No chance of bigger crowds, warns Minister

SCOTTISH sport will definitely not be following England’s lead by allowing thousands of fans back into fixtures any time soon, according to the country’s Sports Minister. Joe FitzPatrick also insisted he was ‘hugely concerned’ to see some of the scenes playing out south of the border over the weekend at English football matches. The MSP warned that only clubs in Tier 1 areas will be granted licences to have even a few hundred supporters in attendance, insisting that plans for larger crowds depend on Covid-19 being virtually ‘eliminated’. Asked why English clubs could admit up to 4,000 fans while virtually every Scottish fixture is still being played behind closed doors, FitzPatrick told BBC Radio Scotland’s Sportsound: ‘I can’t explain what’s going on in England. ‘I certainly saw some TV footage of English matches. And I would have been hugely concerned, from the footage I saw, if that was in Scotland. ‘It’s one of the challenges, particularly if a game gets exciting. It’s really difficult for people to control their social distancing. ‘The crowd was also moving as one. While they all started off very carefully spread out, the masks had come off, people were shouting — and all the aerosol risks that creates. ‘Not everyone in England is comfortable with 4,000 being allowed to attend. ‘The pathway is dead clear. We’ve got to get prevalence of the virus down so more areas can get into Level 1. ‘We can then look at increasing the fans from the 300 base. But the way to g get more teams to have fans at their eir matches is to get the prevalence e down across Scotland.’ Asked if there was any chance of bigger crowds across the country by the end of the season, FitzPatrick (right) admitted: ‘I can’t know that because there’s a whole host of unknowns. ‘One of the most important things ngs is can we get the prevalence down to the kind of level we saw in the summer, when we had the pilots. ‘It was almost eliminated in the summer, the prevalence was so low. We’ve done it once, can we do it again? ‘The route map is to get the prevalence down, g get 300 fans in. Then we can look at wha what happens next.’ Fitz FitzPatrick said he understood th that Premiership clubs would ra rather have grants than the state st loans being offered at commercial c rates under the terms te of the Holyrood bail-out. ‘I’ve ‘I’ had a meeting with the SPF SPFL and SFA last week,’ he said. ‘The SPFL S would obviously prefer that the loan section was grants. I totally understand that. ‘But, with a Barnett consequential of only £4.5million, there’s only so much money to go around.’