THE suspicion that women's football has returned to being an afterthought for influential members of the Scottish FA board was given credence by the events of last week.

Having met with SFA president Rod Petrie, vice-president Mike Mulraney and chief executive Ian Maxwell on Monday night, the points made by representatives of the clubs and Scottish Women's Football were ignored on Friday. That's when the governing body announced the three week suspension of the Scottish Building Society SWPL will be extended for at least a further two.

That this also applies to men's football below the Championship is neither here nor there. If it's allegedly good for the morale of the nation to allow the top two men's leagues to continue, why not the top two women's ones?

That was one of the points made on Monday and it was backed up by facts which demonstrate that players, many of them on professional contracts and from other countries, will suffer from the indefinite continuing suspension. The anomaly is shown up by vice-president Mulraney's part-time club, Alloa Athletic, being allowed to play matches while the fully professional Rangers women's team can't even train.

My understanding is that Petrie, Mulraney and Maxwell were told that the SWPL clubs wanted to recommence training at the start of February. And that furthermore they wanted the season to resume at the end of the month.

Testing costs, it was suggested, could be covered by money from a $500,000 Covid relief fund which Fifa gave the SFA last year. This was specifically allocated to help women's football through the pandemic.

None of these points were addressed on Friday. If the $500,000 can't be used to help the clubs, what exactly is it being used for?

The inconsistencies in the SFA approach are illustrated by the fact that the governing body won't allow Glasgow City, who are prepared to pay for their own testing, to train in a safe environment.

Yet, paradoxically, some of the City players will be permitted to train. Any who are selected for the Scotland squad to play Cyprus and Portugal, as well as those at other domestic clubs, will attend specially arranged SFA training sessions.

Rangers, who are likely to have most players in the Scotland squad, would, like City, be entitled to tell the SFA that if their contracted employees can't train at club level they're not going to be released for SFA training sessions either. However, this is unlikely to happen as it could compromise the players' international careers and possibly trigger internal dissent.

All of which begs another interesting question. The Cyprus and Portugal games are meaningless in terms of reaching the Euro finals. But if they weren't, and Scotland had to win both to qualify, would the SFA have been so quick to shut down SWPL1 football? It hardly seems likely.

Meaningless or not, Scotland goalkeepers Lee Alexander and Jenna Fife, as well as all the domestic outfield players, will go into next month's double-header having not played a game since December 13. That's not something that would have been countenanced for the Scotland men's team.

 

IT'S not just the Scotland players who are being harshly treated. There are 27 players in SWPL1 who have played international football in the last two years. Most of them are Scottish, but they include five from the Republic of Ireland and three from Northern Ireland.

The latter have massively important Euro play-off games coming up in April. Had Rangers' Demi Vance and Megan Bell not currently been injured, how would Northern Ireland head coach Kenny Shiels have felt about these players not even training at their clubs, far less playing games?

Players from other countries have come to Scotland to play professional football. Yet they find themselves confined to barracks for a second prolonged period – which is why Summer Green parted company with Celtic in midweek.


AND ANOTHER THING


AMIDST all this, the SFA announced that their men's under-16 head coach Stuart McLaren will be in interim charge of Scotland for the February double-header.

McLaren has a more rounded background than many in football – he has worked within the prestigious Australian Institute of Sport programme as well as at Loughborough University – but inevitably such a low key appointment reinforces the view that women's football is barely on the SFA board's radar.

Had this not been the case there could have been a permanent head coach in place in time for these two games – something that would have allowed the appointee to hit the ground running when the World Cup qualifiers get underway.