Gills won’t force players 3G pitches are key for future

Gillingham Maidstone

Gillingham manager Steve Evans insists no player will be forced to play if they are uncomfortable about doing so. A June 1 date would be the earliest any professional sport can resume in England, and there is still a big question over whether the Football League can return to finish the season, but the Gills are ready regardless. If they play again in June, it will be under the government’s second phase of their road map to exit lockdown, and would mean playing behind closed door matches with rigorous testing.

Evans – who has taken a substantial pay-cut during lockdown – is ready to go back to work with the players but won’t be pressuring anyone to join him.

Speaking before the new guidelines were introduced, the Gills boss was asked if a player would be expected to play, regardless.

“Mentally you have to be right,” said the Scot. “I don’t think it is a collective thing, I think it is an individual thing. “It may hurt the team, it may be one of our better players, it may be a squad player, it could be anyone.

“The Professional Footballers’ Association, the League Managers’ Association and the Football Association all spend money on tackling mental illness and stuff and this is a big test.

“If a kid is saying to me ‘gaffer,

I am really worried about this’ then I would have to take them out. I am not going to force a footballer to come to work and play on the basis of this virus. “I am ready to work, my players are ready to work, but I would think privately some of these young men’s family would have concerns until we hear further medical evidence that we are good to go.”

The Football League have spent some time investigating how testing procedures for coronavirus will work if they get the green light to resume action. Prior to the weekend there were reports that the EFL would be scrapping the season but a glimmer of light has emerged following the government’s new phased exit from lockdown. Much will depend on whether the EFL can get their testing procedure in place but even Evans – who is keen to finish the season – admits there could be complications.

He said: “Imagine a scenario, we are all tested, we are all clear, we train for two or three weeks, we are ready to go, then one player has the symptoms on the Friday before our first game. “It means all of us and everyone we have come into contact with are isolating for 14 days. It would mean we couldn’t play Fleetwood, Coventry too, or Rotherham (the next three teams on Gills’ original fixture list). That would just be us, not allowing for any other team. “We have to do it with extreme caution and thought, with regard to the players and staff. “We need to be pretty damn careful but if I get the medical people telling me from higher levels we are good to go, I will be on the training ground. “I am missing football more than people can imagine. Football runs my life. I am a manager that watches four or five games a week, I am a manager who goes into his apartment in Gillingham and doesn’t go home for three weeks, I am that manager.

“I love my players to be focussed and dedicated and most of them are, if not them all. “We have a plan in place to isolate the training, meaning it is apart, where we sit people to change and get ready, we have got plans in place if we start, and games that we would play, but it’s all maybes at the moment because we don’t know.”

Maidstone co-owner Oliver Ash believes the subject of 3G pitches in the Football League should be back at the top of the agenda during the current crisis.

The lack of football has hit clubs hard throughout the country and Mr Ash feels now is the time to allow clubs in the EFL to use 3G pitches as a way of helping them to survive the crisis and thrive thereafter. Mr Ash was responding to recent comments from former Football Association director Dan Ashworth, now technical director at Brighton. Mr Ashworth spoke about a number of different plans to help football survive the coronavirus shutdown and said bringing artificial pitches back could help bring in funds for clubs.

There has been a ban on artificial surfaces in English professional football since

1995 because of issues which included fears over long-term injuries.

QPR, Preston, Luton and Oldham all played on plastic surfaces prior to the ban. Maidstone United incorporated a 3G artificial pitch when building their new stadium in 2012 and have benefited greatly from the income generated as they can open it up throughout the week. They say the pitch brings in around £400,000 a year in revenue and the club has recorded profits every single season since the pitch was installed.

Maidstone, together with Bromley and fellow nonleague sides Sutton and Harrogate, are backing the call for change within the EFL. At present teams wishing to gain promotion from the National League into the EFL would have to rip up their 3G surfaces and replace them with grass.

Mr Ash feels now is a time to focus on the subject again. He said: “With this terrible Covid-19 crisis affecting so many people and damaging so many football clubs, which are vital to their communities, we have to think outside the box if we are to avoid financial meltdown.

“Going forward it will all be about sustainability. Clubs will have to find ways of making their businesses sustainable in the interests of their supporters and their actual survival. One obvious way of achieving this is by installing a 3G pitch.

“We have now had five years’ experience of 3G pitches in the National League. We have seen supporters and players embrace the change in playing surface; we have seen that the highest quality 3G pitches encourage good football but also allow physical players to get stuck in.”