VACCINE PASSPORT KEY TO GETTING CROWDS BACK

FOOTBALL should be pushing hard for the introduction of a vaccine passport scheme. It’s the only way to stop politicians locking down the turnstiles every time there’s a spike in Covid cases. It’s now almost 16 months since Rangers housed the last capacity football crowd on Scottish soil for the Europa League visit of Bayer Leverkusen. And supporters will finally be back in large numbers by the third weekend of the new SPFL season if First Minister Nicola Sturgeon sticks to a plan to end social distancing and return to normal by August 9.

The trouble is that football is already copping the flak for a sharp rise in cases in Scotland. Two-thirds of the new cases are in men, suggesting Covid-19 may have spread faster amongst those gathering in bars and homes to watch Euro 2020. And ticketless members of the Tartan Army travelling to London in their thousands only ramped up the blame game. People are nervous or angry about the idea of football fans gathering in large numbers while cases are rising fast. Fair enough. But thanks to vaccines, case numbers have yet to translate into hospitalisations or deaths. And thanks to the vaccine rollout moving at pace, football really should be in a position to start letting the fans back in by the middle of August without constant carping. American basketball teams are asking spectators to produce a digital vaccine passport to prove they’ve had their jags before entering arenas. Fans attending England’s Euro 2020 game with Germany, meanwhile, will be allowed in if they produce proof of full vaccination or a negative lateral flow test.

Scotland is behind the curve with this stuff. The First Minister says she is ‘openminded’ on the passport idea, but sports clubs really need a bit more certainty than that. Matchday income is the key to survival. They need to get the fans back in decent numbers soon. Stuff the rights of anti-vax loonballs. The right of everyone else to return to normal activities like watching football is more important. The incentive for everyone receiving the vaccine should be the right to flash their passport at the turnstiles and return to their old seat, no questions asked.