Dale chief wants campaign suspended due to Covid

And Dale chief Bottomley believes the suspension of the season is getting closer.

He said: “My own view is that we’re closer to a suspension of the season because it’s happening day by day, club after club and no matter what precautions you put in place – which we have done at our training facility and within the offices – you can’t stop people having contact in other forms of life.

“I think maybe a suspension of the season is what’s required at this moment in time.”

He said that the club cancelled the fixtures after a player tested positive for the virus.

“One of our players has tested positive,” he said. “It’s happened because of what’s happening in the world right now, and you can’t stop people living with people who test positive for Covid.

“We have a situation as a club and we’re not going to break any government advice or guidelines on that either. It’s just a simple situation that we have an outbreak of Covid among the playing staff.”

Bottomley also said that the matches will have to be rearranged when the club has a full complement of players – and stressed that Rochdale won’t be the last club to suffer cancellations.

But he said that the cancellations paled into insignificance when compared to the rising cases and under-pressure hospitals across the country.

He said: “I hear on the news that the hospitals are at higher capacity than they were at the height of the first wave of the pandemic. So us cancelling three games this week is absolutely irrelevant in comparison to that.

“Follow every bit of advice you can, keep safe and just do everything you can.”