WE BATTLED IT TOGETHER
The Havant & Waterlooville boss praises the united front displayed by Step 2 rivals and explains how clubs will prepare for their forthcoming play-off campaigns amid the Covid guidelines
SEEING how everyone has come together to get our play-offs played has restored a bit of my faith in football.
It’s become very apparent the £75,000-£100,000 figures originally quoted were overestimated. As a club we’ve actually managed to get the costs down to around £20,000 by all pulling together.
Every single person at the football club has been given a role and they’re doing each one brilliantly.
I know our rivals in the National League South are all doing similar and that’s been the key thing. We were being frightened into what the costs might be.
Our players are taking substantially less wages to take part in these playoffs and give us a shot at promotion. It’s been great to see. Rivalries have been put to one side.
As football managers we live and thrive in a very competitive environment. We wouldn’t be in the game if we didn’t have that edge. We’re probably all a bit Marmite!
I don’t mind saying I fell out massively with Neil Baker and Jon Underwood at Slough when our league game earlier in the season was abandoned.
But it’s the measure of good people that you can get back on the phone a few weeks later and resume a very good relationship.
Bakes found the cheaper testing kits so we pay £30 instead of £150. Bakes made sure we all knew about it.
Everyone has been helping each other. We are very lucky here at Havant & Waterlooville that our vice-chairman, Tim Mellor, is an eminent surgeon so he has written our protocol for us.
There are pages and pages to go through. A lot of it is very sensible as opposed to a tangible cost.
We’ve sent that down to Dorking Wanderers, for example, even including training schedules to help with the understanding of what return to sport phase needs to be completed and when.
The camaraderie between clubs has been fantastic. York City and their media department deserve great credit. We got together with them and pushed out the #Promote2 hashtag on our social media channels when the play-offs looked in the balance. Without that we wouldn’t be in this position now.
People are wide of the mark when they say clubs are bankrupting themselves over this. Most have set-up GoFunding pages, we’re still hopeful BT Sport will pay to screen the games and, if they don’t, then all of us will stream our games and share the money.
The National League have said they will help finance the final, which will be a boost for the eventual hosts. Lots of people are coming together and lending a hand.
On Thursday, July 2, we start our testing. We get the results back inside 24 hours. Every Thursday thereafter the players will be tested – the 9th, the 16th, the 23rd and, if we are fortunate to get to the final, the 30th.
The first week – Phase One – the players will train in groups of five plus a coach for non-contact training. We will have five on one half of the pitch, five on the other. They will then go home and we will have the next two groups of five.
There won’t be any food or drinks at the ground. The players bring their own and have to arrive in separate cars, dressed ready to train. The bibs, balls, cones and GPS vests have to all be disinfected after every session.
Phase two allows to progress into contact training, still with limited numbers, and then after 14 days we can go into 11v11 contact.
Whether it’s testing day or not everyone will be temperature checked when they turn up at the ground. The players have also got to fill in a daily medical report of how they’re feeling and they’re encouraged to avoid places like supermarkets if they possibly can.
We’ve got hand sanitisers everywhere – you can’t move in our club without seeing one – and we’ve set-up one-way systems throughout the ground.
Social distancing in dressing rooms is also a big consideration. We’ve got to create an area in one of our big bars because the away dressing room isn’t big enough for 18 social distancing players and we’ve even taken walls down in our home one to make it bigger.
We’ve got a Health & Safety executive on board and are in contact with the Safety Advisory Group as well as the Police.
Every club has to have a Covid officer while our physios take up the role of medical officer – we’ve also got an away team liaison officer so that when our visitors arrive they are led directly to where they need to be.
It’s not rocket science. In many ways it’s being overcautious. Just look at Bournemouth beach the other day! From July 4 people will be allowed in pubs and cinemas – but not in football stadiums!
Of course we have to adhere to the rules. I agree with the testing. That’s important. But it all feels over the top when we see what’s happening in the rest of the country.
Why can’t the government relax the rules around football stadiums? It’s ridiculous. We won’t have fans in the grounds. But we’ll all be doing our best to give them something to shout about.