LUNACY TO PUT PLAYERS AT RISK
Union must fight any rush to return for sake of TV cash
HE’S spotted less often than Kim Jong-un and seems to hold a similar approach to public questioning, so it was maybe only a matter of time until Murdoch MacLennan started firing off missiles from the bunker, too. His spat with Rangers over independent inquiries and those Shifty McGifty stories in Private
Eye is one thing. Another diverting skirmish, really, in the great circus show that is our national sport.
MacLennan’s sudden insistence during the week, though, that ‘we must do everything humanly possible to get games up and running by the end of July’ in response to coronavirus is something else entirely.
It is crackpot stuff when so much about the future is so uncertain, the havering that comes from people sitting down in their ivory towers and holding Q&A sessions with themselves.
It feeds into the growing narrative that those running Scottish football have become as concerned with fulfilling TV contracts as controlling Covid-19. That money means almost as much as the mitigation of risk.
That the motives behind the greed-driven obscenity of Germany’s Bundesliga recommencing yesterday and other major leagues forcing players into action to cling on to as much of their broadcasting revenue as possible are just as prevalent here.
John MacLean, the SFA’s chief medical consultant, stated recently that the timescale of a tentative restart in September or October ‘wouldn’t be a million miles out’. Lord knows what makes MacLennan think he now has the right to start dishing out orders after three years of silence as SPFL chairman, but his demand to get up and running by the end of July certainly felt like a rocket being launched skyward — and should put Scotland’s players and their trade union on a war footing.
Shortly before the ridiculous SPFL Reconstruction Group was closed down, PFA Scotland sent out the results of a questionnaire of 691 footballers.
They expressed an overwhelming desire for a new league set-up. In that same document, 64 per cent of those questioned felt that governing bodies did not pay enough attention to what they think about
any major issues.
‘People tend to forget that players are at the heart of the game,’ said PFA Scotland chief executive Fraser Wishart. ‘It is their job and they care passionately about it.’
That does not mean they should be expected to put their lives — and the lives of those around them — in needless peril, though. None of us should.
Players know fine well that a new five-year deal with Sky Sports is due to start on August 1. They understand the eagerness to serve up the Betfred Cup to Premier Sports in July. They are acutely aware of the financial pressures.
Players accept they are the horseflesh that keeps the business moving, commodities to be bought and sold and sent to the glue factory when they no longer carry value.
They do what they’re told, go where they’re told, say what they’re told, flog strips and pose for photos beside advertising boards.
It is part of the gig. Just as being abused by punters is part of the gig. There comes a time when the quid pro quo — that constant need to handle the negatives along with the positives — becomes too much, though. And that time is surely now.
Scare stories over countless clubs dying seem slightly melodramatic. Contracts can surely be renegotiated. Government support has been extended until October at least.
If there are insolvency events, so be it. The game will recover. Clubs will recover. In the worst-case scenarios, they might have to start up again in a different league or a different level, but they won’t disappear for ever. We’ve witnessed enough examples to know it is true.
We are in the middle of a global pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of people, for crying out loud. That people should be under pressure to put their wellbeing on the line for the sake of milking as much money as possible out of a television contract centred on the triviality of showing football games is, frankly, grotesque.
Even in the English Premier League, that most horrific example of finance trumping all, the kickback to all this is becoming impossible to ignore.
Grant Hanley’s wife is pregnant and the Norwich captain worries about putting her and the baby at risk should tomorrow’s vote on returning to training lead to closeddoor fixtures on June 12.
Chelsea’s Tammy Abraham lives with his father, who suffers from asthma. Darren Pratley of Charlton is rightly frightened by the statistics which suggest black men and women are twice as likely to die from Covid-19, a virus we don’t yet understand, as whites.
For sure, the nature of the modern game has driven a wedge between footballers and the public, but these most human of stories should reinforce the view that, in this, we really ought to stick together and should all seek a say in the conditions of our working lives.
Whatever they may earn, footballers have families like the rest of us. And fears like the rest of us.
That is why, in Scotland, it seems incredible that discussions are already taking place within the SPFL-SFA Joint Response Group about multiple matches being staged in ‘hub’ grounds — with the added risk of punters somehow paying in as well.
On Friday, Spanish league officials finalised the protocol for closeddoor games returning next month. Players will be concentrated in disinfected hotels where breakfast, lunch and dinner will be prepared in individual containers and placed in individual bags.
The time they are not training must be spent in rooms with specific ventilation, kept at 21 degrees with humidity of 50 to 60 per cent.
Matchday dressing rooms are to be cleaned, sealed off and used by only one team with temperatures and medical results to be taken at the door.
If a player tests positive for Covid19, he will be isolated and those in contact with him will be tested. A match-analysis device will review footage of the last game the player was involved in and pick out all opposition players he spent five minutes or more in contact with.
They’ll be tested again, too. It will all cost a fortune. And that means it certainly cannot happen here.
Wishart cut a diplomatic figure on radio yesterday. However, he represents PFA Scotland on the Joint Response Group’s medical sub-committee and should start canvassing his members on what they see as the best way forward this week.
By the sounds of things, they’d better be ready to mobilise and start shouting from the rooftops.
If they go for it, we should all support them, too. This shouldn’t be about rushing people into playing football when they don’t feel safe and it certainly shouldn’t be about protecting the broadcast deals that got SPFL CEO Neil Doncaster his £91,000 bonus last year.
It’s a matter of life and death. It needs flexible thinking. And it’s about showing the likes of MacLennan that it’s time to start listening to more than just the sound of his own voice.