Stephen McGowan on the Covid conundrum
COLCheSTeR UnITeD don’t surface on the football radar often. handed a map of essex, most couldn’t pick out the JobServe Community Stadium with a magnifying glass. Yet on Thursday afternoon, United chairman Robbie Cowling forced people to rip off their face masks and pay attention when he asked Boris Johnson a question football fans want answered.
Why is it okay to breathe in the recycled air of 300 people on an aeroplane and spend all day drinking inside a pub until 10pm, when fans can’t sit in a vast open-air stadium two metres apart in a face mask for 90 minutes?
Governments across the UK have pushed back the date when supporters can return to grounds.
But two weeks ago, Cowling wrote to local MP Will Quince outlining the measures the League Two side had taken to get the fans back aSaP.
They revamped the ticketing system. They ripped out 1,800 seats to make social distancing easier.
Their reward for all that time and effort? Death by a thousand cuts.
The english Premier League have warned of losses of £700million if the fans are locked out for six months or more.
The SPFL predict losses of between £40m and £50m for clubs in Scotland.
In a statement, Scottish football’s Joint Response Group warned of ‘catastrophic’ consequences for a game three times more reliant on gate income than other leagues in europe.
Just when it seemed the meteor had passed planet football by, it’s now back in the atmosphere. and the people in charge seem hell-bent on guiding it at speed towards a football ground near you.
Sports clubs are not the only victims of baffling, incomprehensible one-size-fits-all rules governing Covid-19.
One minute, our blessed leaders are subsidising half-price lunches. The next, they’re cracking down on pubs and restaurants
One minute, they’re urging people to get back to the office. The next, they’re telling them to stay home.
One minute, they’re giving the green light to test events for fans. The next, they’re off the table for the next six months.
Ross County recently hosted a pilot event for the return of 300 supporters and journalists sat working outside in the main stand muzzled by face masks.
Behind us in a lounge sat punters enjoying hospitality in a confined indoor space with no sign of a face mask in sight.
Last week, Linlithgow Rose played east Stirling at Prestonfield. no one was allowed into the ground to stand two metres apart. however, just a few yards from the turnstiles, fans
could sit in the club beer garden drinking with friends and watching the game with just a metre between them.
In an absurd state of affairs, fans can now go to a busy pub, sink a few pints and watch a game on a TV in the corner without covering their face.
But sitting with 3,000 temperature checked people in a ventilated, socially-distanced open-air stadium designed to hold ten times that number? Computer says no.
If or when Boris Johnson gets round to writing back to Colchester United’s chairman, he’ll explain that it’s not the act of sitting at a live game which poses the problem. The ‘mingling’ is the problem. Fans travel to games on crowded buses and trains. They share cars, they enjoy a pint before and after the match, they queue up to go to the toilet and brush past others to get in and out of the stadium safely.
Yet all across the country, people will take buses and trains, trams and subways into city centres this afternoon to wander freely around shopping areas of Buchanan Street, Princes Street or Union Square.
They, too, will use social distancing to queue outside shops and toilets.
and they’ll do it with significantly less regulation than you’d get when 1,000 people pitch up at a football ground in a face mask to sit 1.5metres away from another living soul for 90 minutes.
Is shopping and retail a more important economic pursuit than sport? Probably.
Yet Boris Johnson and nicola Sturgeon have spent this week telling everyone how important football clubs are to the beating hearts of towns and communities.
The national game improves the physical and mental well-being of young and old alike. It employs thousands and it bonds people tightly together. a little too tightly for the politicians, it seems.
That’s why Celtic and the Scottish Rugby Union went to the time and the expense of employing external consultants to come up with ways for people to play and watch matches safely.
If that means travelling solo by car, or games being restricted to local household bubbles, or fans arriving early on pre-paid public transport with entrance times spread out, then none of that should be impossible.
The alternative for clubs is bleak.
It won’t be the centre-forward on £5k a week who’ll be cast on to the dole — it will be the fans’ liaison officer on £20k a year.
Youth academies will be mothballed and teenagers cast on to the scrap heap with a calamitous impact on their mental health and self-confidence.
and good luck to the politicians who have to explain why the jobs of Marks and Spencer staff deserve more protection than the coaches and kit men at hamilton accies or Motherwell.
Or why community clubs, who have done outstanding deeds to help the needy and vulnerable during lockdown, should be left to wither and die.
In an attempt to avoid this bloodbath, Scottish Sports Minister Joe FitzPatrick has written to his UK counterpart nigel huddlestone seeking urgent talks on a financial recovery package for British sport. But, when it comes to coronavirus, politicians don’t tend to lead. They watch what’s going on in other countries and follow.
and all across europe there is an acceptance that Covid-19 is not going away. To survive, football has to find a way to live with it.
The German Football League (DFL) now allow 20 per cent of a club’s capacity to be admitted unless the seven-day infection rate in their native city rises above 35 per 100,000 of the population.
Last week, Borussia Dortmund opened their Bundesliga campaign with a 3-0 win over Borussia Monchengladbach in front of 10,000 fans.
In holland, Feyenoord secured agreement to play their first three Dutch league games at home in front of 13,000 fans.
and, on Thursday night, a crowd of 15,180 watched Bayern Munich beat Sevilla to win the european Super Cup in a UeFa pilot event in Budapest.
Bill Shankly was wrong. Football has never been more serious than life and death. But if Britain’s leaders feel the risk of fans going back to grounds is just too great, then they’ll be held accountable at the ballot box. That’s democracy.
neither should anyone ignore the fact that the collective failure of the politicians to close borders and set up an efficient, workable test and trace system contributed to this shambles in the first place.
as for the plea for a bail-out, handing public money to clubs who blow millions on transfer fees and exorbitant wages is a tough sell. Many will feel that’s not right.
But if Boris and nicola won’t let the fans back in, they have a moral duty to pony up or football clubs will go the same way as dodos and the dinosaurs.