'National League may not return until January ' - reports

Yesterday it was announced that the remaining fixtures would be cancelled after the majority of clubs voted in favour of ending the season immediately.

The National League will now draw up options for how the season should finish - such as null and avoid, average points per game, promotion and relegation - and then clubs will be asked to vote again.

Completing the play-offs has not been ruled out.

There are suggestions that fans may not be allowed back in football stadiums for several months due to the need to keep social distancing even when the peak of the coronavirus is over.

This would mean that some leagues could start next campaign with games being played behind closed doors and streamed live on TV.

But according to the Mail on Sunday’s chief sports writer, Oliver Holt, the National League may not start the 2020/2021 season until next January because, according to his sources, there is “no appetite” for non-league clubs to play games behind closed doors as they desperately rely on matchday revenue to pay players’ wages.

Chesterfield’s last home game came against Harrogate Town March 3 which would mean the Spireites would go 10 months without a match at the Proact.

A medical expert has told The Times it could even be 18 months before supporters are allowed back in Premier League stadiums.

Zach Binney, an epidemiologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, said: “The thing that people need to understand, epidemiologically speaking, is that every person you add to a gathering adds risk.

“Five people is more dangerous than two, ten is more dangerous than five, 500 is more dangerous than ten, 60,000 is very, very dangerous.

“Even if you have really low community-based transmission, it only takes a few people in that crowd of 60,000 for there to be a risk of something very significant happening.

“As a scientist, I hate to say I am ever 100 per cent sure about anything but I am as close to 100 per cent as I’ve ever been that we cannot return to filled-to-capacity stadia until we have a vaccine. Period.

“The best guess is about 18 months, could be a little more, could be a little less.”