Imagine that game yesterday had been tight.
How much time was added on at the end?
Three minutes?
If you’ve been watching the English game results and score-lines you’ll know that those days are over with south of the border.
I’ll give you one example; Chesterfield v Dorking was a game I had my eye on. Chesterfield were a goal up on 90 minutes, and I have no idea what time was allotted to be added on but the home side conceded a goal six minutes into it, and then won the game nine minutes in.
You would think nine minutes would be enough, but having had two goals in added on time even more was added on until the whistle blew for full time. With 105 minutes on the clock.
If you had been forced to endure a Livingston-Aberdeen style horror show (in which the away club didn’t get a shot on target in the match; awful start from them) that might be more than you were willing to sit through, but we’re painfully, massively, short-changed here and one of the pet hates that many of us have is the failure by refs to add on enough time.
It doesn’t seem to affect Ibrox games, this affliction. They got six minutes at the end of that game yesterday and under current rules where in God’s name did that come from? Hilariously, they were not able to use it to create as much as a chance.
Chesterfield v Dorking was not an outlier yesterday.
It’s just the game I happened to be following on one of the betting apps.
But I looked down the list of matches; over a dozen across the professional leagues in England were still going when I checked. Many were well beyond the 100-minute mark, a full ten minutes of time added on for stoppages.
This needs to come to Scotland, and we should embrace it.
We are going to come up against teams in this campaign who waste time from first minute to last and we’re not going to get the proper amount added on.
Not this season. But when the next one starts I’d love it if these rules were in play, and if ten more minutes of football at the end of a second half sounds too much then imagine us in a game where it’s still tied, and hearing that.
I recognise that Ibrox will also benefit from this change, but having watched them yesterday I can safety say they could have played for a week and not even got a shot on target. No additional time on the clock is going to make the least difference to a game where a club plays such woeful football and is banging its head against the brick wall.
I want this change badly, and next season seems like a good time to introduce in, when everyone is prepared for an extra ten minutes on a second half, when people can plan for that and accommodate it better. Because right now, we’re being short changed.