I FEAR WE ARE BEING TOO HASTY
‘Great to be back but I have reservations’
I’VE spoken to numerous managers in recent weeks and we all agree it’s great to be back. Training has restarted at many clubs and we seem to have got the buzz back. But let’s just take a big deep breath here.
Hosting the National League play-offs last week was nothing short of a footballing miracle. No-one gave them a chance of being staged a few weeks back but thanks to the incredible efforts of those working behind the scenes at the host clubs, they managed to pull them off to great success.
But there is a bigger picture here – and one which I believe is being ignored and underestimated.
It’s all well and good welcoming fans back to stadiums and giving them football to watch – but that is the easy bit.
At Step 5 and below it’s doable. There are very limited crowds and, geographically, the matches are close by. But when you get to elite football, Step 4, Step 3 and above, then it’s a different story, you start to encounter problems.
My biggest concern is away travel. Let’s take a worst case scenario. In Southern League Premier South, we, at Farnborough, have to travel to the likes of Truro, Tiverton, Taunton – trips which can take three-anda-half hours – on a good day.
Players have three ways they can travel. Firstly, in a minibus, but that is impossible to socially distance and extremely expensive for clubs with limited income. Or, they could car share, which is again very dangerous because you are opening up dozens of bubbles among players, coaches and volunteers who all have families and other work commitments.
So, that leaves travelling independently – driving threeand-a-half hours alone in their football kit to play a game (because they can’t get changed on site) and then jump back in their cars and drive three-anda-half hours back wet, muddy and tired. It’s just not feasible. It puts huge pressure on the players and if someone is not careful then, God help us, we could have manslaughter charges on our hands!
The decision to force football back has been rushed and has not been thought out thoroughly enough. There are still so many things that need to be done.
For me, rugby have got it right. My son plays at a decent standard and for the first half of next season – the opening nine or ten games – his team are only playing local sides. The longer trips come in the second half of the season when, hopefully, the danger will be lessened somewhat and a Covid vaccine will be found.
Madness
This has to be a no-brainer and, at Farnborough, we have made our views clear to the Southern League. It would mean the likes of Truro, Tiverton, Taunton, Weston and Merthyr can play each other in relative safety, similarly the likes of ourselves, Hartley Wintney and Hayes 250 miles further west.
It has been mooted that the leagues are tempted to reprint and replay last year’s fixtures for 2020-21 with the constitution that same. That would mean Truro coming to ours in the opening two weeks of the season. Total madness!
We have also requested that our players be handed squad numbers so that kit can be washed and kept individually.
Snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan got it right recently when he suggested that you either let everyone off the leash or you don’t. Football wants to have its cake and eat it. Clubs like ours are being expected to pay for coaches, even hotel stays, to ensure the safety of our players, yet we are still not allowed to operate as a business where the hosting of functions provides around 70 per cent of our income. You can’t have it both ways.
Football has made huge strides to overcome this pandemic and I have admiration for those who have got us to this point. But let’s not ruin all that hard work by making rash decisions without fully thinking through the consequences.