Even for those leagues that have played on throughout, the 2020/21 campaign has often felt like a slog, matches having the air of something that has to be fulfilled - a means to an end to get to where we need to be for next season more than anything else.
When I've caught games on a Friday evening, the Scottish Championship has felt a little like that as clubs battle with the challenges of covid and their own financial futures while also trying to push for promotion or beat the drop.
At this level the absence of supporters, in the stands or on the terraces, seems even more pronounced as the people missing are not just a background to the game but an intrinsic part of it.
At the time of writing it could be either of the above outcomes for Inverness Caledonian Thistle as they have games in hand on the other teams.
The club from the capital of the Highlands did recently issue a more favourable outlook in terms of their own finances after some very difficult years although recent weather-related postponements highlight how every penny counts.
Formed from a merger of two Highland League clubs in August 1994, Caley Thistle came to wider prominence with their cup win over Celtic just over 21 years ago and the famous headline it produced.
Later this month, live on BBC Scotland, Caley will host clear Championship leaders Hearts, the club where Thistle boss John Robertson retains legendary status from his playing career.
That link, and the help given to Hearts during their own battle for survival a few years ago, has led to a great initiative from the Federation of Hearts Supporters with travelling fans unable to attend the Friday night fixture, and perhaps make a weekend of it.
So, virtual tickets are now on sale, priced either £5 or £10 with the latter being accompanied by a hand-signed ticket and letter from John Robertson himself.
https://ictfc.com/ictfc-announce-first-ever-virtual-tickets-v-hearts
Although the 2020/21 season remains, for many, frozen in time and not yet officially over, it's inevitable as the weather bites that thoughts turn to better times ahead.
For Horndean FC, of the Wessex League, that means getting Five Heads Park in tip-top condition for spectators and players from Under 7's to the First XI.
That means, of course, working out the best way of maximising revenue while complying with whatever rules are in place when football gets the green light to start again.
Restrictions of one kind or another are likely to be with us for a long time to come and having seen a bewildering number of changes to what they can and cannot do over the last ten months, one of many challenges facing clubs is to how to future-proof themselves against them.
Horndean have launched a crowdunding campaign to help do just that, a £6,000 target being set.
Pledges of £20 or more will be able to claim (or donate) rewards such as match or season tickets and sponsorship packages.
Waiting for ‘The Pink’, the Coventry Evening Telegraph football paper, on a Saturday evening remains one of my most vivid childhood memories, the van arriving around 6pm and eager hands passing over their money before rushing off to digest the afternoon’s reports.
It was a tradition I continued after moving to Sheffield but the battle for survival facing the ‘Green Un’ and others became more evident as the years passed, a number of price rises in quick succession and later delivery (if at all) on a Saturday evening as production moved away from the city centre.
Of course, all of the information is available at the touch of a button nowadays but I still don’t think the format of seeing all of the scores, scorers, attendances and tables, on one page has ever been bettered.
That has always been one of my favourite features of The Non-League Paper over the years, the disparate strands of the pyramid in England pulled together on the page in addition to the promise of the fixtures for the week ahead from the Northern League down to the South-West Peninsula.
Those simple pleasures are currently denied us, with only the National League season still being played, but the paper remains a focal point for the game at all levels outside of the EFL as the debate over what becomes of the 2020/21 campaign begins to intensify.
Despite the unprecedented challenges faced by the club in 2020, North Ferriby FC chairman Les Hare was able to issue an upbeat New Year message recently in which he said he thanked the ‘wonderful community, loyal sponsors and fanatical supporters’ for getting the club into a position where it is well placed to manage its way through the current crisis.
The re-birth of The Villagers, after the demise of North Ferriby United in 2019, definitely ticks the box in my search for good news stories and it was clear to see when they visited Hallam FC last March (the final game I saw before the initial suspension of football) that something positive was in the air over in the East Riding with a healthy travelling support making the journey on a Tuesday evening.
The latest @VFTAE has been a good read over the weekend. A classic fanzine mix of football, music, beer and local gossip and helping @FareShareHull too. pic.twitter.com/zkyobKbvcA
— Affordable Football (@AffordableFooty) January 18, 2021
As more and more leagues around the UK face up to the prospect that the 2020/21 season may not re-start, I thought I would focus on some brighter stories over the next few weeks.
Downton FC of the Wessex League are making plans for a better future with their community clubhouse project and generous support to date, with £5,500 raised, has enabled work to begin.
Further donations are needed to allow for a Sport England grant to be unlocked with more information available on the club's Crowdfunder page.
Update on the Clubhouse fundraiser - #looksamazing pic.twitter.com/MSAYdq11RC
— Downton FC (@DowntonFC) January 9, 2021
The FA Cup Third Round, so the narrative goes, has lost some of its sheen in recent years, tacked as it has been onto the end of the increasingly busy festive period and with so many of the matches involving those teams in the bottom half of the Premier League or the upper reaches of the Championship having the air of unwanted additions to the campaign.
Attendance figures are often highlighted as an indicator of reduced interest in the competition, unfairly in many ways but not a problem this coming weekend as the cup will be played behind firmly closed doors.
For Marine and many others that is, of course, a real shame, but one positive spin-off is the number of games that are being made available on a free-to-air basis.
Across BBC platforms there are eight live ties being shown and, in addition to those matches not being shown on the Beeb or BT Sport, a further eight can also be viewed on the FA Player, registration for which is free.
Marine have had a huge response to their ‘virtual’ tickets for the Spurs tie while Chorley are running something similar for the visit of Derby County (a game that looks set to go ahead despite the Rams first-team having to miss out due to a coronavirus outbreak) and supporters of both Newport County and Cheltenham Town are raising funds for their respective clubs in lieu of missed matchday revenue.
