Premier League players could be unwitting guinea pigs for the GAA

AT a time when people are still sick and dying from Covid-19 in this country, when people are dying in their hundreds daily in the United Kingdom, and when America is tearing itself apart after what appears to be another racially motivated killing of a black man by a white police officer, it leaves us a little uneasy to be thinking let alone worrying - about when and how sport will resume here. And yet this is where we are at.

America will continue to cannibalise itself over its abject failure to deal with the systemic racism therein, and unfortunately people will continue to die from Covid-19 for the foreseeable future, albeit hopefully in far smaller numbers and to the extent that some sort of normal can resume for humanity.

Needless to say, the return of sport, and the calls for same, have been becoming louder and more frequent over the last couple of weeks as the country starts to loosen up after several weeks of lock-down and restrictions. Suffice to say that cabin-fever has well and truly set in, and the natives are getting restless...

In Germany - a country that escaped the worst reaches of the virus, unlike Italy, Spain and Britain, but wasn’t without its Covid-19 deaths either - the Bundesliga has resumed, and in a couple of weeks the English Premier League is expected to get back underway, after what will have been three months of a suspension of action. In both cases, the action will take place in empty stadium, bar a few media people and the summer seagulls.

I haven’t seen any of the action from Germany, bar a couple of snippets on the news outlets, and truth be told, I haven’t gone looking for any. Augsburg versus Hertha Berlin didn’t hold much attraction for me last February, and nothing has changed on that score now.

The last couple of months have been difficult for sports fans, with the total lack of live action in any discipline, but if I’ve managed to cope thus far, I think I’ll be fine for another couple of weeks until Liverpool resume their Premier League title challenge, which will be secured with two more wins - or less if Manchester City fail to win all their remaining 10 games.

We’ve heard all the old jokes about Liverpool waiting 30 years to regain the League title only to get screwed over by a pandemic when they had a hand and four fingers on the Cup back in mid-March. Of course, it’s no laughing matter when one considers what it was that halted the Premier League and just about every other social activity and interaction world-wide for the best part of three months and counting.

When one sees what measures and precautions the Premier League and the 20 clubs involved are having to take in order to reboot the season, one can appreciate how fraught with danger the whole exercise is. The latest diktat is that any player who tests positive - every player and staff member is being tested for coronavirus twice weekly now - will have to self-isolate for 14 days, although they could return to the club’s training facility on day 8 for individual training away from their team mates.

As a professional league, and a multi-billion pound industry, it’s obvious how much pressure there is on all concerned - clubs, players, broadcasters, etc - to get the season completed, not least for champions-elect Liverpool, as well as those with Champions League qualification hopes, and, of course, those at the other end of the division who are fighting the perennial relegation battle.

Little by little sport is coming back to us. Horse racing is back under way in England - Killarney jockey Oisin Murphy had a winner in Newcastle on Monday - and next week golf clubs will be able to hold local competitions.

All the while the GAA are watching and waiting. By the end of the week Croke Park will issue its own roadmap to get back to action of some sort, where the expectation is that they will row back a little on the previous pronouncements that little or nothing would happen before the end of the summer. It’s more likely now that GAA pitches will open before July 20, and that some form of collective training, even in groups a small as four or five, will be permitted sometime this month.

GAA President John Horan’s recent declaration that there would be no action until the start of October, at the earliest, might have been a little premature or over-cautious, but so be it. If GAA players can start to back training earlier than the middle of July then great. If games can be played before October, better again.

Whether anyone really wants an All-Ireland Championship played behind closed stadium gates remains a very real question, and one that possibly won’t be answered until we’re actually in the middle of the competition, if, indeed, it does go ahead under those circumstances.

To that end it will be hugely informative for all concerned with Gaelic games to see how the Premier League plays out over the next couple of months. Will the echo of boot on ball reverberating around empty stadia start to ring hollow as the days and weeks pass? What will we make of Liverpool winning the title - as they surely will - and celebrating in front of an empty Kop Stand, if they secure those definitive points at Anfield? Will those players even be allowed to hug and high-five each other under the circumstances, or will some vigilant health official/ steward be there to remind them of their social distancing obligations? And what if a key player, or more, from one team tests positive for Covid-19 and misses three or four crucial games as they self-isolate?

As much as inter-county players - and the rest of us - are chomping to get back to playing or watching Gaelic games, we have to be certain that we want to resume in the right way. Empty stadiums might cut it a provincial championship level, but when the action moves to Croke Park do we really want an All-Ireland semi-final or final to be played before a crowd of faded blue seats and a grey Hill 16? Would that really bring out the best in the players? Would a victorious homecoming parade amount to the players driving down from Dublin individually only to be met by a few hundred people spaced out along the roadside, with no Denny Street parade, in the case of Kerry bringing Sam back to the Kingdom?

All-Ireland Finals and homecoming parades might seem an impossibly long way off now, but if a football and hurling championship are to be played in a socially distancing Covid-19 world, then they are the very things to be considered before any ball is thrown in.

More than one GAA person has cautioned about this group of players or that group of players being made the guinea pigs for the wider GAA community as a return to play is considered. And rightly so; no individuals or group should be pushed out there ahead of time as some sort of bell-weather for the rest of us.

Nevertheless, I’d imagine everyone with a vested interest in Gaelic games - even the fíor Gaels who abhor that foreign game - will be watching the Bundesliga and Premier League extremely closely over the next few weeks, and not because they have any interest in whether or not Liverpool make it to the Promised Land.