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Continued shutdown leaves Peterhead captain Scott Brown with more questions than answers

Brown Peterhead
Scott Brown in action for Peterhead

Peterhead captain Scott Brown believes the continued suspension of lower-league football has thrown up more questions than answers.

And the Blue Toon skipper says players need to know whether the campaign can be completed.

Football in Scotland below the Championship will remain in cold storage until March 1 at the earliest.

Clubs in League One and Two had offered to carry out coronavirus testing – like their Premiership and Championship counterparts – in a bid to restart.

However, their plan was rejected and it now appears impossible for League One and Two’s 27-game seasons to be finished without an extension to this term.

Even if the seasons were reduced to 18 league games, they may be difficult to complete with no restart date in place.

Balmoor midfielder Brown said: “We now need to know one way or another what’s going to happen, it’s not fair to keep players and clubs hanging on and hanging on.

“We’ve played 11 games this season and it’s increasingly unlikely now that we’ll finish the season in my opinion.

Scott Brown, left, in action during Peterhead’s last game before the shutdown against Cove Rangers on January 2.

“It’s tough, because everyone has worked hard to get to this point, so then for it to be stopped as it was brought up more questions than answers when there are other clubs in other leagues that are allowed to continue and we were prepared to meet the same rules and can’t continue.

“It is hard and it feels like there is division between the part-time and full-time clubs at the moment.

“We’re on the wrong side of it just now and it’s tough. It’s a question for people higher up than me, but I don’t understand why there are rules for some and rules for others? It doesn’t make sense.”

For players, Brown says the sooner they know whether they will be returning to action, or if the season will be cancelled, the better.

The 26-year-old added: “It was nice to know either way because if we were given a definite start date we could actually get excited for it and, if the season isn’t going to start again, then you could wind down for a couple of weeks.

Peterhead boss Jim McInally has also been critical of the decision to keep the lower leagues in cold storage.

“The hanging on and hanging on just adds to the unfairness we already feel to be honest.”

Brown says prior to lower-league football being suspended by the SFA on January 11, the Peterhead players felt safe as a result of the protocols in place at training and on matchdays.

He says the Blue Toon squad would have been happy to return under those guidelines or with the beefed up measures proposed by League One and Two clubs, which includes weekly Covid-19 testing.

Brown said: “What we would have had to do didn’t really matter to the players, we just want to get back to training and playing.

“Before it was stopped we never felt under threat or felt like we could catch it, because the guidelines we were following were so good.

“I asked all the boys how they felt about returning and everybody was happy to go back without testing.

“That shows you that we didn’t feel we were being put at risk. We have had players who have had Covid-19 this season.

“But it hasn’t spread throughout our squad and that’s due to the guidelines that have been in place and doing things properly.”