Graeme Robertson has revealed East Kilbride YM and a host of other amateur clubs were forced to rip up their friendly plans at the weekend after Lanarkshire was forced into a mini-lockdown.
The YM gaffer - who is also secretary for the Caledonian League - had been due to take his side to East Dunbartonshire to play Harestanes in a friendly on Saturday, but that had to be binned after an announcement from the Scottish Government on Thursday.
Following a rise in Covid cases, Lanarkshire joined East Renfrewshire, Glasgow and West Dunbartonshire into new restrictions, which also bans football clubs from playing teams outwith their local authority border.
It's a move that has now been lifted for this weekend, but it caused Robertson and others a real headache last week.
He said: “I’m the league secretary for the Caledonian League and I had loads of friendly permissions for teams at the weekend, but come the lockdown announcement, all these games were deemed null and void and teams had to start playing teams within their own council areas.
“There was quite a lot of people changing games at the last minute, tearing things up and starting again.
”We had a game planned, but because of the new restrictions in place with not being able to go across local authority borders we had to cancel it.
“It’s really difficult to get games as it is, especially when it starts narrowing down to council areas.”
YM instead played an in-house friendly with their Greater Glasgow side, running out 4-2 winners.
For all 28 players involved, it was their first game since March 7, but they still produced an entertaining 90 minutes with six goals. Connor McCann, David Cameron, Craig Tocher and Cammy McCulloch scored for Caley, with Kyle Rankin and Stuart Gordon replying for the GGPL team.
After last week’s chaos, YM have a trip to Lesmahagow planned and are hopeful the competitive action will kick-off at the start of next month.
Robertson added: “If all goes well with friendlies and there’s no more issues, we’ll be back in a couple of weeks, all going according to plan.
“The fixtures are done but we are holding them back until we get official word from the SFA that we can start the league on October 3.”
Meanwhile, YM’s Kirktonholme ground could be set to host matches from the end of next month.
The club are awaiting delivery of a new perimeter fence to cordon off their two pitches and Robertson said: “The fence is arriving on October 9 and once we have that in place, we will open up the pitch for games, but not before then.
“The pitch is good to play on now, but we’ll wait until the fence is up around the end of October.”
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