Chilling reality of sport in life and death era...
‘Testing and tracing are key to battle against virus’
THIS pandemic has undoubtedly been a nightmare, but it has also been every creative sports photographer’s dream.
There is a gallery of shots out there that have already chronicled the strange sporting times we live in — empty terraces occupied only by players’ gear bags; locked-out spectators finding a viewing point from the roof of parked Transit vans; players being rubbed down by physios in the presentation areas of empty stands — but none captured the absolute perversity quite like a shot from Brendan Moran of Sportsfile during the Kerry SFC clash between champions East Kerry and Feale Rangers last weekend.
As the East Kerry players took their half-time rest on the concrete area of Fr Sheehy Park in Listowel, only an unplastered wall separated them from the graveyard next door.
Life, death and sport framed with the click of a button. It couldn’t but chill.
But what should send a shiver down the spine of the GAA is that the regulations which afforded the photo opportunity are unlikely to be sustainable into the near future.
Central to the reopening of the GAA season has been the enforcement of the regulation keeping players in outdoor spaces where the scientific evidence says that transference of the virus is 19 times less likely.
It is absolutely central to not only opening the season, but keeping it open.
In shutting dressing rooms and indoor spaces, the GAA has created an environment that ensures team-mates are deemed casual contacts when infections occur.
Despite the sometimes garbled messaging on this, this means that when there is an infection, only the diagnosed individual has to quarantine for two weeks rather than the entire group.
That is essential to the sustainability of the championships, which would otherwise be exposed to either long delays or the forced withdrawal of teams.
However, a winter inter-county championship will make extending those return to play protocols a considerable challenge.
In one of few blessings, the timing and localised nature of the GAA’s reopening in mid-summer facilitated those protocols, but that changes when inter-county training resumes next month.
And when the championship begins in early November, the logistics of having teams travel to games around the country, of perhaps requiring overnight accommodation pre-match and, in wintery conditions, having access to a dressing room rather than taking shelter from a storm against a wall or under roofed stands, will all have to be addressed.
It brings back the singular issue that dominated the GAA news agenda in the early months of lockdown – the availability of testing for players as a key layer of security against the virus.
When the GAA decided it was not necessary back in May, that decision was rooted in pragmatism and understandably so.
‘We did think about that (testing) very carefully. We looked at the logistics. The sheer scale of testing required in amateur sports were the roadblock. We’re going to have something in the region of half a million players returning,’ admitted Dr Kevin Moran, Donegal team doctor and a member of the GAA’s Covid-19 advisory group.
The capacity, either physical or financial, did not extend to facilitating the regular testing of players from over 2,000 clubs nationwide — and likely never will.
But as the focus moves to the inter-county season, it becomes far more feasible.
The numbers involved are still challenging, but are now manageable. Allowing for 30-man squads and extended management teams across both codes, the numbers involved are likely to be in excess of 2,500.
Allowing for testing twice a week, as has become the norm in professional sports, and that’s 5,000 tests a week at the intercounty game’s peak activity.
But in a condensed knock-out Championship those number will reduce dramatically once the games begin.
But the costs involved are considerable – especially in these cash-strapped times.
It is thought that every individual public Covid test costs the State €98, and that is still only a rough estimate of what the costs would be if outsourced to monitor the GAA’s playing population.
The likelihood, though, as the GAA’s elite teams get back, is that travel, time and temperatures will all combine to ensure that the contact between intercounty players, management and support staff will become closer and less casual.
If that happens, it could be that the GAA cannot afford to refuse to go down the testing route, despite concerns, articulated by Dr Moran, over a significant rate of false negatives and false positive, in fit people under the age of 35.
Even so, the reality remains that testing and tracing are key components of the global battle against the virus and that will not change.
As for how testing will be resourced, the duty is on the Government, whose leading figures Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar have not been shy about paying lip service to the symbolism of getting an All-Ireland championship played, and the effect it would have on the country’s morale.
When the bill for doing so arrives, it will have to be picked up by the State.
Better that than placing further financial burden on the GAA, especially when testing is in support of the personal health of players and, by extension, the wider community.
Talk is cheap and this is no penny-pinching matter.