The long-term effect of Covid on Bruce’s Newcastle stars is horrifying. Football CANNOT take any risks... if it has to be halted, that’s what must happen
LISTENING to Steve Bruce talk about the effect long Covid is having on Toon stars Jamaal Lascelles and Allan SaintMaximin shook me to the core.
To find out, a few days later, that infection rates for the virus in football are once again on the rise was another sobering moment.
Premier League bosses reacted by insisting there are no plans to lock down the game after three top-flight games were postponed. If not, there should be.
I just can’t see how we can avoid putting football into isolation for two or three weeks if the second wave of the pandemic continues to spread out of control.
Infections in the wider community are as high as they were in the spring. And the bubbles, which players were placed in to initiate Project Restart last season, have clearly been burst.
Safety should not be the top priority, it must be the only priority.
Bruce’s description of how two of his Newcastle players did not have the energy to take a half-hour walk after falling ill was a warning that football must heed.
I have seen all the crackpot conspiracy theories about what the pandemic is and how it is being handled.
And I am also aware that the science tells us that the ill, the infirm and the elderly are most at risk of being hospitalised by the virus – or worse. If you are young and fit, then the chances that Covid will seriously damage your health are supposed to be minimal.
But try telling that to Lascelles and Saint-Maximin and their families.
I think we are heading towards another disrupted season.
Hopefully, if or when that happens, it will be just for two or three weeks while the R-rate is once again brought under control and players will be able to maintain a decent level of fitness.
It is not the scenario anyone wants. Football has at least given the nation something to look forward to during the last nine months of living under restriction.
But I don’t think we can keep putting players in harm’s way. However small the risk.
This is a unique situation. There is no handbook that football can turn to for guiding the game through a pandemic.
So the first rule must be to keep everyone safe.
Hopefully, as the various vaccines being manufactured get rolled out during 2021, we can return to normality.
I have heard it suggested that clubs should look to get their players and staff to the front of the immunisation queue by buying up their own stockpile of shots.
That isn’t an option that appeals to me. The whole world is fighting
for health at the moment and, in my view, it is only right that the most vulnerable people in society should be first in line to be vaccinated.
The football family has proved already this year that we do care.
That we don’t live in our own little world of privilege.
Maybe the football authorities – the FA, Premier League, EFL, UEFA and FIFA – were naïve in thinking that this season could be ‘normal’.
I understand all the arguments about protecting tournaments such as the FA Cup and League Cup and also maintaining the international calendar.
But with so little wriggle room, any second or third coronavirus wave was going to present huge problems.
If the season is put on ice, then the knock-on effects would be massive.
I can’t see how players would be able to cope with a busier schedule than the one they are already enduring.
So do we extend the season? And, if so, what would the consequences be for the delayed Euro 2020?
Does it get put back until later in the summer – and administrators then have to find new dates for next season?
Or should the tournament be shelved completely? Those are a lot of questions. And, no doubt there will be a myriad of different answers.
But what I do believe is that it is unrealistic to ask national teams to fly in and out of 12 host cities to play a tournament that might be played in empty stadiums.
That is a risk too far .
And it must surely only be a matter of time until there is an announcement to confirm that the Euros will be staged in one host country.
I’ve got one hope for the New Year – and, unfortunately, it’s a bit of a cliche.
But I would like to wish anyone and everyone good health and better times in 2021.