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Coronavirus and the Scottish Championship


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2 minutes ago, Poet of the Macabre said:

Thistle actually were very lucky to not be further adrift at the bottom as they only drew with us thanks to an offside, last-minute equaliser in the final game before shutdown. They deserve no reprieve, whether they get one or not.

I actually think setting up a rule where there are checkpoints that are used if the league is forced to finish early would actually make the early games more interesting.

And I'm sure Thistle fans will not be long in pointing out that in the 0-0 with us the week before they were awarded a penalty late in the game which was inexplicably reversed after the referee and assistant had a chat. Nobody yet knows why since it looked a clear foul. Had they scored it.........

It is what it is. We can all look at places we were lucky or more likely think we were unlucky. It finished when it did and they were bottom at the time, both in fact and in average points. They were still the most unfortunate of the three relegated sides.

The notion of a rule about checkpoints is interesting. Not sure how it would work in practice though. What if as in the Premiership a stray game from the 1st half of the season (Rangers v St Johnstone) was still carrying months later when things shut down? Difficult to make a rule to cover every eventuality.

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1 hour ago, RossBFaeDundee said:

 

I wonder who his Championship source is and how reliable they are? 

A real head scratcher over whether to believe this or not.

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I wonder who his Championship source is and how reliable they are? 
A real head scratcher over whether to believe this or not.

I’m fairly sure it’s Gardiner.

There’s absolutely no chance that Lachlan has changed his mind over this. Don’t know about the others.
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7 hours ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Easy bit first - I assume a fixture list will be drawn up randomly as it always is. 5 sides will get 14 home, 13 away. 5 sides will get the other way round. We had that situation in 14 team leagues for the better part of two decades in the 70s and 80s. Nobody lost a lot of sleep over it. It is anticipated that crowds are unlikely before January anyway so the advantage of an extra home game is limited anyway.

Here’s an interesting thought, as unless there is a form of pooling of gates, there is an inherent harm to those getting the better attended teams once at home versus twice. Perhaps, and this sucks, but might work, a draw is taken determining who faces who twice at home versus once and then the schedule has those two home games in the first and second third of the season while the away match is scheduled in the last third. That way the solo home game is theoretically likely to be the best attended of the three, and should be most likely to have the fewest restrictions.

Otherwise, it would be good if a portion of the away gate for one of the two games was paid to the visiting team, but that seems unlikely.

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36 minutes ago, TxRover said:

Here’s an interesting thought, as unless there is a form of pooling of gates, there is an inherent harm to those getting the better attended teams once at home versus twice. Perhaps, and this sucks, but might work, a draw is taken determining who faces who twice at home versus once and then the schedule has those two home games in the first and second third of the season while the away match is scheduled in the last third. That way the solo home game is theoretically likely to be the best attended of the three, and should be most likely to have the fewest restrictions.

Otherwise, it would be good if a portion of the away gate for one of the two games was paid to the visiting team, but that seems unlikely.

There's only an inherent harm if there is a visiting support (which is fairly unlikely for the first third, though granted I assume the home team may potentially be able to sell online coverage to the away club's support).

In any event, these things happen all the time. You get one of the better supported teams on a midweek date or on a live tv Friday night game instead of a Saturday. Such is life, you get on with it. Let's face it, we're only really discussing Hearts here. Every other club has a low enough travelling support that it's not making that much odds and, according to their message boards, Hearts are boycotting everyone except ICT anyway.

We had Dundee and Ayr games move to Friday night for live tv last season. Dundee one cost us probably 300 - 400 away fans. Ayr may or may not have done the same, we'll never know as the covid suspension called it off at about 6 hours notice. Hearts is a different ball game I suppose with potentially a couple of thousand travelling fans if they don't boycott. But then if they'd not got themselves relegated we wouldn't have that either. You can't really budget on getting 2,000 Hearts fans twice.

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The issue of checkpoints is interesting but the SPFL have now set a precedent. Going forward, this precedent is as good as a rule. If the SPFL was to decide that checkpoints are more appropriate then they'd open themselves up to legal action from the clubs who lost out under the current situation vs checkpoints.

 

Basically, this decision to end the league as is will be the rule for the foreseeable future due to the setting of a legally-binding precedent. 

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2 hours ago, BraeTon74 said:

The issue of checkpoints is interesting but the SPFL have now set a precedent. Going forward, this precedent is as good as a rule. If the SPFL was to decide that checkpoints are more appropriate then they'd open themselves up to legal action from the clubs who lost out under the current situation vs checkpoints.

Basically, this decision to end the league as is will be the rule for the foreseeable future due to the setting of a legally-binding precedent. 

Surely you’d just have to suggest it as an option/rule change going forward and the clubs would vote on it like any other issue?

Like a side finishing 2nd in League One saying they’d have been promoted before play-offs were brought in.

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Indicative vote only today. Need a healthy margin for it to be concluded or will just roll on for another week. Guess it really depends if Doncaster is playing for time or trying to avoid court. If it’s the latter then expect the Zimbabwean election tactics  to appear over the coming days 

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6 hours ago, BraeTon74 said:

The issue of checkpoints is interesting but the SPFL have now set a precedent. Going forward, this precedent is as good as a rule. If the SPFL was to decide that checkpoints are more appropriate then they'd open themselves up to legal action from the clubs who lost out under the current situation vs checkpoints.

 

Basically, this decision to end the league as is will be the rule for the foreseeable future due to the setting of a legally-binding precedent. 

Er, no, because the clubs can vote to put in place actual rules to deal with this type of situation in the future.

And in the continued absence of such rules, the current practice of voting will continue with clubs being able to vote in any way they wish, even if it’s inconsistent with the way they previously voted.

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9 hours ago, D'Jaffo said:


I’m fairly sure it’s Gardiner.

 

9 hours ago, Tynierose said:

I heard it this morning and the source is reliable.

 

9 hours ago, RossBFaeDundee said:

surely not mr. scotchgardiner

 

8 hours ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

Not hard to guess.

I was being sarcastic, FWIW. 

Well aware it's the absolute slaver Gardiner.

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Er, no, because the clubs can vote to put in place actual rules to deal with this type of situation in the future.

And in the continued absence of such rules, the current practice of voting will continue with clubs being able to vote in any way they wish, even if it’s inconsistent with the way they previously voted.

 

And in addition to that, you’d imagine that a checkpoint after 75% of the season would be used to end the season ‘as-is’.

That’s consistent with what happened this season so wouldn’t induce a legal challenge from anyone ‘wronged’ last season.

 

The more difficult decisions would be what to do if only 25% or 50% was reached for example.

 

But they’d be absolutely daft not to put some sort of contingency and clarification in the rules for the same thing happening going forward.

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10 hours ago, Poet of the Macabre said:

Thistle actually were very lucky to not be further adrift at the bottom as they only drew with us thanks to an offside, last-minute equaliser in the final game before shutdown. They deserve no reprieve, whether they get one or not.

I actually think setting up a rule where there are checkpoints that are used if the league is forced to finish early would actually make the early games more interesting.

Edit - Cheers to SD for the detailed and helpful answer. Informative as always.

 

The checkpoints would make it more interesting, but I can't see it being used. SD raises one issue, but I think the biggest one could be you could have a team top at the last checkpoint, collapse and fall a few points behind, the season then gets abandoned and a team who are a few points behind, potentially even a couple of positions behind, are awarded the League. In effect you're pretending the last 7-8 games didn't happen. Obviously if that was the agreed procedure beforehand no-one could complain (but this is Scottish football...), but I think points per game, whilst not perfect, does the best job of using all the available evidence to predict the most likely winner.

You'd think in the aftermath of all this someone could do a study on previous seasons across Europe, calculate who would have won the league using various methods at various points through the season and then compare it to who actually won in the end to see what is the most predictive measure. Can't imagine that is top of Doncaster's list though.

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Would it not be easier to play the first round of games behind closed doors, then round 2 & 3 with fans ?

Therefore no inequality in terms of home v away games split ?

This gets games up and running quicker, but gives more time to sort out the potential bottlenecks in grounds, turnstiles to get in, toilets, programmes, food sales, exits Etc

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1 hour ago, AyrExile said:

Indicative vote only today. Need a healthy margin for it to be concluded or will just roll on for another week. Guess it really depends if Doncaster is playing for time or trying to avoid court. If it’s the latter then expect the Zimbabwean election tactics  to appear over the coming days 

Wait, there are still some non Hearts fans who think there will be legal action?!

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1 hour ago, The Master said:

Er, no, because the clubs can vote to put in place actual rules to deal with this type of situation in the future.

And in the continued absence of such rules, the current practice of voting will continue with clubs being able to vote in any way they wish, even if it’s inconsistent with the way they previously voted.

If you make a decision and lay down a precedent then immediately say that it was the wrong thing to do, then you would obviously open yourself up to legal action. 

If the dust settles and time passes then sure, but its quite a simple case to make - why is this the right decision today but wasn't 6 months ago. 

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