaign being scrapped.
In his view, Celtic — 13 points clear with only eight rounds of fixtures remaining — should be crowned champions for the ninth consecutive season.
Others weren’t so keen on this idea, naturally. Rangers weren’t going to concede without a fight.
And Hearts, well adrift at the foot of the Premiership though they might have been, demanded the chance to play their way out of relegation trouble.
The words ‘null and void’ were bandied around by those with most to lose from the season being ‘called’ on a points-pergame basis.
THE WARNINGS
WHILE all of this was happening, a majority of Scottish clubs began focusing on the existential threat facing every team in the country.
Various chairmen and chief executives talked about a ‘tsunami’ or an ‘asteroid’ heading for the national game. Nobody could honestly say whether everyone would make it safely through to the other side.
Pay cuts and deferrals were imposed on players who didn’t automatically agree to voluntarily take a hit, while the furlough scheme was used by clubs on the brink.
Moving forward, there was a real fear that a return to play — without allowing paying supporters into grounds — would represent the worst of both worlds, forcing clubs to shoulder all the costs of football without receiving their main source of revenue, gate receipts.
But a variety of different working groups and task forces were set up. There was optimism that, as long as everyone stayed focused on what really mattered, the game might just make it.
VOTES, WHISTLEBLOWERS AND WILD RAMMIES
DUNDEE’S missing ballot became the source of both uproar and hilarity for a locked-down nation running out of box sets.
Eventually, SPFL clubs voted to finalise the season’s standing on a points-per-game basis. End of story, right? Not quite.
Over weeks of infighting typified by serious accusations and intemperate language, Rangers and Hearts — the two clubs with the most to lose — variously accused the SPFL leadership of all manner of shady behaviour.
There was an internal investigation, a leaked dossier and ‘whistleblower evidence’ that didn’t quite live up to the hype.
League reconstruction was dead in the water from the outset and, at a time when the selfless acts of so many were providing so much inspiration, self-interest was the obvious driving factor for virtually everyone involved in repeated skirmishes.
Few in Scottish football emerged from the summer of rancour with any great credit.
WINNERS AND LOSERS
CELTIC obviously benefited from the points-per-game formula, as did the winners of the other three divisions.
Dundee United were promoted to the Premiership and Raith Rovers — who had been just a single point clear in a tight battle for the League One crown — stepped up to the second tier, while Cove Rangers marked an impressive SPFL debut season by winning League Two. Falkirk, who missed out on the chance to compete for a place in the Championship, were obvious losers.
None were arguably more hard done by than Hearts, Partick Thistle and Stranraer, whose relegations were eventually confirmed by an SFA arbitration panel — after much legal wrangling.
There was enormous sympathy for Partick Thistle, in particular, who had a game in hand on the teams above them when the season was interrupted.
Ann Budge’s more abrasive approach to diplomacy meant Hearts didn’t receive quite the same level of goodwill when their relegation was confirmed.
NOTHING IS NORMAL
AFTER a brief flirtation with the Bundesliga, the Korean league, virtual sporting events and anything else likely to take the edge off the absence of ‘our’ game, the top flight finally kicked off on August 1.
But the fact that fans are still not allowed back into stadia, despite the success of a couple of test events, means season 2020-21 will go down in history as a genuine oddity.
Nothing about this is normal. And although the smartest operators managed to monetise the fury and passion of their core support by flogging season tickets for a campaign of closeddoors games, there is genuine uncertainty over fans renewing in serious numbers.
Academies remain in cold storage, the Championship has struggled on manfully — but Leagues One and Two are only just returning for a more curtailed season after another enforced shutdown.
The same goes for the Women’s Premier League, unfairly lumped in with the ‘lower leagues’ when the latest suspension was announced.
We’ve had Covid outbreaks, breaches by players and breakdowns of protocols, threats from Holyrood to call the whole thing off… and still the machine keeps rumbling on.
So, does it go into the books as our annus horribilis or annus mirabilis? Perhaps the best we can say about it is that it happened.