GAA’s safety-first approach is the way forward
McKenna’s positive test a timely reminder
AWORLD away no longer provides the kind of distance that invites comfort. The news that Conor McKenna, the former Tyrone minor star and current Essendon player, had tested positive for Covid-19 at the weekend was both sobering and timely.
Sobering because it intruded on the inevitable giddiness that the easing of restrictions and the reopening of sport may have been seen by some as the beginning of the end of a pandemic, rather than the end of its beginning.
Timely because it also coincided with the GAA’s response to the government’s acceleration on the resumption of sporting action, which was once more guarded and cautious.
In effect, the move by the government – which Croke Park is understood to have anticipated – to allow for resumption of contact sport from next week, handed the GAA three extra precious weeks, which in the context of a severely truncated season felt more like a couple of months.
It opened up all kinds of options; adding three weeks to an inter-county season that for once received the thin end of the wedge meant, theoretically, that if Croke Park was of a mind it could have squeezed in more expansive inter-county championships.
One that could have reintroduced the qualifier safety net in Gaelic football instead of the straight knockout model it will proceed with and allowed for the round-robin provincial championships in hurling.
At the very tightest – not allowing for any gap week – the football championship with qualifiers could be run off in nine weekends and a late September start would have allowed a 13-week inter-county window, which would have been enough to complete the Allianz League, allow for two gap weekends in the championship and still have it all wrapped up before Christmas. And by moving the club window forward three weeks, the 11-week club window would have remained. However, the optics would hardly have looked good and instead
Croke Park handed two of those extra weeks to the clubs to ensure that it is they who will enjoy a 13week window, something that will be appreciated not least in large dual counties like Cork.
It was the right thing to do for all kinds of reasons, reaffirming Croke Park’s core message right though this crisis that the clubs must come first.
There are those who will argue that had the GAA aligned its roadmap with the government’s from the outset, it might have served them in terms of being better placed to respond to what has been a rapidly evolving situation. Perhaps, but the GAA, even though it has been led by public health advice, has been acutely conscious of the challenges it faces, protecting its club volunteers as much as it could from the challenge of policing challenging physical distancing regulations on its pitches, and it also has been sensitive to the need to protect the community it is perceived to be at the heart of.
Because of that it has erred on the side of caution and, given the gravity of what we are dealing with on a global basis, that is no error
‘It was the right thing to do for all kinds of reasons’
‘It was his seventh test since returning to Australia’
At a stretch: Conor McKenna at Essendon training earlier this month (left); an Australian news report (far left) at all. McKenna’s diagnosis resonates not because of his background but, because he’s playing in a contact sport similar in nature to Gaelic football, he is exposed to the extra security layer that is a regular and rigorous testing programme.
His test on Friday revealed a ‘low grade irregularity’ and he was positive when tested again 24 hours later.
In total, since he returned to Australia last month, it was the seventh test McKenna had taken, but what should concern is if he stayed at home and played for his club Eglish GAC, there would have been no pre-match weekend test to reveal that ‘low grade irregularity’.
It is simply not possible to roll out tests in terms of capacity, logistics and economics to GAA players, who instead must place their faith in education, awareness, adherence to return-to-play protocols and the strength of the questionnaire they fill in to protect others.
The argument has been made that testing is hardly foolproof, with Dr Kevin Moran – Donegal’s medic and a member of the GAA’s Covid-19 Advisory group – pointing out that in the conventional playing age groups, tests tend to produce a relatively high number of false negative and false positive results.
Still, unless you share Donald Trump’s view of public health best practice – he revealed this weekend he had advised ‘his people’ to cut back on testing because they were finding too many people with the virus – testing allied to contact tracing has been deemed as the best weapon against the spread of the virus.
Right now that might not seem a concern, with strong evidence that the virus is suppressed in the community, but the likelihood is not for long.
That’s not speculation but the accepted reality – one which even those who have been globally at the top of the suppression table like China, South Korea and Germany have realised in recent weeks. The price for opening up the economy and society is an increase in infection rates.
It is unlikely that Ireland will return to lockdown in the face of that but as the winter season approaches – and the inevitable pressures that will be visited on the HSE – the sense of threat will be magnified.
Without a testing programme and in the knowledge that its players cannot be segregated from its community, the GAA had another reason not to use the extra fixture space to add more games to its schedule in deep winter.
Less in this instance is better than more.
And, yet again, in this crisis the GAA has shown that caution is the better part of valour.