Alan Pattullo: The contract issue that means extending the season is a problem

Suspending Scottish football has huge financial implications

A coronavirus sign at Livingston's Tony Macaroni Arena. Picture: Mark Scates / SNS

Who was it again that mentioned something about Armageddon? Perhaps former SFA chief executive Stewart Regan was simply eight years too early with this much-criticised take in association with Rangers.

Where does Scottish football go from here? First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s advice that large gatherings of more than 500 people should not take place while efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak are ongoing effectively meant shutting down a lot of Scottish football clubs for an unspecified time. They are businesses too, remember. Or at least they are trying to be businesses in an ever more challenging landscape.

The SFA and SPFL’s belated confirmation that the season was being suspended was a potential death knell for smaller clubs who might have felt briefly reprieved by the above recommendation being limited to crowds of 500 people and above.

Of course, it is only a matter of time until the first coronavirus case occurs in Scottish football – indeed, the likelihood is that it has already happened. Others will occur throughout the game at all levels. The virus does not recognise status.

If it did, it might lay off clubs such as Stenhousemuir who find it tough enough as it is in the current climate. The Ochilview outfit confirmed last night a player has gone into self-isolation having shown symptoms of the virus.

Neil Doncaster, the SPFL chief executive, has already warned of the dire financial consequences for clubs. This comment was in the context of games taking place behind closed doors.

The situation is now more critical; there won’t be any games at all for the time being. Nothing. Not Elgin City v Brechin City, not Stirling Albion v Annan Athletic. Lowland League games? All off.

Health comes first of course. But what will we find when we resume, whenever that is? Close season is bad enough for many clubs. Now they have to cope with an extra spell of zero income through gate receipts.

At this stage of the season, when issues are being resolved, hospitality, even at smaller clubs, tends to be sold out. How many catering firms took calls yesterday cancelling hundreds of meals? And what does the future hold for these often small, local businesses?

As for football, which is what we’re concerned with here, club officials will be contacting local MSPs and MPs, if they haven’t done so already, to see what can be done in terms of remuneration. Scottish football authorities have already made it clear there is no money left in the pot.

Then there is the issue of player contracts. It is all very well blithely suggesting that we just prolong the season, providing Euro 2020 is also put back a year, as seems likely.

In this day and age, when so many clubs operate by signing players on short-term contracts, it is impractical to simply extend the season to June or July. One chief executive at a Championship club confirmed they have nine players whose contracts end on 9 June, including two who have signed pre-contracts elsewhere.

He asked: “Guys we thought we would have in the team for the run-in won’t even be at the club any longer – how’s that fair?

“The fact is, I can’t see any other course of action except having to void the season. If you postpone the season and it isn’t possible to restart for a few weeks – as seems likely – then what do you do about players being out of contract? No one has mentioned that.”

This chief executive had already met with the club’s players to give them the weekend off while reminding them of their personal responsibility to stay fit. He was then rushing off to speak to his directors in order to try to formulate some kind of financial plan.

Nearly every club in the land will be having such meetings this weekend as officials seek to find an answer to the same burning question: how do we get through this?