Today has seen the complete Highland League fixture list ,as well as numerous high profile Scottish Cup matches being cancelled due to adverse weather conditions, and the Highland League is now heading towards a major fixture "pile up" at the end of the season.

Buckie Thistle manager, Duncan Shearer, expressed his views this weekend with articles in both yesterdays Northern Scot and in todays Sun newspaper when he said "I think it makes a mockery of the league when you have people calling for matches to be postponed on a Scotland matchday".

"The thing about games up here in the north is that the weather is more unpredictale than anywhere else in the country."

"You know at some stage that games will be put off, so to postpone them when we could be playing is ridiculous."

Jags President, Mark Duncan, gave his views on the current situation by saying "it is obvious that Scottish football is currently going through a period of change".

"Gordon Smith has come in at the SFA with new, modern ideas and a fresh approach."

"The first example of change was the inclusion of junior clubs in this years Scottish Cup competition, for the first time in history of the competition."

"There is currently discussion regarding so called  "pyramid systems" for the future and with the continued cancellation of matches throughout Scotland there will undoubtedly soon be calls for a new "summer season" of football, my own opinion is that this could be introduced within the next five years."

"Gordon Smith has already said that the way ahead for Scottish Football is a season which starts early in March and finishes at the end of November, and with the cancellations we have seen again this week it is difficult to disagree with this view."

"You have to feel sorry for clubs in our league who have matches cancelled late on, at much expense, such as Deveronvale who had a match cancelled when halfway to Wick two weeks ago, and even worse for Wick themselves who had a very late cancellation with todays match at Lossiemouth."

 A proposal for a change to a summer season would of course be nothing new, it is something which was previously put forward by Buckie Thistle, when Raymond Cardno was in charge.

Raymond said "we put forward a proposal to change to a summer season about nine years ago, we did a lot of research and the findings were very positive, there were a great number of advantages,i ncluding better weather for both supporters and players, increased attendances, better pitches, more sponsorship, and of course hardly any more pitch inspections and cancelled matches".

"Although there was a lot of support from a number of Highland League clubs, ultimately, the clubs did not vote for this."

"With Gordon Smith now in charge at the SFA it will certainly be intresting to see if his proposals, which mirror ours of nine years ago, go through.  If they do then I would expect the Highland League to then follow with this change."

Jags President, Mark Duncan, then added to this weekends comments of Manager Shearer by saying "Duncans comments in the press were in response to a proposal which was put forward to have all of the Highland League fixtures cancelled on the day of the Scotland match against Italy".

"We sent a letter to the Highland League, against the cancellation of matches on this date, our main objections were that any change of date should have been arranged before the start of any season (the dates of all Scotland matches were after all known for several months before the fixture list was allocated), that several clubs had sponsors booked for the date concerned and that, among other things, there would be enough  postponments  to deal with as it was, without cancelling a complete fixture list when the weather is good."

"The facts are that the clubs agreed with what we had said and voted to play all fixtures on the date concerned, all seven matches were played and when you look at the current  situation, it is just as well, as I don't know what mess the fixture list would be in if all of the games had been cancelled, the decision made was therefore 1oo% correct."