St Mirren manager Jim Goodwin believes Scottish football will eventually be played in the summer months.
Goodwin faces a second postponement at Fir Park inside four days with their William Hill Scottish Cup replay against Motherwell in doubt because of persistent rain.
The Saints boss saw some players overcome knocks because of the free weekend after playing seven matches in 25 days following the end of the winter break.
Goodwin is a supporter of the winter break and would go further by playing more league games over the summer.
“I am a big fan of summer football,” the Irishman said. “I understand the festive period is a big one in Britain because financially it’s great for clubs – you have people who maybe live abroad coming home at that time of year.
“But the reason we have the backlog of fixtures is because of adverse weather conditions.
“The likelihood is in the summer months you are not going to get as many postponements.
“I would love to follow the League of Ireland. They started Friday and will play right through to October and be off November, December and January. It makes sense to me. The weather is bad in the months we find ourselves playing in.
“The attendances in Ireland have dramatically increased due to that better weather.
“If I was wanting to bring my six-year-old son to a game of football I would much rather bring him in the summer months when we could maybe have shorts and a t-shirt on as opposed to the weekend when we were wrapped up head to toe, getting soaked on the way into a game and then soaked on the way back out, and it’s taking you four or five hours to heat up when you get home.
“I think that’s the route we are going to end up going down. In the next 10 years I can certainly see an argument for summer football.
“We want to see good football on quality grass pitches. We are playing through the winter months where it must be a real headache for the groundsmen because the grass simply doesn’t grow from November to March.”
Goodwin is desperate to avoid a backlog of fixtures and get Tuesday’s game on but Saturday’s call-off was not a major blow.
“I wasn’t too despondent,” he said. “I spoke to Stephen Robinson as well, I think they were quite happy because they have one or two injuries.
“From our own point of view, we have had a lot of games of late so a weekend off didn’t really bother me. It allowed us a little bit more recovery for players who needed it.
“We had one or two with niggles who would have had to play through it on Saturday. We now have a clean bill of health apart from the serious ones.”
