The fat lady has sung

Published 30th Mar 2020

It would appear that, a few years ago, someone with foresight on a paranormal level had the smarts to protect the All England Club by taking out an insurance policy which covered the failure to stage Wimbledon because of the effects of a global pandemic.

So when they take the decision later this week to cancel this year's tournament, as they inevitably will, there will be no financial hardship involved for the strawberries and cream division.

Lucky them.

Would that Scottish football had been blessed with visionaries who had the foresight to run the risk of ridicule and insist that their clubs' insurance policies had a clause covering global catastrophe.

But, of course, no-one is to blame here for failing to anticipate the coronavirus which may yet change the appearance of our game for ever.

We simply have to work out a way of dealing with the initial impact of Covid-19, that's all.

And the fall-out from whatever decisions are taken will live with us for decades to come and create internal division of a kind which will live make previous hostilities look innocent by comparison.

What was once a thinly disguised contempt for one another will now become a deep rooted, never to be forgotten, source of enmity on a toxic scale.

But when football clubs like Rangers are offering their grounds and adjacent facilities to the NHS as the virus death toll rises, and the spread of the disease has yet to reach its peak, the day of judgement with regard to where Scottish football goes from here has arrived.

Whether we have the rule makers and law enforcers who are up to the job of getting this right is no longer the issue.

Whether you, me or anybody else agrees or disagrees with whatever decisions are taken is neither here nor there.

Time can't stand still indefinitely. A grim reality is closing in on all of us.

There can be no end to this season by the playing of matches, behind closed doors or in front of spectators, because a cursory look at at the tragedy which is unfolding all around us tells you that is a physical impossibility.

Curtailing the numbers who are dying trumps crunching the numbers with regard to how long it might take to determine champions, the relegated and the promoted where four football leagues are concerned.

And ask yourselves one question, which one of those two things is more important at the end of the day?

Players at every club, and I mean every club, will will need to accept wage cuts on a temporary basis or else they won't have clubs to play for when this horror story ends.

Where do they think they can go where things will be any different?

The financial ramifications of declaring the season null and void rule out that idea as well.

The fat lady has sung. The season ends here.

How it ends is for the governing bodies to decide. That's why they're called governing bodies.

Injustice will be an integral part of whichever verdicts are delivered. That much is undeniable and unavoidable.

The greatest injustice of all, however, is lives lost before their time.

The rest of us who survive this nightmare will get over what happens within the game of football before families cope with loss of life.

There'll be howling, name calling, litigation and all of the other by-products of discontent.

But that expression about at least being here to tell the tale now has an unmissable resonance, does it not?