Wednesday, 9 December 2020

From Cornwall to The Highlands

If not quite Land's End to John o'Groats.

Cornwall and the Highland area of Scotland are two parts of the country that are currently under their respective Tier 1 restrictions which, hopefully, will have a positive impact for the local football scene.

Supporters in England are currently allowed in both Tier 1 and Tier 2 areas but the higher tier does come with tighter restrictions on the opening of bars, clubhouses and refreshment areas.

For leagues where clubs straddle a number of tiers (with no spectators at all allowed in Tier 3) it makes planning for a potential restart very, very difficult.

An excellent piece in The Non-League Paper at the weekend with interviews across all of the Step5/6 leagues highlighted just how problematic this is, both currently and going forward.

The main league at that level for Cornish clubs, the South West Peninsula League has been able to restart and hopefully supporters will come out in good numbers to their local clubs through the winter months.


Up in Scotland, the Highland League finally got underway for 2020/21 on the last weekend of November with 11 of the 18 clubs (in the Highland and Moray areas but not Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire) able to admit fans.

Many clubs are starting to embrace cashless payments and online ticket sales and the support of local communities has been invaluable (along with the excellent Donate A Ticket platform) in getting clubs to this point although the cancellation of many of last weekend’s matches served as a reminder that it is not just Covid-19 that will cause disruption over the coming months.

This weekend there is Scottish Cup action before a full, scheduled programme of Highland League fixtures next weekend

Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)