Comley: It’s been upsetting to see the behavioural changes
Mark Nisbet’s former Maidenhead United teammate James Comley is another who’ll hope to recover some of the losses his coaching business will incur through this second lockdown.
Aside from pulling the strings for the Magpies’ midfield, Comley is a fitness instructor and personal trainer who also runs in-school and after school sports classes for children.
They’ve been put on hold for the time being, and he admits it’s going to be another tough time for a lot of people working in the sports sector.
Thankfully, the Government’s classification of National League clubs as elite means he’ll be able to continue playing for Maidenhead United through this period.
Like Nisbet, he’s frustrated that children are being denied the opportunity to play and train outdoors in COVID-19 secure environments, adding that it was difficult to see the behavioural
changes from certain children when they returned to his sessions after the first lockdown this summer.
“It’s been tough, as it is for a lot of people,” he said. “Especially those working in the sports sector. I haven’t been able to do my normal after school clubs. It’s frustrating, but what can you do. Quite a lot of people are in the same boat.
“With schools they just want to protect themselves and keep everything as low risk as possible. But we had a good run in the school holidays.
“It felt like I was back to normal and thankfully the weather was good because we did it all outside.
“I’ve also done some after-school classes, but with the nights coming in and the weather being horrendous recently. It’s been hard so I’ve now knocked that on the head until after Christmas. But, with the way things are going, I don’t know when we’ll start them back up.”
Comley added: “It was good to see the children come back in from July.
“We kept them socially distant and in their own bubbles when we had larger groups. Some days we would just let them play because we could see they’d missed it so much. But what was a little upsetting was to see some of the behavioural changes. Kids I’d never seen cry before or were usually the happy ones or would normally just get on with things, they were now crying if they lost games and I’d never seen these kids do that before.
“You could see the effect of them not being around other kids. They were completely out of sync.
“The interaction of the younger ones with each other, the games they play, the things they say, to us it’s nonsense, but to them it all makes sense.
Without that interaction it’s hard for them. At least they’ll be doing sports during the day this time. But we’ll just have to be patient.”