By Chick Young BBC Scotland football correspondent

The crisis within Scottish football deepens. And this time, dear friends, it's serious.

Your old reporter was invited - summoned, some may suggest - for heart-to-heart talks and coffee and biscuits at the Mount Florida mansion which is the palace of our beautiful game.

There, in Hampden's corridors of power, where, as one door of the SFA closes, another of the SPL slams in your face, the bodies which run our game traditionally refuse to communicate with one another.

But that may be a dawn of new hope you see breaking. A New Year: new philosophy.

Morton's Scottish Cup tie with Celtic has fallen victim to the cold snap

BBC Radio Scotland's Sportsound listeners and readers of this column will be aware of my impatience with the authorities' failure to re-arrange the season into a well-known phrase or saying involving the words "common" and "sense".

My huffs and puffs of frustration filled the airwaves as SPL chief executive Neil Doncaster broadcast his reluctance to introduce a winter break of any substance, or refusal to bring the season forward to July.

I suspect I had the sound of a drunk being refused one for the road at closing time, and it was never my intent to air my annoyance to the world.

I really must gain a better understanding of how microphones work.

In any case, Mr Doncaster clearly felt my anguish.

The message was unequivocal: "Biscuits and coffee… and a chat, Wednesday morning, if you want."

The man tells untruths, I knew it from the start.

Never mind liking a lot of chocolate on my biscuit - not so much as a plain digestive. Deep is the financial peril of our national game.

But talk we did. Am I breaking a confidence to reveal that in many ways he shares my pain?

Too late if I am.

There is a huge mistake in the fact that next season's SPL campaign will not kick-off until the middle of August.

This is at least a month too late, given that our clubs will be knee-deep in Europa and Champions League qualification, and will later complain - in the wake of their inevitable early exit - about the lack of domestic fixtures to sharpen their match fitness.

I wanted the beginning of July. Neil Doncaster said it had to wait until after the World Cup, so that would be later in the month. But he was singing from the same hymn sheet, just missing out a couple of verses.

Furthermore, the SPL stinks of stagnancy. We need play-offs to generate excitement at the bottom, their epicentre reverberating all the way to the top of the First Division.

SPL chief executive Neil Doncaster has been pressed about a winter shutdown

Their introduction south of the border has been quite the most exciting thing to come out of London since they built the M1 and created an accelerated route back to civilisation.

"Agreed," said the SPL's chief executive.

Well, that was a shock. I didn't realise he thought that way at all.

So if the ayes have it and my gang is multiplying at the rate of Old Firm fans at the first whiff of a UEFA Cup final, why is major change not in full flow?

Doncaster and me… we could have been the Castro and Che of a football revolution.

I'll tell you why. Because the chief executive is the hired hand of the clubs and chairmen, individually, will always protect their own precious - and in most cases precarious - empires.

MY SPORT: DEBATE Give your thoughts on a possible winter shutdown

It takes the vote of the clubs to bring about change and Scottish football has never liked this concept.

It would not surprise me to learn that there are those who think it was much too rash to dispense with ropes for crossbars.

You couldn't play football in this weather with penguins for referees and we are ripping the knitting out of fans by expecting them to travel the length of the country to watch games and then telling them an hour before kick-off that the game maybe, might, possibly, be off.

As for play offs? Boards of directors in the bottom six have just come over all faint.

This isn't just turkeys voting for Christmas, it's Gordon Brown voting Tory. In any case thanks to the chief executive for the coffee, but shame about the biscuits.

Although actually, given the choice, I'm not worried about the Kit-Kat.

I'd just settle for the break.

E-mail this to a friend

Printable version