David Preece: How do you motivate players in the midst of a global meltdown that’s costing not just livelihoods but lives as well?

Let’s keep Nigel Farage quarantined for as long as we possibly can.

Preferably in a bunker with no contact with the outside world, just long enough for him stay out of the way so as not to further poison any kind of success that can be rescued from then mess he helped engineer. Enough daydreaming though.

I don’t know about you but when I was a kid I was obsessed with the year 2000, telling anyone who’d listen that I’d be 24 by then. It felt like a landmark I was hurtling towards. 18 and 21 didn’t have the same attraction.

In terms of thinking about my future, that was as far as I ever got. The years beyond that were stuff of Tomorrow’s World, the TV show on BBC 1 that would predict what fanciful technological advances would be today’s norm.

Thursday nights, just after Top of the Pops, if I remember right.

Thursday nights always stuck out because that was my dad’s night off and we’d sit and watch the telly together.

Not that I can remember many of Maggie Philbin and her co-hosts predictions but I can vividly remember watching the video toe Sabrina’s “Boys, boys, boys” and my dad remarking that she had lovely shoulders. Obviously a coded statement but I was fond of the video too. I just didn’t yet understand why.

I may be wrong but whatever the boffins at the BBC forecast, I’m not sure it involved people greeting one another by rubbing elbows, shooting fearful looks at anyone on public transport who coughs and more than anything else, NO FOOTBALL.

Perhaps it serves me right for thinking at loud in last week’s column that I was safely isolated from Covid-19 in the frozen north but here in Östersund we too are now football-free for the foreseeable future. And no matches means Monday to Friday toil with no end goal to work towards. It’s frustrating. Like being a second choice keeper all over again.

Don’t get me wrong, I love being on the pitch coaching but apart from game day itself, I enjoy the pre-match preparation of opponents and the post-match analysing of our own performance more than anything.

That’s where the challenge is; spotting flaws in their defensive structure to take advantage of, coming up with the solutions to the problems they’re going to pose.

We had two friendlies against Norwegian sides arranged for the next two weeks, second tier side, Stjørdals Blink, and Rosenborg that have both bitten the dust and the start to the league season, which was three weeks away, is now anyone’s guess. On the upside though at least there is no excuse for not being prepared once it does.

It goes without saying that this pandemic crisis is all more important than football, no matter how problematic it’s going to be in terms of restructuring schedules. For us it’s just another set of curveballs coming our way.

In the past twelve months those kinds of deliveries have been flying at us at such at rate we’re becoming like Babe Ruth.

Football clubs, particularly ones like ours who finally looked like they were just getting back on their feet again after a turbulent twelve months, face new financial obstacles because of the lack of income from match day revenue.

With the uncertainty around when competitive football can restart, this week’s training has presented a challenge motivating players who are potentially looking at another break and embarking on another 6 week preseason when we are already 11 weeks into one now.

But as I’ve made the case to a few who are finding life in limbo a frustrating, the truth of the matter is that we’re still to play a game which is basically an extension of our childhoods whilst we’re in the midst of a global meltdown that’s costing not just livelihoods but lives as well.

I’ve got little care for being labeled old-fashioned or brutal with the truth when it needs to told. My hips are too damaged from my playing days to be dancing around any issues now.