NOW REFS TESTED
Officials with virus may miss rest of the season
REFEREES and assistants will report to their nearest Premier League training ground this week to be tested for Covid-19 for the first time.
Ensuring match officials are negative is one of the final boxes to be ticked before the season can restart.
The PGMOL are confident they have sufficient numbers to cover the upcoming matches, even if some referees test positive. In player and staff testing, there have been 13 positives and 6,261 negatives.
Any referees testing positive for coronavirus would miss the restart on June 17.
One source close to several officials suggested it could even sideline them for the rest of the campaign. That would hit referees hard financially, because a significant part of their salary is based on per- game and performance-related bonuses.
Once the season restarts, referees are likely to test themselves from home rather than continue to report to their nearest training ground. The Premier League are footing the cost of coronavirus testing for their officials, while the EFL are taking care of their own.
There are no plans for referees to get together before the resumption, which suggests there will be no fitness tests.
Mike Dean, Michael Oliver and Co have been keeping fit from home, with the PGMOL sports science department monitoring them from afar.
Referees have taken part in refresher courses together over Zoom, in which they have watched and analysed clips from games earlier this season, including VAR mistakes. Officials have not been able to take charge of clubs’ in-house friendlies, but that could change once referees have tested negative for the virus.
Meanwhile, Premier League clubs have virtually halved the amount of time players spend in contact with each other at training.
As revealed by Sportsmail last month, the Premier League are working with data technology company STATSports to devise coronavirus-safe sessions.
The company pinpoints any occasions when players go within two metres of one another and measures the average duration of these ‘incursions’.
STATSports co-founder Sean O’Connor said: ‘The early indication is that we’re seeing a substantial drop in the average incursion time in training, going from 3.3 seconds pre-Covid to 1.8sec this week.’