Elgin City may never know if this was going to be their best Scottish football season yet, says defender Matthew Cooper
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MATTHEW Cooper fears the 2019-20 football season will be cancelled and Elgin City may never know if this was going to be their big year.
With Scotland in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic, health chiefs have advised that restrictions could be in place for another three months – placing huge doubt that sport will resume during that period.
Elgin defender Cooper said football is not a priority at such a difficult time, but reflected on what could have been for his club’s aspirations for progress.
He said: “With the announcement that we might have to isolate for 12 weeks, it doesn’t look promising that you would be able to finish the season.
“There’s been talk of playing behind closed doors which wouldn’t be any use for the clubs who aren’t getting any income, and it’s still putting the players at risk.
“We are seeing some (players) down south who have contracted it (coronavirus) so it’s a hard one.
“They (Uefa) said it has to be finished by June 30, which doesn’t give us long.
“It’s difficult trying to come up with ways of making it work. It could be a month before it all peaks so even making a decision on how long things will close down is difficult right now.”
Cooper is currently in isolation at his home in Portsoy, with his job as a roofer and his football at Elgin City put on hold for now.
Elgin were on the crest of a wave in their mission to make the League 1 play-offs when the plug was pulled on Scottish football in March.
(See Elgin City TV video below of the club's last match against Cowdenbeath before the shutdown)
The Moray club had hit their best form of the season to reach third place and had plenty momentum to carry into their final eight fixtures and possibly the play-offs.
“You work all season to get on a wee run and we had won seven out of eight games coming into the business end of the season,” Cooper said. “So it was the worst possible timing for us.
“We were third at the time, the highest position we’d had and a lot of big wins in amongst that patch with eight games to go.
“We were just on a high. In the changing room everyone was buzzing and we just couldn’t wait for the next game to come along. Now we’re in a place where we don’t know when our next game is going to be.
“We were on such a good run, it would be gutting to just end it like that and not know what could have been with this team. But at the end of the day we are just hoping we will have a club to go back to.”
Former Caley Thistle stopper Cooper is in his seventh year at City and is under contract for another season.
He hopes people will rally behind the Borough Briggs club, who like many other SPFL outfits have been hit hard during the football shutdown.
The bulk of the City squad were willing to take a two-thirds wage decrease during the closure, but Cooper and his team-mates could now move into furloughed employment, where the government would pay 80 per cent of their salary.
Cooper hopes it will be enough to keep his club afloat and sees better times ahead if they can keep the bulk of their current playing squad.
“A lot of boys are signed up for the next year or two. The core of it will be good, and hopefully the rest will want to stay and keep it going.”
