THIS IS ONLY CALL WHICH MADE SENSE
DAVID MARTINDALE insists ‘football has to take a back seat’ to the pandemic after being the first to call for an early winter shutdown.
The Livingston manager was the trailblazer in arguing for the Premiership’s winter break to be brought forward following the emergence of the new Omicron variant of Covid-19.
Scottish Government restrictions on crowds at games convinced him the need for a circuit breaker is even greater.
He said: “I spoke about a circuit breaker and what I said was it would make sense to bring the winter break forward.
“I got battered for that for a full week but if you look at the data it’s telling us we have to do.
“If there are no fans in the stadium does it make more sense from a football point of view to try to maybe curtail it for three or four weeks and play these games at a later date with fans in the stadium?
“That would hopefully allow us that three or fourweek period to try to get the numbers down.
“Do I want fans in the stadium? One hundred per cent.
“I would rather play those games in four weeks’ time and bring the winter break forward, if it meant playing in stadiums with no fans.
“The reason why? If we’re trying to reduce the spread of Omicron, it probably makes more sense not to be playing games of football. It probably makes more sense for us all to be holed up for two weeks or whatever it’s going to be.
“First and foremost, for me, player welfare comes first. Secondly, we’ve got to watch what we’re doing with the NHS; we can’t cripple the NHS.
“Football, for me, has probably got to take a back seat. January 22 is the next fixture and hopefully we’ve managed to decrease the spread of it and we can hopefully bring fans back into the stadiums.
“And it lets us get the booster programme rolled out to everybody that’s over 12, and that’s meant to help make it less transmissible. It helps stop the spread of it and it helps you if you do get it.
“That makes more sense to me.”
Livingston issued a statement to back up Martindale’s point of view.
It said: “By bringing the winter break forward, we can help in slowing down transmission rates.
“This also allows players, staff and fans a window of opportunity to receive their booster jags, to help alleviate the situation with Omicron.”