LongTimeLurker

In an LL context having artifical pitches in Dalbeattie, Gretna and Innerleithen that could be relied on not to get waterlogged would make a midweek heavy fixture list through the winter months easier to accomplish on a very tight time-limited schedule. It probably only takes one of those to build a backlog of postponed games for three games a week to rear its head in the run in to the promotion playoffs, if there are also lots of SCC games happening for a pack of clubs that are also chasing the title. On the bright side at least they don't have Camelon (the way it was a few years back), Whitehill Welfare or LTHV to worry about from that angle.

The clubs most likely to be in the latter stages are the LL promotion challengers who need to get their season finished in time for the playoffs against the HL champion. They already have 32 league games to squeeze in as well. May should have been used for this not Feb to Apr.

Given how jam-packed the league seasons would be for a 17 club Lowland League and a 20 club WoS premier this season with an Oct 9 start it is frankly astonishing that the LL/EoS fixture secretary would think that allocating six Saturdays before the end of April to the SCC would have been a sensible move. A blazer politics related agenda coming to the fore by the looks of things.

If you wanted to have something useful to rant about you would have picked up on the snippet of info from Lithgae Rose fans that Ian Maxwell was blissfully unaware that clubs from Step 3 downwards in England are allowed to play in front of spectators at the moment. The FA administers the nonleague pyramid so were responsive to the needs of the lower levels. In Scotland in the new pyramid era we have an SFA Board that is SPFL dominated and only really cares about the SPFL, so the lowers levels get largely ignored. That's as strong an argument for why having something like the SJFA around at the moment might have been useful as you are ever likely to get. Meanwhile on COVID statistics there were 17 deaths yesterday across the UK so the "second wave" is in no way comparable to the first one so far and appears to mainly a product of greatly enhanced testing capacity. There are other European countries that are a lot further along with this "second wave" than the UK is and there is no sign yet of deaths rocketing up to April sort of levels.

One of the great ironies of the COVID-19 pandemic has been that it was Europe's "last dictator" that fostered an environment in which citizens were most free to make their own choices. Has there been some kind of medical armageddon there as a result? No, there hasn't because the IFR fatality rate turned out to be much lower than initially feared. You need to have a population that will actually comply like in certain parts of Asia for the nanny state approach to be worth pursuing to the extent the UK has. If you are going to attempt it then the politicians really needed to apply the measures by early February well before the exponential curve was rocketing up. Otherwise it's largely a case of window dressing to deflect attention away from their earlier monumental cockup. You had one really important job Boris and Nicola. Stopping it from getting into the care homes...

The advice initially was masks should be left to medical professionals as they only do any good if worn properly and can actually lead to increased infection risks in certain circumstances when not. I consistently made an effort to wear one properly before it became mandatory as I had experienced first hand how the Japanese are able to combat flu that way every winter, so I follow all the instructions on how to take them off and then clean them properly. That's a prime example of how you can look after numero uno effectively and try to sort out your own personal circumstances so you wind up in the 30% if the initial advice about 70% to get to herd immunity is applicable (probably isn't as high in reality so the odds of avoiding the virus have improved for those that make an effort). Have my own sanitiser at both work and at home etc, so I don't need to rely on anything being dished out for free as I find that isn't always topped up in time, etc. In big picture terms though on whether a nanny state approach with lots of regulations actually really helps, how many people do you see walking around with their nose exposed or with a mask around their neck or on their chin, how many people are pulling it off to speak to somebody defeating the entire point of the exercise, how many are actually taking it off properly and cleaning it daily when they get home, etc? How many people are washing their hands for over 20 seconds the thorough way that doctors and nurses do it and are using hand sanitiser to the full extent they need to be? There's a good chance that the reason there isn't much happening on a second wave in Lombardy at the moment is that things were messed up so monumentally badly the first time around that herd immunity was achieved.

Meanwhile the pubs and schools are still open, so they have pretty much given up on elimination. You actually believe these small things in the outdoors at a football game matter in bigger picture terms if there has only been 18% compliance happening with self-isolation for 14 days upon developing symptoms? The UK has wound up with a curve on deaths per capita population that looks remarkably similar to Sweden's, so there is a genuine question mark over whether the stricter lockdown measures actually made much of a difference given how late in the day they were implemented. The politicians love the limelight and want people to hang on their every word as if it makes a pivotal difference. It's quite possible none of this stuff has really mattered all that much if Ned and Senga from down the street haven't also been following through with it and were going to work, the pub and the shops and sending the bairns (oops weans it's the WoS board) to school in recent weeks when they knew they were symptomatic. The only person that can really make a difference to your own set of circumstances in all of this is yourself, basically.

If you don't feel safe, don't go. There are much bigger issues to worry about on non-compliance elsewhere. Check out the numbers that are being reported on actual compliance with self-isolating, for example. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-self-isolation-uk-rules-symptoms-police-fines-b594240.html%3famp

Didn't seem to stop all the friendlies from happening yesterday, so travel for grassroots level football is already very much happening with the SG's blessing. The only major sticking point at WoS level on having a season is getting spectators in. Transmission outdoors is less likely than indoors and plenty of riskier stuff is happening indoors at the moment with the SG's blessing, so this revolves around getting SNP politicians to explain/justify why Scottish nonleague is being treated differently from the comparable level in England. If enough people highlight the lack of logic in how they are handling this issue, common sense can prevail. We have a democracy rather than a one party state and that's how democracy is supposed to work

Much better sight lines with a third tier, if you could find a way to keep it stable up against a building or something. Having a second tier for seating and using the bottom tier for covered standing would be the obvious way to go, so everybody has a reasonable vantage point. Clubs like Spartans got the design of their ground all wrong from that standpoint.

At the start of the year the mathematical models were based on assumptions that there would be a 2% fatality rate for people getting infected because that was the info coming from Wuhan and that 100% of the population had no pre-existing immunity given it was a new virus in a human context. That was very scary as it meant up to 1 million deaths could easily be on the cards in the space of a few weeks in a UK context. It beggars belief that so little was initially done on testing and the sort of routine sanitising and social distancing methods we are now used to as infections in the UK went through exponential growth from Jan to late March given that backdrop. The lockdown when it came will probably turn out to have been implemented too late to make much difference. We were very lucky that it subsequently turned out instead to be more like 0.2% on the fatality rate after infection and possibly up to 50% having some sort of immune response although there's a lot more research still needed on that second part. What many of us are arguing is that lower level football does not necessarily need to take a back seat at this point and that people need to start moving on from the doomsday scenario that was being predicted by mathematical models back in late March and respond to what has actually happened around the world since then and is actually happening in the here and now in Scotland.

You don't need to leave it to a league to do this. MSPs and MPs will listen to what clubs and individual fans are telling them as well. They are used to mass apathy so will start to get very concerned once the silent majority start calling them to tell them that they are very unhappy about their handling of a particular issue. Camelon have the right idea on this:

^^^At least one of the 592 likes on the first tweet came from an official Kelty Hearts account. Bo'ness United and Troon also backing it from what I could see on a quick skim through. Camelon, Alloa Athletic and Newburgh are among the likes on the other tweets.

Lithgae's secretary works in the NHS, so this is not a club that are clueless as to the issues involved on this.

The assumptions on which that sort of number were based are now out of date. Nowhere in the world that is reaching herd immunity levels of infection because of there having been no effective mitigation is reporting anything even close to a 1% overall fatality rate in population terms. Estimates on fatality rates have generally been scaled back by about an order of magnitude on that basis.

Cherrypicked facts to fit a preferred narrative. Deaths yesterday across the UK were 34 with 6874 new cases mostly mild or even asymptomatic. Comparable numbers back in April would have been around 1000 deaths for under 5000 new cases mostly people with severe symptoms. Mild and asymptomatic cases were not even being tested for the most part back in April and hence were not being included in the official statistics so it is grossly misleading to use a new cases graph against time and not carefully explain that context and also show the graph of daily deaths against time. When viewed in terms of daily deaths the second wave is a faint echo effect related to a lifting of lockdowns so far and has been elsewhere in Europe as well. This is not the pattern that would have been expected if the lockdown had shielded huge numbers of people from being exposed to the virus and points instead to the process of opening up society again over the last few months having been a reasonable course of action overall. Over 500,000 people die in the UK every year and into the tens of thousands of that are always likely to be the elderly from respiratory diseases. The numbers so far for COVID-19 deaths are not hugely worse than those for a severe flu season in other words. At the start of the year there were genuine reasons to fear that there could be a fatality rate of over 2% and the apocalyptic mathematical models reported by the media all assumed that sort of fatality rate with 100% of the population having no prior immunity. That isn't what has actually happened though and European countries that avoided strict lockdowns like Sweden and Belarus did not undergo the level of medical armageddon that was being predicted for them. The data on what actually happened in reality point to something closer to a 0.2% fatality rate and probably less than that when viewed in population terms as the number actually getting infected usually seems to max out at around 20% for reasons that are not fully understood yet but could (this was in The British Medical Journal on 17th Sep so is not some wacko fringe internet theory) be due to cross-immunity from other coronaviruses related to T cells rather than antibodies. Are things completely safe on airplanes and in restaurants? No, but they never are. Are things as bad as was being predicted back in late March? Not even close.

There have been exceedingly few deaths amongst people under 40. As long as sensible precautions are being taken over contact with the elderly and people with compromised immune systems (which everyody should be doing anyway regardless of any football angle) this is not a reason that is likely to scare most younger people off participating.

Have heard it claimed that Donald John MacDonald got his job at Grampian because he answered "I can learn" to the question "Do you drink?" in his interview that was prompted by them being aware that he was a bit of a bevvy merchant. Simpler times on corporate culture.

Think it's more likely that any bailout will be for the SPFL level, if clubs at Nationwide League and above in England get some help because Boris says they can't play in front of crowds until at least March. If so, hopefully the English approach on what happens below that also applies in Scotland, everybody still gets to have a season north and south of the border and the politicians at both Westminster and Holyrood are seen to save the day where all levels of football are concerned. We'll find out soon enough.

We should still be playing 2-3-5 and nane o this 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 shite was a regular refrain in the 1970s. Played in a 2-3-5 in my first ever organised game because the coach was a former Kilmarnock player (so he claimed anyway) who saw things that way. Slamming a ball repeatedly into a wall until none of us flinched and getting a guy he knew from the pub who was just out of jail to instruct us on how to slyly batter opposition players being highlights of his coaching methods. Every generation had to deal with an older generation that had its share of nutters. Think it's the Young Fogeys going on an on about schools being the elephant in the room we really need to keep an eye on though.

If the average punter ever understands how messed up their initial response was the political elite in the UK are in big trouble. Lockdowns need to be done when the first cases are identified Taiwan style to be effective. Waiting until the exponential curve on deaths is already rocketing up was equivalent to trying to use an aspirin to cure terminal liver cancer. If Nicola Sturgeon goes to the UK treasury with a begging bowl for a football bailout as suggested in the link provided by The Ilford Drummer it will be difficult not to follow England's approach because the bailout will probably be targeted only at the "elite level". https://www.scottishfa.co.uk/news/coronavirus-joint-response-group-update-23-september/?rid=13929 ...Neil Doncaster, CEO of the SPFL, commented: “We are engaging with the Scottish Government to underline the existential threat to many of our clubs, and to the huge community, economic and sporting benefits they deliver, if this grave situation continues without meaningful public financial support. We therefore welcome the intervention of the Scottish Government in seeking urgent discussions with the UK Government about a package of financial recovery for Scottish sport.” Hopefully Boris Johnson doesn't try to use Scottish football as a (wait for it yes I am going to use that analogy) political football in the wider game of constitutional politics that is ongoing between Westminster and Holyrood.