A hopeless, thankless task
No matter what UEFA, the SFA, the SPFL or the government decide this week relative to what happens next when the game of football can no longer take place it will enrage and infuriate someone somewhere.
There is no universally acceptable solution possible when self-interest is the main motivation for owners, players, management and supporters alike.
Twenty years from now there will be callers to Superscoreboard who will reference what happens in the coming days as an example of the game’s governance being suspect and specifically designed to favour one club over another.
It’s a national trait of long established origins.
When league titles were won by Dick Advocaat and Alex McLeish at Ibrox there were howls of protest that these were achievements overshadowed by suggestions financial doping had been responsible for leaving others at a distinct disadvantage.
Rangers’ present chairman, Dave King, is on record as having said that Celtic’s journey to eight titles in a row was diminished by having won several of those championships when the Ibrox club were not in the top flight at the time.
This is to perpetuate a myth that a league competition should somehow go into a state of suspended animation because one club, through nobody’s fault but their own, was unable to play in the top league for a while because they were in the lower orders as a consequence of administration and liquidation.
There was another world, and another time, when Celtic won Nine in a Row the first time and both Rangers and themselves won European trophies during the same period between 1966 and 1975.
But that was when the standard of football was higher in this country and conspiracies were reserved for television and film instead of consuming the minds of the perpetually outraged.
What chance, therefore, do any of us have now with the state of affairs created by the coronavirus that has brought the world to a standstill?
Whatever decisions are taken will pale into insignificance as every passing day sees the global death toll rise to horrifying proportions.
People of my age will soon be invited to self-isolate for months on end if they don’t want to expose themselves to even greater risk of infection.
I’m trying not to retain an image of having my grandchildren brought to stand outside of their grandparents’ flat so that they can wave to them from behind the safety of a window.
It is hard, under those circumstances, to think that the main priority in life is to ensure a league title is not wrongly awarded to somebody.
But membership of this business requires that a view be held and expressed openly so that everyone can tell you what an idiot you are.
In an ideal world, which is clearly a pipedream and not a reality as things stand, the game would be able to resume weeks from now and the league title would be able to be determined by matches played in front of crowds or behind closed doors.
This becomes ever more unlikely as the health crisis deepens and the relevance of league title wins lessens in importance, but something has to be done to complete the paperwork.
The principle of a title being awarded when the fixture list has not been completed and the arithmetical possibility exists that the team at the top of the league table can still be overtaken does not sit easily with me.
None of this is to deny that Celtic have been the outstanding team in the Premiership on a consistent basis since the season started.
If the decision is taken to declare the season over and award Celtic the title then it is one that will have to be respected because no other course of action was possible.
The fall-out will be spectacular and the subject of furious debate for decades to come.
There is nothing any of us can do about that.
If the decision is taken to declare the season null and void and pretend that the last eight months never happened, meaning we start over again whenever medical opinion allows, the fall-out will be spectacular and the subject of furious debate for decades to come.
There is nothing any of us can do about that either.
There is no halfway house. The title is awarded and teams are promoted and relegated by consensus among the hierarchy or else we are forced to accept Force Majeur, effectively an act of God, has got the better of everyone and we need to try again when time permits.
There is no great level of belief in those who run the decision making process within Scottish football, based on them being serial offenders when it comes to getting major calls wrong. But there should be an allowable degree of sympathy for them and the job they have to do in order to deal with the mess they have been handed through no fault of their own.
They face a hopeless, thankless task.
Whatever they decide, they will be accused of pandering to one club or another, or of being the playthings of one individual or another, but they are being asked to adjudicate on something that is unique in one hundred and fifty years of organised football.
Meanwhile the death toll rises and so do the numbers who want to point score in the midst of human misery.