Players will enter stage left pursued by a virus
In the greatest of threats, the smallest of things amuse. On Wednesday, Faf de Klerk posted a picture of himself and his girlfriend, Mine van Niekerk, on Instagram. De Klerk was leaving for Manchester. De Klerk was going to miss Mine. In the picture, Faf and Mine both have long, straight, blonde hair. They have the same parting, on the left of their heads. They looked as though they had used the same hairdryer. They looked too alike to let the chance go.
I reposted the pic with a new caption: “Faf is on the left.” It was wrong and mischievous, but it was a Wednesday afternoon, the wine was cheap and just about drinkable and the air was full of madness.
It got a lot of reaction, most of it schoolboy giggling funny.
I should probably apologise to Mine van Niekerk. I was taking the mickey out of her boyfriend. Mind you, I apologised to Faf de Klerk after a Twitter rant during the first game of the Rugby World Cup in 2019.
The beer was cheap and drinkable and the air was also full of madness. The air was also full of box kicks, bad box kicks, lots of box kicks, but, as time and the cold tomorrow of sobriety would show, Rassie Erasmus had a plan for De Klerk and an afternoon of beer had clouded the reasoning part of my brain.
De Klerk is returning for the possible start of the Premiership in England, which is hoped for in July. The Premiership board were said to be getting together on Thursday to consider a starting date after the British government okayed contact in training.
They are desperate to start. There is broadcast money on the line. The push to begin is financial and the officials in suits are weighing up risk against reward despite the incredible uncertainty and lack of true understanding of how to diminish the risk.
World Rugby has already advised that scrums will no longer be reset and wants no more upright tackles, also known as the Owen Farrell law, to be implemented.
New Zealand Rugby has already said it won’t be using the new law changes in its domestic Super Rugby tournament.
New Zealand think they have contained Covid-19, with no new cases reported recently.
“There don’t appear to be any signs of community transmission in New Zealand so our circumstances are different and we don’t expect the need to adopt the law proposals. We have been open with World Rugby about this and they understand our situation.
“We will continue to manage all health risks with stringent protocols and be led by our public health authorities,” New Zealand Rugby CEO Mark Robinson told a Kiwi radio station.
They are going to kick off on June 13. They are also going to tackle, sweat, spit, snot and bleed on each other. They are going to smash social distancing into a messy pulp and see what comes out the other side. There is risk, but they believe the reward of some form of normality in a nation as rugby mad as New Zealand will see them through.
Other nations are taking small steps. Denmark began the top-tier football league on Thursday night, the second country in mainland Europe to do so after Germany.
AGF Aarhus played Randers with fans “attending” via a 40mwide screen that was a digital grandstand using Zoom to fill it with the faces and sounds of fans. It’s not the real thing, but it’s better than nothing, a bank of sound and support and no problems with crowd control and queues at the bar.
Liverpool may watch what happens at AGF and hope to set up something similar for when they win the Premier League, as they surely must. A monster screen in the Kop. Fans singing You’ll Never Walk Alone channelled through the tannoy.
The Premier League is hoping to finish its season in a compressed six weeks. Broadcasters are still looking for a R7bn rebate on their deal because of the curtailed season. Teams are pushing back. They and their players are taking a huge risk in coming back to play. They want their reward paid in full.
These are confusing times. No-one knows truly what will happen. No-one knows.
Well, except for us. That’s definitely Faf on the left.