Non league football has never fared well in the bleak mid-winter, but when you add the Coronavirus pandemic into the mix, even the most optimistic fan could be forgiven for thinking that another season is set to be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Yet non-league football continues to endure.

Having come to terms with a Christmas separated from friends and family, twelve Western League sides, including Welton Rovers and Radstock Town, braved the weather and the virus to produce Boxing Day performances, a reminder of the old normal during the new.

2020 was the year we were told what we couldn’t do. We couldn’t welcome visitors to our homes or meet friends down the pub.

Rightly or wrongly, football has found a way to continue. It remains one of the few leisure activities we can still enjoy, be it to participate or spectate.

However, this doesn’t sit well with everyone involved in the game, as with the rest of society, opinion is divided across a spectrum that believes at one end that we should carry on regardless, whilst at the other, there are genuine concerns that public health shouldn’t be jeopardised for the sake of a hobby.

The Western League First Division has completed 27 per cent of its fixtures, at a time when it would normally have completed around half.

The winter weather will only create more pressure on a fixture list already stretched to breaking point. The Football

Association have extended the season to finish on May 28th, with an option to push further back into June.

The FA appear to remain committed to concluding this season, one way or another, to allow for their scheduled restructuring of the non-league pyramid.

Whilst fans have been asking when this season will end, the FA have been considering how.

The question of a “threshold of matches” triggering a “mechanism” to determine final league places, was raised for consultation with Clubs in November, yet the FA had been reflecting on this question in their own scenario planning, since before this season began, considering “a pre-determined policy if we achieve 25, 50 75 per cent of the season”.

The popular belief amongst many in the game is that the Points Per Game threshold for completion should be at least 75 per cent, yet it is interesting to note the FA’s lowest threshold of 25 per cent, a level already surpassed in both the Western League’s Premier and First Divisions.

Surely a season can’t be concluded after only a quarter of matches have been played?

Whilst the battle to conclude the season continues to be waged in the corridors of power at Wembley, there is growing evidence that an unparalleled year of disruption and anguish is taking its toll at the very heart of the game.

Football, like any sport, is built on rivalry and competition on the field of play. Yet these rivalries risk spilling into the public domain, propelled by social media.

There can be no doubt that the volunteers charged with getting matches on, have been stretched to breaking point in their efforts to make football Covid safe.

So why would clubs and fans now take it upon themselves to post images of breaches in social distancing and other less savoury infractions?

Clubs will be investigated, fixtures will be lost. Football will never be the winner, only the authorities who view Coronavirus legislation as a pedant’s charter, an open invitation to criminalise individuals who, under any other circumstances, would be considered law-abiding citizens. Covid-19 risks portraying the football family as something you’d find occupying the Queen Vic on Albert Square, rather than the Little House on the Prairie.

Now is the time to hold the line. Clubs unwilling to put players, spectators and volunteers at risk should not be forced to play until this crisis has passed, they certainly shouldn’t be subjected to abuse for expressing their concerns. But why shouldn’t those who wish to play be facilitated in doing so? When the Western League suspended fixtures in December, a host of clubs continued to play Friendly and FA Vase matches. Football is a game that refuses to bend to the will of the virus, yet it is also a game that threatens to eat itself.

If we are to emerge from the shadow of this crisis in the Spring, we must think now about what that brave new world will look like. Will our society and our game be stronger together or will the game’s inhumanity to itself leave deeper scars than the Coronavirus could ever hope to create?

Marcus Brody