How do you compile a fixture list in Scotland?

Did you know the Links Market in Kirkcaldy can affect the fixtures of your team? What about Ayr Races? Or a Red Hot Chilli Peppers concert?

All of these factors - or constraints, as the SPFL calls them - will taken into account in the 2023/24 fixture schedule, which will be published on Friday.

So, too, were more obvious ones. City rivals not being at home on the same day. Having to play on Sunday after Thursday night European ties. Ground-sharing arrangements and pitch maintenance.

Once all that is factored in, it becomes what Calum Beattie - the SPFL's chief operating officer - describes as being like part fruit machine spin, part whack-a-mole.

And while just a small slice of his overall role, getting a fixture card sorted is one that stretches his patience, resolve and ingenuity. Ask 42 SPFL clubs for an opinion and you'll likely get 57 different answers, so where do you even begin?

First, get the dates in place

Believe it or not, it all started nine years ago. Once it became clear that the 2022 World Cup would be in winter, Beattie's predecessor Iain Blair began - with almost perverse relish - sketching out how the Scottish domestic calendar might look.

That plan has shifted a little in the intervening years, with Blair's retirement in 2021 leaving the task of executing the colour-coded riot of engagements in the hands of his successor.

Clubs were informed late last year of the putative dates, with the league season starting on 5/6 August, the top flight breaking for two weeks after 2 January, and concluding on May 18/19.

Then push the button on the fruit machine...

The morning after Ross County's penalty shoot out win over Partick Thistle in the Premiership play-off final, Beattie called together his staff and told them "welcome to the 2023-24 season; we've got four weeks to get the fixtures out".

That day, the SPFL sent Florida-based company GotSoccer the composition of the divisions and that list of constraints to allow them to run it through their systems. "Then it's a race against time until the launch," Beattie says.

The algorithm used is fiendishly complex given the foibles of Scottish football, but effectively a button is pressed on the fruit machine, all the teams whirl around, and when it comes to rest a list of fixtures is displayed.

That is repeated several times, then a selection of lists are offered for former Inverness Caledonian Thistle youth player Beattie and his surprisingly small team to pore over for issues and potential solutions.

"The closer you get to the end, that's where some judgment calls come into play," Beattie says. "You might solve one problem, but that means somebody's got a horrible trip on Christmas Eve. Ultimately, you need to weigh up those things and come up with the least-worst option.

"You're never going to get a perfect set of fixtures with everyone playing home, away, home, away. That's mathematically impossible even before you start considering our split after 33 rounds in the Premiership.

"And with all four divisions being linked this season because of things like groundshares or city rivals not being able to play at the same time, one change in one division can have a ripple effect all the way through."

What are the particular challenges this season?

Mercifully fewer than last term, when the World Cup fell in the middle of the campaign and the death of Queen Elizabeth caused further unexpected disruption.

However, five teams will start the season in European competition, with Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen all guaranteed to be involved in six group stage matches in the first half of the term.

The latter will definitely play on Thursday evenings, so must have six Premiership matches on Sundays. So might Rangers, Hearts and Hibernian depending on their respective qualifiers.

Fine. But what if their domestic opponents are Celtic, who might have a European engagement the following Tuesday? It'll be the end of August before that is known - far too late to wait and see.

"Having five teams in Europe is fantastic but presents additional fixturing challenges," Beattie adds ruefully. "We've had to build that in, trying to avoid certain matches on certain weekends, which gets quite complicated. The alternative is we would have to postpone those games, which nobody would welcome.

"We know they will play each other at some point so there's no competition integrity issues - it just means you've got to bake that constraint into the recipe. But if you add more constraints, it throws up other things you don't like..."

Just how many of those things there are will become clear as Friday unfolds.

"I will tell you on Friday afternoon how it's gone when I see how many angry phone calls I get," Beattie adds. "There were only one or two last year so if we hit that again, I'll have done okay."