It's not looking good for football, with no end in clear sight for the suspension of the game. With the peak of the coronavirus in Europe still predicted to be over two months away we can suspect the run of postponed fixtures to go on for a while yet.
What to do with the current Premier League season is up for debate with calls for the campaign to be axed going up against shouts for it to be completed as soon as possible. As it stands, it is off until at least April 30 but that date is widely expected to be pushed back further.
So what happened the last time football was plunged into a fixture crisis? Authorities didn't need to suspend matches for a sustained period during the 1962-63 season. Mother Nature did it for them.
The winter of '63 was Britain's coldest for 223 years. Temperatures plunged as low as -20 degrees Celsius which in football terms means a few Newcastle United supporters might even have worn coats - if they could get to a game that is.
What started as freezing fog a few days before Christmas soon turned into 14 inches of snow dumped all over the country. The big chill never eased up for the next three months. The 'Beast from the East' (which lasted little more than a week) had nothing, absolutely nothing, on this icy behemoth.
Football was left devastated. Perhaps the best way to sum up the fixture crisis was that the FA Cup third round, which even over four days is long enough in the current climate, took a whopping 66 days to complete!
It started on January 5, when only three ties (somehow) went ahead and ended on March 11 when Middlesbrough saw off Blackburn Rovers 3-1 at Ayresome Park. During this period there were 22 match days and 261 postponements.
Many of the games fell victim to the snow, frost, ice and even power cuts. Some were called off 10 times. Birmingham City vs Bury for instance had 14 postponements and an abandoned tie. When the game did eventually see the end of 90 minutes it of course needed a replay two days later, with Bury eventually prevailing.
While advertising was common at grounds having fancy commercial streams like an official Bovril partner was an alien concept so the main source of income for all teams was gate revenue. Thus desperate measures were taken to get pitches into some sort of playing condition. Some better than others.
Liverpool got the 1960s version of 'Mr Plow' with manager Bill Shankly calling in a 'ground construction expert' using a tractor to loosen the ice and snow before getting a bulldozer to clear the Anfield turf.
Other clubs took more drastic measures. Norwich City used flame-throwers on their pitch which for about five seconds proved incredibly effective in melting the ice... only for ambient temperatures to freeze it once the flames had dispersed.
Of course if the FA Cup was effected so was the league campaign and some teams went 10 weeks without playing a game. Manchester United were one of the teams struggling for playing time during this period and played friendlies in the Republic of Ireland which had not been hit as bad by the cold weather.
After losing at Fulham on Boxing Day, United did not play another competitive fixture for two months - returning to action with a 1-1 draw against Blackpool on February 23.
Chelsea went a step further in travelling to the warmer climes of Malta but were left frustrated by the closure of British airports which delayed their return.
Other teams gave up trying to keep their pitch up to a playing standard. Halifax Town simply turned their Shay ground into a public ice rink.
Of course the advantage this delay had over today's coronavirus crisis is everyone knew by around mid-March warmer weather was due to return and the catch up could begin.
More impressively, these missed 10 weeks were soon caught up, but only by playing to a schedule totally unthinkable by today's standards. It was one that would require Jurgen Klopp to have even a back up for his Carabao Cup selections for Liverpool.
Sticking with Manchester United, they played an incredible 24 games over just three months in an insanely packed schedule following their run to the FA Cup final.
For instance on April 13, Manchester United lost 1-0 at Liverpool before hosting Leicester City in a 2-2 draw just two days later. After a quick sleep they travelled to Filbert Street for the reverse fixture - going down 4-3. Yes, that's three games in just four days and United only made one change to their starting XI within that period!
The FA Cup final at that time was typically held on the first Saturday of each May and was only delayed by three weeks, with Manchester United gaining a measure of revenge on the Foxes with a 3-1 victory at Wembley.
It proved a season of near misses for Leicester. They were one of the teams least affected by the winter. Ten straight victories from Boxing Day through to March put them on course for a League and Cup double.
But as the snow and ice melted, so did Leicester. Including the Wembley final they ended the year with five successive defeats, handing Everton a first-post war title after they pipped Tottenham Hotspur.
Spurs though could still end the season on a high by becoming the first British side to win a European trophy in the European Cup-Winners' Cup. The season was complete by the end of May... and with time to spare until the next campaign too. If only it was that easy today.