Hamilton Accies boss Stuart Taylor admits he's baffled by the 500 supporters cap put on football matches by the Scottish Government and feels for fans who will be locked out of festive fixtures over the next few weeks.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced new restrictions on Tuesday to tackle the ongoing pandemic, with the Omicron variant sweeping the country.
And among the latest measures is limiting the number of supporters in stadiums to 500 across all levels of football for at least the next three weeks.
It means their Boxing Day clash with Kilmarnock, as well as huge forthcoming clashes with Arbroath, Queen of the South, Partick and Dunfermline will be played in front of reduced capacities.
And Taylor said: "Why is it 500? Where has that figure been plucked from?
"At the end of the day, if it is giving that guarantee that everyone is safe then that's what we'll do.
"Safety is always going to be the overriding factor.
"But if there's more than 500 is it going to risk the safety of the spectators? I thought that's what the vaccines and the boosters were for, but clearly that's not the case.
"So where do we go with all this?
"It's an outdoor environment. People travel on trains on buses, go to restaurants indoors. They are all fine - but sitting in the fresh air isn't? It's a shame for supporters.
"There's loads of seated stadiums around where social distancing can be in place, so football supporters are losing out.
"We took a good crowd up to Inverness on Saturday - and we need our supporters.
"Not just financially, but vocally backing the lads.
"I know Kilmarnock would bring up more than 500 on their own so it's a huge financial loss for the football club, but it's also a huge loss for the fans because a lot of them will miss a good game of football.
"I think football has been impacted financially and it's sore for owners of every football club."
Accies go into Sunday's clash with Killie off the back of a fantastic comeback win in Inverness.
The victory over the Championship's joint-leaders has the club on a high and they now hope the confidence from that can help them get one over managerless Killie, who sacked boss Tommy Wright at the weekend.
Accies have lost all three of their meetings with the Rugby Park side so far this season and Taylor added: "It was a great result on Saturday and the boys were buzzing after it.
"That belief has always been there. There's been times when we've played really well and not gotten the result we deserved this season so it's nice to see it go for us and there's nothing better than that.
"It's a good journey down the road and we are looking forward to Sunday.
"We played against Kilmarnock here in the quarter-finals of the cup [SPFL Trophy] and that was a very disappointing result, although we felt the performance was good.
"The game down there in the league I felt we did well but never got the win.
"So we are looking to put that right on Sunday."
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