Week 35: Several Wrongs Do Make A Right Mess Of Football
As a fan, it was very easy to get frustrated when the announcement was made that the planned October reintroduction of fans into football stadiums is now on hold, amid an increase in Covid-19 infections. Pilots for September have also been paused.
You could see it coming. The virus is spreading more quickly again – an inevitability given that schools have reopened and other restrictions were relaxed during this month – and the scientific community have, as they said they would, rode to ‘the rescue’ by recommending something that sounds awfully like a second national lockdown.
But not quite. It’s full of contradictions and ambiguity as usual. Pubs will stay open (although only until 10pm and with table service only) and other restrictions will be either less stringent or localised. But the impact on spectator sport is absolute and major; cut off before it really had a chance to get going again.
Because the government made an almighty dog’s breakfast of the initial outbreak in the UK, allowing massive sporting events like the Cheltenham Festival to go ahead, as well as a Liverpool v Atletico Madrid Champions League match where 3,000 people travelled in from the Spanish capital – at the time one of Europe’s hotspots for the virus – they are [over?]compensating now by, as Michael Gove admitted, ‘showing caution’ even though there is less evidence of major transmissions in outdoor venues. The ‘mingling’ of fans outside and on public transport is the major concern as the stadiums themselves pose less of a threat.
Of course, if the games are live on TV, and fans aren’t allowed to go to them, where do they choose to go instead? The pub, for one, or to other people’s houses who have Sky. This conflict hasn’t been lost on people. The government’s attitude to football has been to ‘look within for help’ and ‘ask the Premier League for a loan’ yet pubs and restaurants have not only been open but given huge cash incentives to attract more people inside. Shops and shopping centres are full of people again, following – in most cases – the rules, but in comparison to those venues, most sports venues are outdoor and set up in a way that allows for more effective social distancing with multiple entrances and exits as well as easily controlled seating plans.
Germany reopened its stadiums at the weekend with Bundesliga grounds having up to 9,500 fans inside dependent on which region they were in. It seemed to pass off without problems. In many other countries in Europe, this has been the case for some time. But it hasn’t happened in the UK, where a broad-brush approach is favoured that impacts everyone from Arsenal to Tonbridge Angels. Predictably, an outpouring of media reaction followed Tuesday’s announcement.
Callum Semple, a professor of outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool, thinks the measures aren’t anywhere near enough; he’d like to see no mixing outside of your household, closing of all sporting and hospitality venues and, presumably, hand sanitiser pumped intravenously into veins.
The next article on the BBC website was that Whitbread, who own Premier Inn, are cutting 6,000 jobs due to lack of customers. Presumably, Mr Semple is going to help these newly-jobless people buy food for their families over the coming months.
MrDoesn’tAffectMe from Basingstoke then weighs in with the ‘it’s the right decision’ comment that’s based on health and safety, and not unreasonable, but he and Mr Semple ignore the other side of the argument; that some clubs, and even sports will be finished off by this decision. People might be safer but their hobbies (some of them that helped to keep them fit and well, or sane) will no longer be there for them. They might even be people they love and care about.
Tranmere’s vice-chair, Nicola Palios, sees the bigger picture and described it as potentially ‘devastating’. The club had some money set aside for projects that will now go towards keeping the club solvent, so they’ll probably be OK, but she says, the clubs living hand-to-mouth already might not last much longer without some form of rescue package.
Nigel Clibbens, Chief Executive of Carlisle United, calling the news ‘desperate’, was another who pointed out the inconsistency on Twitter, saying the “pause” means that “four people from two families won’t be able to sit outside socially-distanced in our stands” but that “four people from two families can [still] sit around a table inside eating a meal out”.
Clubs, in my opinion, have been treading water until now. Those in Leagues’ One and Two, as well as The National League – clubs who’s reliance on ticket and match day revenue is enormous – have been waiting for October and knowing that, if they can stay afloat until then, the light at the end of the tunnel will be visible and they can begin to work themselves out of the mess with a socially-distanced and pragmatic approach.
It’s not perfect and not what they would choose, but it was a way forward. That light might seem a long way off now and for some, might be extinguished forever. This threat has intensified the call for external financial support, with many sporting leaders beginning to lobby the prime minister to act in order to ‘avoid a “lost generation” of sport and activity.’
The Premier League, Football Association and EFL Trust are among one hundred organisations who have written a letter to Boris Johnson in a bid to avert a crisis in professional and grassroots sport, and the immediate response was a promise to find a way to help. One positive, intimated earlier by Gove, was that after the pause, more fans might be able to attend. This is a flicker of hope, as the 1,000 limit in the test events will be of little benefit for clubs in the long-term. As Aston Villa’s Christian Purslow put it, ‘the only thing having 1,000 fans tells us is that football clubs will lose a lot of money.’ So, a solution that could put 30-50% of fans into stadiums in the medium-term is no bad thing.
But most clubs won’t be able to hang around waiting anyway. This announcement is the equivalent of pushing some heads underwater. There will be more fight now; there has to be, as the alternative is to go under and not come back up. Owners, directors and fans won’t let that happen to their clubs without a struggle and I expect to see a concerted and joined-up pushback from these groups before long, in the way the airlines railed against quarantine rules that would see them go out of business.
But all arguments quickly turn into a question of health versus economy. It’s an over-simplified angle that doesn’t work so easily in real life.
We obviously cannot ignore the virus; it’s killed too many already to do that and letting thousands more die so the remainder can work isn’t a plausible option. But neither can the whole UK economy be allowed to crash and burn so that tens of millions don’t have jobs be allowed either. There is a fallout from that which would impact on countless more as widescale homelessness and increases in crime and civil unrest would present a price that simply isn’t worth paying.
So, as ever, despite the extreme ‘all or nothing’ attitudes we carry around these days, the answer has to be somewhere in-between. There has to be some middle ground where we have to live with the virus in some capacity (at least until a vaccine is ready) and there are some acceptable risks taken that allow institutions, organisations and individuals to go on.
We have to remember, also, that this is not March. The numbers are currently much smaller and we also now have a roadmap to follow in terms of hospitals, care homes, medication and restrictions; not just our own but that of countries who have dealt with it more successfully than we have.
Yes, the mistakes that have been made so far in the UK are humiliating, but surely we can’t go on making them. You don’t fall into the hole the person in front of you just fell into. Or you shouldn’t.
I think we need someone to take control – not a beaten, broken man who can’t get by on £155,000 and with ‘only one’ cleaner – and there have to be candidates in the private sector who could come in from the outside and navigate football and sport through this crisis. Someone who is independent and can look at it from a wider perspective and not a vested interest, not an un or under-qualified minister.
Of course football club owners want fans back. Of course scientists want 100% safety, although why Neil Ferguson continues to give us his lockdown theories when he couldn’t stick to them himself is beyond me, and fans themselves want to go to games. And of course someone who doesn’t like football won’t give a damn what happens to it.
But beyond self-interest, there has to be a view that looks at this in widescreen. And the long term.
The numbers of people dying from coronavirus are currently low – lower than the figures for both breast cancer and prostate cancer and the numbers of people who will die as a result of slow-growing cancers and other illnesses in the coming years who were unable to get treated, or even diagnosed, will dwarf all of these in the years to come.
And that’s before we even get to the number of suicides.
The impact on mental health is still largely unknown in all this and may not be fully understood for a decade, but it will be gigantic. It’s a hidden killer that we can’t fully comprehend but will be partly made up of those who lose jobs, cannot find new employment, are not able to see people during the crisis and those who’s health deteriorates in other ways because of the sanctions.
In that respect, local sports clubs, as well as grassroot participation and facilities, are a vital component in their communities and the public health within it.
As we saw a year ago, and only last week, the loss of Bury and Macclesfield Town (although not related to Covid), create a hole in the community and people lose jobs at the clubs and in businesses that survive from match day footfall. Their families suffer too, meaning that the loss of one club in the lower or non-league structure devastates thousands of people when you include the fans for whom they were a big part of their daily lives. If several clubs begin to go under as a result of these latest restrictions, then we’re talking about a major social and mental impact on a massive scale.
So when people say the decisions to lockdown or keep stadiums closed are right because it keeps people safer, they also need to consider the many thousands who might be safer today, but who will be irreversibly affected by it tomorrow. Or the day after that.
We’ll eventually beat the virus.
But by then, it might already be too late.
words Darren Youn, D3D4 columnist