ON Wednesday night, Hurlford United salvaged something from what was ultimately a disappointing season, by beating Auchinleck Talbot in the Ayrshire Cup Final, at Meadow Park, Irvine.
The blast of the final whistle in that match was significant, since it signalled the end of a long season in Scottish football - we are now, officially, in the close season.
That said, even before the United and Talbot players had taken the field, the first of our senior players were back in pre-season training, ready for the 2015-16 campaign; which just proves how the game is now an all-year-round one.
Of course, at senior level, the game is fully-professional (even if some of the game's administrators would surely have been, lang syne, struck-off for incompetence, if the game was governed with the same rigour as the traditional professions such as teaching, medicine, the law and accountancy). The professional clubs have to have 24/7x52 weeks
income streams.
This fact will have repercussions when it comes to answering the growing clamour for a re-cast season, usually condensed into two words: "Summer Football".
**Meander warning - I am about to go off on a tangent**
Summer football is seen, somehow, as un-British. We must have a clear division in seasons, which would allow talented chaps to play both football in the winter and cricket in the summer.
Sadly, the days of the dual-international are long gone. The last man to play football and cricket for England (the real pinnacle of dual-internationalism) was Arthur Milton, who played on the right wing for Arsenal and was capped just once, against Austria in 1951.
Milton who played for Gloucestershire, won six Test caps in cricket for England, scoring a century on his debut against New Zealand in 1959. He had a much-longer cricket career, captaining his native county and having a street in Bristol, where he was born, named after him.
The last Scotsman to represent us at cricket and football was Andy Goram, but, Walter Smith put the kybosh on "The Goalie's" cricket career - which had seen him on Lancashire's books as a youngster, in case he damaged his hands.
Playing both sports was comparatively simple in the days of Milton, less-so in Goram's time; today, I would say it was impossible.
As a boy, growing up in 1950s Ayrshire, I enjoyed reading the DC Thomson comics - the Adventure, Rover and Wizard. Back then, in the pre-24-hour TV days, you actually had to READ these comics, actual words rather than comic strips were the order of the day.
And, what heroes we had: Alf Tupper, "the Tough of the Track", welder and plumber from Monday to Friday, Olympic 1500 metres Champion at weekends; "Limp Along" Leslie - shepherd and midfield genius; Nick Smith, veteran former England inside left, who with his lifelong friend Arnold Tabbs, who played left-half, would take-over a struggling Division Three North club in some town of dark satanic mills, win them promotion and at the same time, win the FA Cup, before moving-on.
Then there was my particular hero - "Bouncing" Bernard Briggs, the goalkeeper who "only lost one goal" - in the pre-match FA Cup Final warm-up at Wembley. As an impressionable wannabe young goalkeeper, I loved the idea of having a goose egg, a big, fat zero, after my team's name in every result.
Briggs was a small-time scrap metal dealer, whose mode of transport was an old Norton motor bike, with an old cast-iron bath as a sidecar. He played for Darbury Rangers, the team "Limp Along Leslie" captained, in the winter, while in the summer, be was a leg break bowler in county cricket. He was also, the England goalkeeper and an England Test cricketer.
These days, Briggs would be so-busy dealing with VAT returns and elf n safety to have time to train, far-less play.
Right, where was I? Yes, Summer Football.
When I turn up at late season Ayrshire junior games, such as Wednesday night's Meadow Park affair, I always find it interesting to bump into guys who, when you meet them at Rugby Park, or Somerset Park during the senior season, are somewhat dismissive of the juniors - which they sometimes don't see as "proper" football. Yet, there they are, enjoying the craic on sun-dappled terraces. You wonder then - what is wrong with summer football?
The reasons why not are myriad. Not least amongst these is the thorny question of when would the league shut-down? You can never properly forecast the British weather for a start.
In Scandinavia and on the bulk of mainland Europe, they know more or less that the snow will arrive in late November/early December and remain with them until early March. Leaving aside the lack of hard winters, due no doubt to global warming in recent years - we never could accurately forecast when games in Britain would be forced off by poor weather.
I remember playing rugby on Ayr Beach during the harsh winter of 1962-63, but, that winter apart, every other one has been a lottery. There would normally be a heavy snow-fall around the time of the old RAC Rally in November, maybe a heavier fall around New Year and a third bout of snow in late February, but, this no longer seems to be the case.
Back in the day, we didn't have pitch protection, or artificial surfaces, so, games were off. This isn't as much of a problem today. But, the problem remains - we cannot accurately forecast the weather.
So, we might decide to shut down from the second Saturday in December say, until the first Saturday in February, only to discover we have reasonably weather over this period, with three feet of snow dropped on us on the Friday before the season is about to resume.
Any change to Summer Football will not happen before season 2016-17, so, what might be the time-scale?
Assuming WGS gets us to Euro'16 in France, season 2015-16 will be extended until 10 July, 2016, which will give our home-based international players a very short break - the qualifying rounds of the 2016-17 European competitions will begin within two weeks of the Euros ending.
If we take it that the 2016-17 season kicks-off on 23 July, we have 22 weeks until the (theoretic) winter shut-down comes into play on the weekend of 17/18 December.
If our theoretic new seasonal calendar kicks off on Saturday, 5 February, 2017, and carries on through to the end of June, we have 20 weeks until the last Saturday of June, 2017.
This means, we have 42 weeks into which we have to compress 38 league games, plus the Scottish Cup, the League Cup and that diddy cup for the diddy clubs, which seems to have a new name or sponsor every season.
So, there will still be a need for midweek games. At least, under our theoretic new calendar, there will not be midweek games in deep mid-winter; unless we have our nightmare scenario of crisp, cold but dry weather over Christmas 2016 and into January, 2017, before white-out conditions in February.
A winter shut-down in Scotland could work, but, I would reckon, only if we bring in further changes, to league compositions and competitions.
This, of course, will bring us into further discussions as to how we make Scottish football, leaner, meaner, more fit for purpose in Europe. These aspects of change, I intend tackling in my next posts.
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