YOU’VEGOTTILLIT’SGONE

It is times like these you where you learn just how many aspects of everyday life you take for granted.

Top of the list is our NHS, of course, and I hope you were among those who took to the streets to offer thanks for the outstanding work they have done and continue to do on our behalf. I know I was.

For the NHS workers life has gone into overdrive due to coronavirus.

For most of us, however, the handbrake has been applied on life as we know it.

Sport was the first major casualty of the virus as the debate about whether large gatherings of people in public was a good idea.

It shows you just how rapidly everything has changed that the question which was only raised a venture outdoors again and mingle with each other, it is unclear what we will be returning to.

In football this week was supposed to be Scotland’s date with destiny in the Nations League had we overcome Israel on Thursday. A trip to Serbia or Norway was all that would have stood between Steve Clarke’s side and a place in this summer’s finals.

Now we don’t even have a summer finals to aim for in 2020 and the idea of playing the Nations League semi-final and final in June seems ambitious to say the least.

Domestically, Brora are Highland League champions but little else has been determined. No league winners, no promoted teams and no relegated sides.

Fans have their own ideas on what should happen but within the boardrooms across the country the issue the directors are dealing with is how to plug the financial gap which now exists from no games being played.

Wage cuts are being enforced at several clubs as clubs simply try to keep going until such time as the ball is back out and paying punters are coming through the turnstiles again.

In rugby the Six Nations has not been completed and the club game has stopped dead in its tracks. The Scottish cricket season was due to start and we are a week away from what should have been the first golfing major of the year, the Masters.

For golf clubs, already struggling before all this, goodness knows what lies ahead for them.

Then there is the small matter of the Olympics which has been delayed 12 months.

We all feared the worst when shutdowns were first mentioned but what we perhaps did not appreciate was just how big a part sport plays in our everyday lives.

Looking forward to the game at the weekend with our friends, playing that round of golf with a mate. It’s all gone.

Maybe when it does eventually come back we can appreciate it a little more.

“What we perhaps didn’t appreciate was just how big a part sport plays”