Consistency and clarity over Covid in urgent need
I’VE started so I’ll finish. Less a game-show catchphrase, more a motto to live by for the stubbornly persistent. One can imagine the scene in the Magnusson household as the bold Mamie hollered repeatedly to her husband that his tea was oot while Magnus refused to budge from his favourite armchair until he had completed the final clue of a particularly bamboozling cryptic crossword.
Or the family dog looking up expectantly at John Humphrys at walkies time only to see his master lost in concentration, tongue poking out the side of his mouth, as he tried desperately to finish a 1000-piece jigsaw of a row of crows sitting with their eyes closed on a black rock in a cave in the dead of night. Drop that lead, Fido, this could take a while.
This column has previously extolled the values of procrastination and living life at a meandering, leisurely pace. No good ever came from rushing about as if your hair has just been set on fire.
But there is also a noble element to eventually getting the job done, sticking with something despite rising frustrations and tempers and seeing it through. Even if you will almost certainly upset a few people along the way.
This is the course the SPFL appears to be charting for the time being. Goodness knows, this has been a trying year for everyone as we try to navigate around an ever-changing and often exasperating set of guidelines in a bid to contain the effects of a global pandemic.
For all we take it for granted, professional sport should consider itself fortunate that it has been given the green light to get going at all given, in the grand scheme of things, it isn’t hugely important whether a football team kick a ball around or not.
Given that license to commence a new season, it is no surprise that Scottish football’s governing bodies are keen to make sure it finishes, despite a myriad pitfalls and challenges.
They have made life harder for themselves by not reducing the amount of fixtures being played this season – as referenced in a previous column – but that can’t be altered now, barring a late change of heart to reduce the sprawling group stage extravaganza that is the Betfred Cup.
So, where possible, the show must go on. It already feels that the coronavirus isn’t going to go away any time soon meaning clubs, players and governing bodies are going to have to try to continue to tiptoe around it for possibly the remainder of the season.
There is no precedent for how to deal with the effects of a contagious virus, especially when every case that has so far affected Scottish football has arisen in different circumstances.
But the SPFL and the other members of the Joint Response Group owe it to clubs, managers, players and fans to try to put together a blueprint to deal with the inevitable rise in future cases.
For if there is a general level of understanding that this is a nightmare scenario for administrators to have to deal with, there is less tolerance for what can appear to be a lack of transparency or, even worse, an absence of consistency in the decision-making process.
As word filtered through on Friday night that not only would St Mirren’s first and second-choice goalkeepers be absent for yesterday’s league match against Hibernian after positive Covid-19 tests, but their third choice would also have to sit out as a precaution, the reaction was one of chaos and confusion.
Not just at what seemed an unjust decision to insist
St Mirren still fulfilled the fixture, but because nobody seemed to know what the ruling was or ought to be.
If you have three players called up for an international match then a club fixture is automatically postponed. But if you have three goalkeepers ruled out because of a virus…. then what? There was no clarity on that one.
Making St Mirren play the game – after receiving consent from Professor Jason Leitch – in a bid to prevent a fixture backlog seemed harsh but the logic was just about understandable. But not having any fixed rules for what ought to happen when a player/ coach – or a greater number of them – test positive for the virus is less acceptable.
There must be consistency in the process because there will almost certainly be further cases down the line that will need to be addressed. And at this moment in time, it is anyone’s guess what the protocol will be at that point.
St Mirren will again be without those three goalkeepers for a match against Celtic on Wednesday that was rearranged because Boli Bolingoli featured in a game after breaking quarantine rules following a trip to Spain. The original game was postponed despite the defender not having posted a positive test. And now Celtic will benefit from that delay by facing a team shorn of their three best goalkeepers.
Aberdeen had two games postponed after two players contracted the virus after eight of their squad went on a night out. Again, where was the reasoning?
The SPFL season has started but there is going to have to be far greater transparency and consistency if it is going to finish, too.
Where possible the show must go on