As anyone who sat through Aberdeen’s torpid season-opener back in August will recall, if they have not been successful in obliterating it from their memory banks, it felt as if the Dons and Livingston could play until April and not score a goal. So it proved.
If we are to be grateful the teams managed to double their combined output of shots on target – from two to a bumper four – during Saturday’s latest East Lothian stalemate, then it is the smallest of mercies.
A much larger one is the increasing likelihood the fixture will soon disappear from the league calendar, with the sides playing in different divisions.
It is almost fitting these two teams should serve up such symmetrically stupefying spectacles at both the very beginning and the bitter end of their seasons, for they exemplify the puzzlingly sterile campaign both have endured in between.
Neither ran out of the tunnel eight months ago expecting it to be the start of a dour fight against relegation, but neither ever did enough to fire the prospect out of their orbit.
Though it has now almost completely blotted out the light of salvation for Livingston, over on the east coast it remains only a partial eclipse in Aberdeen.
For the final few matches they can turn their seasonal plan into a pinhole camera: allowing them to see it through without sustaining lasting damage, before being scrunched up and thrown in the bin.
A fresh leaf will have been turned over come August 2024, and chances are it will bear very little resemblance to this.
The manager will be new, likewise most of the players, and the ethos may well be, too.
The key will be in ensuring that all three are on the same page, for otherwise it leads back to futile afternoons such as this.
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