Sports bodies should aid emergency services and communities in time of crisis

The efforts of football pundit Gary Neville to offer up his hotel rooms to local NHS staff caring for others during the coronavirus crisis are to be applauded. Partick Thistle players should be commended, too, for contacting elderly season ticket holders and delivering essential requirements direct to their doors whilst their club suffers financially from the threat of relegation after 80 per cent of the season has been completed. There is to be no professional sport for several months, so there are empty stands with excellent catering facilities all over the country. Gatherings of more than 500 are now forbidden but the demands upon our emergency services are massive at this crucial time. Can better use be made of these sporting facilities in order to support our emergency service personnel working in city centres? Borders are closing across the world and we move forward more closely in unison as a nation now, with the intention to restrict the spread of infection, protect the most vulnerable in our society and offer optimal standards of care to those in greatest need.

Inevitably, we can self-isolate and keep our distance from others as far as possible until the spread of this dangerous virus is eliminated and most of us appear to be doing so responsibly.

We should all be making every effort to restrict the excessive demands being placed upon our emergency services at this time and offering every support to assist them .

Our major sports organisations are paralysed through the lack of competitive sport for the next few months and should be offering the use of their state-of-the art facilities to assist them, instead of pursuing the entirely selfish ends of trying to force additional matches to be played at the earliest opportunity with the added threat of legal action to force meaningless matches behind closed doors.

Better-off Scottish households are clearly stockpiling whilst poorer households are experiencing difficulties in purchasing basic essentials from supermarkets and other shops.

Meantime, the isolated and vulnerable also suffer in a life-or-death struggle behind closed doors and urgently require local centres where they can collect necessary provisions and prescriptions safely – or even just have a hot snack.