IT’S becoming a real bore that our main sporting authorities, particularly the Scottish Football Association, the Scottish Professional Football League and the Scottish Rugby Union, continue to get in a fankle over the way to end the 2019-20 season.

They are only taking their lead from the likes of FIFA, UEFA and World Rugby who have all been as much use as Donald Trump’s sunbed in confronting the issues raised by the coronavirus pandemic.

With the proviso that I do not care a jot how sporting seasons are ended in the face of the death and terror being unleashed across the globe by Covid-19 – and we haven’t really seen what is going to happen in Africa yet – I would like to make a suggestion: just postpone every tournament that is still ongoing and cram them into next season which hopefully we can get started in October, though I hae ma doots.

I actually understand one of the root causes of the SPFL and SRU’s problems. Our professional football clubs, with the possible exception of Celtic, need money now because they have no cash in the bank. They hardly ever do. Some are already existing on borrowed money and may not survive the pandemic anyway.

Largely because of the way that professional football developed in this country, most clubs are run as companies with boards of directors whose first responsibility is to the shareholders of the clubs/companies – in many cases, those shareholders are either the directors themselves or businesses in which they are involved. There are a lot of business people on club boards, and a brief sounding among a few old pals informs me that quite a few of them are aghast at the thought of their clubs, i.e. companies, trading while they are insolvent. It’s a real possibility that will occur over the summer, especially if season ticket sales are poor, as they may well be – would you pay for a season ticket when you don’t even know when the season will start and you’ve already lost money on the truncated season Scottish football is having?

I have absolutely no doubt that clubs will go bust. Under the Companies Act, directors have a legal responsibility to keep losses to creditors at a minimum and, as such, if directors knowingly allow trading whilst a company is insolvent, they could incur personal liability for company debts and then be told they can’t practice as directors even of their own businesses. Hence the Gadarene rush to get in money, any money, before insolvency is declared.

Now any first-year business student will tell you that trading while insolvent is forbidden, even in football where the normal regulatory rules often don’t apply, so Scottish football needs to come up with an immediate rescue package for all affected clubs – that’s most of them – and then a long-term plan, including league restructuring if necessary to re-start the leagues and cups and grow the game again.

In this current crisis, no company or club has the right to survive. The SRU, for instance, are looking at a massive problem coming their way later this year. Forget the tour to South Africa and New Zealand, it’s just not going to happen, and I cannot see how the Autumn Tests will go ahead, which SRU chief executive Mark Dodson estimates will mean a £12m hit to the balance books.

That money is needed to help fund the national team, Edinburgh Rugby and Glasgow Warriors and the Super Six. So now we will find out if Dodson et al at Murrayfield are as clever as they make themselves out to be. I actually think that if any sporting body in Scotland can get through this horrendous situation then it’s the SRU, largely because of the fact that while the top end of the sport here, the professional and semi-professional game, is taking a financial battering, the “other ranks” will bear up and pull together as the community assets they are.

Meanwhile, SRU president Dee Bradbury is ploughing on with the Governance Task Force, which just seems ludicrous to me. Yesterday we learned that the Task Force will deliberate past the May 31 deadline for motions to be submitted to the SRU AGM, which on the face of it would mean that Bradbury, who must step down at the AGM, will be unable to bring forward any recommendations by her Task Force which will presumably be taken over by incoming president Ian Barr.

May I respectfully suggest that President Bradbury put the Task Force on hold until after the AGM. There is no pressing urgency for governance restructuring in this time of crisis, and everyone connected with Murrayfield should be concentrating on how to keep Scottish rugby from imploding.

To adapt the quote of Hibs’ Chief Executive Leeann Dempster, the “meteor” won’t just be hitting Scottish football but rugby as well. Time to duck.