Low league freeze is sure sign season won’t go distance
Null and Void. The two most attention-grabbing words in Scottish football’s dictionary.
It’s only January and they’re back on the agenda along with one of the most feared phrases – SPFL and resolution.
What will be will be – but strap yourself in for another round of the relentlessly-exhausting infighting from football’s most dysfunctional members club.
If you don’t think the ‘null and void’ writing is already on the wall then SFA chief Ian Maxwell’s letter to all 10 Championship clubs, asking if they want to continue playing or suspend their league, should provide a sobering reminder of where we are in this pandemic.
The F word is already in play in Leagues One and Two. Furlough is expected to be utilised by many clubs next week after it was announced that level of the game is going into a three-week cold storage.
Let’s be honest, the move to suspend the bottom half of our senior game isn’t a circuit breaker – it’s a pre-emptive signal that our game won’t be able to go the distance this season.
It’s all starting to come apart at the seams, a “fragile situation” indeed in the words of Scotland’s Clinical Director Jason Leitch.
As it stands, there will be no January transfer window for any club under the Premiership. Ethics are now in play after all clubs received emergency funding from the Scottish Government to the tune of £500,000.
It’s a rescue payment that should ensure there is no recruitment by any team taking cash from the public purse.
Philanthropist James Anderson has already donated cash to football at all levels.
Many of the clubs must face the reality of being mothballed until this crisis is under control.
At a time when flight corridors into the United Kingdom are closing, some of the usual suspects are crying foul.
Being muted on Zoom calls and feeling left out on the communication front, you would think by now the penny would have dropped.
The disregard with which the rulers treat the lower-league clubs never seems to truly sink in – throwing them a Tunnock’s tea cake or a Irn Bru crate here and there has usually done the job.
But now the stakes are all about survival of the fittest and ensuring the Premiership is played to a civil war-preventing conclusion, a threeweek lower-league suspension could become something more permanent.
Leagues One and Two are unable both financially and logistically to test the players for Covid in an attempt to finish their seasons – it’s null and void territory I’m afraid.
If the likes of Dundee United, St Mirren and Motherwell are the corner shops of our game then Stenhousemuir, Edinburgh City and Montrose are the market stalls.
The small print on the SPFL rule book could well be about to come into play.
Rangers boss Steven Gerrard is adamant this season must be played to its conclusion after
SPFL chief Neil Doncaster refused to rule out a null and void finale.
In the end that could come down to another nervous breakdown of our game to rival last summer’s vote and resolution fiascos.
That scenario is starting to loom and null and void is certain to be on the ballot.
The small print of the SPFL rules could come into play .. null & void is certain to be on ballot