Covid has put our kids back to square one
The guidance teacher at St Ninian’s High School let out a laugh.
I’d told him Dundee United was my destination and where to stick his suggestions that a trade in plumbing was a more realistic fit.
Signing a 12-year contract at Tannadice soon wiped the smile off his face.
The train to Tayside, the culture shock of full-time training and adapting to a man’s world would soon take a toll.
Mixing with 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds such as Gary Bollan, Christian Dailly, Andy McLaren and David Hannah – it was sink or swim for me.
It’s a hard school where so many dreams are shattered but most are desperate to give it a try.
Coaches call them the bridging years. A crucial spell for late teens who try to take the leap from youth football to the senior game.
Most end up taking the big fall – but at least we had the chance.
Prepare for the posttraumatic stress disorder of young would-be professional footballers reaching pandemic levels in the coming months.
Many signed their first apprentice contracts last summer only for lockdown to prevent them getting anywhere near their clubs.
The arrested development of stunted potential will become only too clear as some sort of new-normal returns.
No vaccine or recovery plan can compensate for time wasted at the tipping point when careers are established or broken.
No coaching manual has ever managed to turn back the clock.
A sporting catastrophe has taken place during a calendar year and dribbling around cones in your garden just won’t have cut it. It doesn’t make for easy reading but we’ve suffered the most significant disruption to football since the Second World War
Many youngsters will have regressed, physically they’ve have lost ground and some will have mentally given up the ghost.
In the best of times, the attrition rate among young players is high.
Not even one per cent make it through the system to first-team level.
That number will inevitably shrink further again. Grassroots football has been obliterated.
One of the more uplifting moments of recent weeks was the sights and sounds of children sledging and making the most of a snowfall.
A simple pleasure and sign of the times where it’s the slimmest of pickings of what they’ve been able to enjoy outdoors.
Lockdown will mean some kids have already kicked the habit of their love of a game – it can’t be learned from laptops or tactical analysis online.
A non-contact return is in the offing but it’s akin to being allowed back into a boxing ring and being told you are not allowed to throw a punch.
Hope is on the horizon and the extension of fixtures, which will see games played all through the summer, is one way to play catch-up.
Thinking outside the box and radical measures are called for to get all kids back with a ball at their feet.
It won’t happen. Joined-up thinking won’t be part of any joint response group assembled to address the consequences of what we’ve had to endure.
There’s more chance of me being able to fix burst pipes.