COVID...19 SPFL...0
Football has never felt more irrelevant as humanity fights one of its greatest ever battles but this global grim reaper is battering our national sport too and today’s crunch vote must not come down a petty fight between our big two
FOOTBALL has never felt less important to most of our daily lives.
And yet seldom has the Scottish game faced a moment just as critical as it does today.
When thousands of lives are being ravaged by this invisible, global plague the temptation is to wash our hands of this latest SPFL squabble and to dismiss it as a complete and utter irrelevance.
Of course none of it matters a damn here in the real world, where humanity fights one of its greatest ever battles.
And yet, when the war against coronavirus has finally been won and our planet returns to some kind of normality, the significance of our national obsession will quickly come back into focus.
The importance of this sport to Scotland’s sense of well being might be easy to forget right now in the very eye of this crisis but it should not be underestimated.
When this is all over, football will have a massive part to play in the recovery of the country both in societal and economic terms.
Very soon it will become the epicentre of our lives once more and although that day will not come quickly enough, it is the hope to which we all must cling.
It represents the life we knew before this vile grim reaper came creeping on to our horizon, coughing and wheezing down every one of our streets.
He will be vanquished. The masked heroes of the NHS will eventually prevail and chase this killer from our towns and cities. And when they do the rest of us will finally be free to emerge from our homes.
But what state will our game be in by the time we’re ready to take it seriously again?
That’s what is at stake today as all 42 of the country’s clubs get set to decide the sport’s fate ahead of a 5pm voting deadline.
And, coming at a moment in time when the world is pulling together like never before, it would be crushingly depressing if this decision of monumental importance was decided along the age old lines of petty division which have run through Scottish football, spitting out poison since the first ball was kicked.
How typical that it should all boil down to an angry stand-off between Celtic and Rangers. How utterly infuriating.
And yet that’s exactly where we stand today as our clubs go to the polls.
Vote for the proposals drawn up by the SPFL in an attempt to see the game through this lockdown and crown Celtic champions. Vote against it and position your club shoulder to shoulder with Rangers who refuse to surrender this season’s title until it has been won fairly and squarely. Whenever that might be.
Meanwhile, between these two feuding neighbours, clubs are fighting for their lives and some of them are facing up to even greater levels of injustice.
In fact, slap bang in the middle of this impasse are Glasgow’s third club, Partick Thistle, who must feel as if their voice can’t possibly be heard above the clattering fury on both sides of their garden fence.
And yet they stand to lose more than most if they are sent down to the third tier.
The drastic wage cuts which will follow – and are written in stone into the contracts of their playing staff – will alter lives.
It’s little wonder they are railing against these proposals with all of their might. Their plight is an obvious unfairness in what is, by it’s very nature, an imperfect solution to an impossible predicament.
And so, Thistle will attempt to derail the entire process this afternoon by voting against the SPFL proposals. Numbers dictate that they need just two more Championship clubs in their corner to bring the whole COVID-19 contingency plan crashing down.
Dundee will be one of them, unless they can be talked around between now and this evening. But a late change of heart at Dens is highly unlikely and not because the proposal would promote Dundee United into the top flight.
As far as owner John Nelms is concerned that ship has already sailed.
But he does believe there are serious flaws in the wording of the SPFL’s document which is why he will almost certainly stand his ground before stepping up to the ballot box.
All of which means little Inverness Caley Thistle – who were in second place and trailing United by 14 points when the game got stopped – could cast the most decisive vote in the history of Scottish football.
What they want is a shot at promotion through some sort of play-off.
What they risk is a cheque for almost £400,000 in emergency cash which could help them keep the wolf from the door as finances run dry.
In other words, there’s a big rock on the righthand side and a hard place jamming them in on the left.
The carrot of reconstruction has been dangled in front of their noses but the noises coming from the top flight yesterday suggest that will be tossed in the bin for good unless the proposals are voted through today.
There is some appetite for a new-look Premiership with 14 or possibly even 16 teams – but there is no way of knowing with any certainty if this is anything more than a false promise with no realistic chance of delivery before the start of the next campaign.
And more and more, it’s the start of the next campaign which is central to most concerns. If season 2020/21 can’t get up and running in reasonable time then the cost could be catastrophic given the damage any delay could cause to newly penned TV contracts with Sky Sports and Premier Sports. That’s the unpalatable reality, amid all the candy floss theories that the ball might start rolling again soon enough to enable the current season to close without impacting on the next one. It will not. It cannot.
But unless some sort of consensus can be found today then Scottish football’s pain may continue long after this current health crisis has passed.
How typical it should boil down to an angry standoff between Celtic and Rangers