BARROW BOYS EYE EFL SHOT
‘We are top team’ – Evatt
IAN Evatt believes his Barrow deserve to be promoted to the Football League should the season not be completed.
The Bluebirds boss admits he was “massively” surprised at the National League’s decision to continue playing games in light of the Covid-19 outbreak.
As it happened, the league leaders’ game with Wrexham yesterday was postponed because their opponents had players with symptoms and it looks likely the season will have to be paused soon anyway when the government announce the next steps for dealing with the worldwide pandemic.
The National League chose not to follow the lead of the Premier League and EFL in suspending their competition until April 3 at the earliest, and Evatt felt player safety should have been considered more highly.
Huge
“Finances are a huge part of the game at our level, clubs run hand-to-mouth so they need gates to be sustainable – I get it,” Evatt told The FLP. “However, when the Premier League are calling games off, the EFL are calling games off, the rest of the world are calling games off, I think there comes a point where we have to come in line with everybody else regardless of money.
“As I said, it’s obviously a difficult decision. But National League players – for me, my players in particular – we have a responsibility to them and their families as well. Playing games at this time didn’t feel like the right thing to be doing.
“People are saying have a bigger backbone but it’s a bigger picture than that. These players are humans. They have loved ones that are potentially susceptible – why take the risk?
“At the moment, it’s a funny way of saying it, we have to take our medicine and get on with it. We have to be guided by everybody else. It looks like the government are going to ban mass gatherings next week. For the sake of one more fixture, are we any better off ? Probably not.”
Barrow have been outstanding this season and are four points clear at the top of the table. Evatt acknowledges any decision will be met with disagreement and, while he wants the season completed, he doubts that will happen.
Unprecedented
“This situation is unprecedented – there’s a lot of ifs, buts and maybes,” said ex-Blackpool defender Evatt, 38, who called for clarity as soon as possible. “Do I envisage football returning on April 3? Definitely not. Then what happens from then?
“The National League and below is slightly different to the Premier League and EFL in that there’s a lot of players who are going to be out of contract in early May, so clubs can’t physically continue into late May and June. What happens, I don’t know.
“From our point of view being top of the league, we’ve been top for four-and-a-half months and no one has really come close to us. In the interests of fairness, clubs have had 37 games to be where they are now. Do I think that’s a fair reflection of where the league is at? Definitely.
“At the minute we’ve got to sit on our hands and see how it plays out. It’s going to be a difficult period for everyone, it’s going to be challenging, but we have to all stick together as a football community.”