SCOTS FINALLY FOLLOW SUIT OVER VIRUS

A solution perhaps would be to delay the start of next season or to scrap the winter break next January to allow more time for games to be played, but that doesn’t solve the issue of clubs being expected to play European qualifiers. Celtic, for instance, will likely have Champions League qualifiers to play in early July.

Still, that may be a preferable option than ending the season just now and declaring it null and void, which would create huge controversy, or even ending the season as it stands and assigning trophies and European places – as well as deciding promotion and relegation – based on how the tables are placed right now.

Celtic manager Neil Lennon has already presented his club’s position on the matter, saying they should be crowned champions by deign of their 13-point lead should the season be declared over. Rangers, while it is still mathematically possible to overturn that deficit – if highly improbable – would perhaps have something to say about that.

Most likely, clubs who suffer from either scenario would have strong cases to press for damages against the game’s governing bodies, so this will be a course of action the SFA and SPFL will be keen to avoid if at all possible. Such conundrums are not confined to these shores though, nor to football. In a wider sense, the sporting calendar as we know and love it has not so much been decimated as destroyed.

Not just in the short term, either.

The Masters, due to start on April 9 at Augusta, has been postponed. No professional tennis tournaments are to take place anywhere in the world until at least April 20. The Giro D’Italia, due to take place in May, has already been cancelled. The International Gymnastics Federation has postponed three World Cup competitions until June.

The UK may have been behind the curve in shutting down sporting events, but these were never going to be any more immune to the effects of the coronavirus than the general population. If life cannot carry on as normal during this global pandemic, then sport clearly could not either.

The truth is that nobody really knows what comes next or when sport, or day-to-day life, will get back to some semblance of normality.

If life cannot carry on as normal, sport cannot either