OLLIE FACES COVID SCARE
A weekly column from the Grimsby boss and former Bristol Rovers player and manager
NEVER in my many years as a football player and manager have I faced a more alarming challenge than that being presented by Covid-19.
While managers normally concern themselves with things like team selection, tactics and arranging away travel, the last ten days have seen me called upon to make decisions affecting health and possibly even lives.
I am writing this column halfway through a 14-day spell of enforced self-isolation as a result of one member of my Grimsby Town squad, Jock Curran, testing positive for the virus last week.
All my players are confined to home too and we have had to provide exercise bikes for those without gardens so they can keep up their fitness work.
Yet, all the while, other professional clubs around the country whose staff or players have tested positive for Covid-19 are continuing with their fixtures.
Can that be right? I only know that we at Grimsby are in the position we find ourselves because of a decision I felt I was forced to make.
Here is what happened. I had loaned Jock Curran out to non-League Spalding United, but wanted him to continue training with us to maintain the standards of a full-time professional.
After playing his first game for them, he came in and worked with the other lads on Monday and Tuesday of last week.
Wednesday was a day-off, but it was then that I received a phone call from our physiotherapist telling me Jock wasn’t feeling too well and that he wanted to test him for Covid.
I agreed and the next day the result came back as positive. Suddenly, I am thinking, oh my God, when was he in, where were we at the time, how close was I and lots of other questions related to my own health and that of my staff and players.
This was at the training ground on Thursday, two days before we were due to visit Cheltenham Town for a League Two fixture.
How did we know the virus had not spread to some of the other players? They were going to spend more than three hours together on the coach journey down to Cheltenham and, even with social distancing, that surely presented a problem.
The view of my medical staff was that we couldn’t guarantee anyone’s safety and that we probably all needed to get tested.
We reported the positive test to the authorities and our physio then spoke to the EFL doctor, explaining his concerns.
The response was that we had to decide ourselves whether we wanted to play the Cheltenham game or not. We asked whether it would be okay to get every player tested and only take ones whose results were negative, but that was not permitted. I couldn’t believe that there was not some EFL protocol already in place to deal with the situation. Instead, it was left up to us whether the match went ahead and I had to decide whether I wanted to risk, not only our lads, but the Cheltenham players as well.
We had a lad I had employed as a substitute in the last few games, who was still at school, and I had no idea who he had been mixing with. He would have been in the squad, but could I take him under those circumstances?
The more we talked about it, the more I felt uneasy about going to Cheltenham, so we took the decision to call the game off.
Once we did that, the EFL investigated and shut us down. Their doctor was prepared for us all to have tests and then play Bradford City in our following match if all were negative, but at that point government officials got involved and made it clear we had to isolate for 14 days.
We are right in the middle of that now. I can’t go out to walk my dogs or visit the shops, not even out of the front door.
I had two lads I had signed on loan and had to contact their clubs because, as things stood, they had to remain where they were in an hotel.
One of them was just 19. He couldn’t go outside his room, so his meals were being brought and left outside his door. Thankfully, the doctor at his parent club contacted the EFL and obtained the go-ahead for him to go home to self-isolate. We couldn’t get that permission, but they could.
I had also signed James Morton from Bristol City, but while I had arranged for him to come up and train with us, he hadn’t actually done so.
He went to the same hotel, but in a different room, and we were able to get him to sign a form and then return straight to Bristol without me even meeting him. That meant James could return to City and train, while my lads are all having to work individually at their homes.
Our next two games against Bradford and Hull City have already been postponed and, like the Cheltenham match, will have to be fitted back into an already hectic programme of fixtures.
Of course, there are far bigger issues. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see we are no nearer to overcoming Covid19 and that the more we mix with one another the greater the risk of it spreading becomes.
Can it be safe to play professional football, considering the travelling involved, when a significant outbreak of the virus in Wales has been linked to a coach-load of people from the area visiting Doncaster?
It is not for me to comment on the clubs who have gone on playing after players and staff tested positive. All I know is I took the decision I made regarding the Cheltenham game for the good of all concerned. There is no room for complacency at this time of national emergency.