Northern Premier League

It isn’t just the hand shaking, hugs etc - it’s the need for an ambulance and staff too attend when they’re needed elsewhere. I like to watch football, any sport for that matter - but in all honesty - should it be going ahead at the moment - when it wasn’t from last March?? Yes, I also understand the mental health aspect etc.

What does annoy me is peoples seemingly delight in the season curtailed possibility at some point purely to save GTFC.

Bigger picture surely?? Whether Town are in League or not - this ‘way of life’ is going to be around for a fair while long after

it would obviously suit us being null and void for certain reasons...

I love watching football, and when it first came back, i would watch all sorts of random games.

But when kids can't go to school, you can only leave the house for essential reason etc etc, it makes you wonder if football should still be being played

Quoted from GollyGTFC

I cheerfully disagree. Football should continue. But with tightened up rules and punishments for disobeying rules.

Face masks compulsory at all times for everyone apart from the 22 players on the pitch and 3 on pitch officials.

No hand shaking or hugging after the game.

And plenty of people would miss football terribly if their team wasn’t playing.

It pains me that I can’t attend matches. I haven’t been to BP since 29th February 2020 and not seen Town play in person since 7th March 2020 at Scunny.

Those 6 months of nothingness from the Scunthorpe game to the Morecambe League Cup game were painful to me and lots of Town fans. If we give up now then it’s another 7 GTFC-less months. No thanks.

I genuinely sympathise to anyone who's using football as some sort of escapism at the minute, because quite frankly it's needed!  

But even with all the social distancing and masking up outside of the 90 minutes, the game itself is the absolute perfect breeding ground for the virus to spread.  Even if we don't use subs, there's 22 people (plus officials) who are producing and emitting all those spores in very close proximity to each other.  Those people are then going back to their homes and potentially spreading the virus even further.

Jase rightly points out the drain on other resources too.  Do we really need to run the risk of admitting players with injuries to local A&E's?

Agree.  But at least our groundsman has virtually no risk of getting a positive test result from being in contact with players and officials.  

Any match involves two squads of players, plus managers, coaches, doctors, officials, security staff, admin staff, journalists and others. i would be surprised if a game involves less that hundred people.  If we need to tighten anti covid measures  further then banning football matches must surely be a possibility.

Given how quickly and how often the government changes it's mind (opening schools for ONE day for christ sakes!) then I would not be at all surprised if this season is suspended or even cancelled.

Also the cost of all the tests (I hear the EFL approved test is £150 per person twice weekly for several dozen people at each club) runs into thousands.

Hope fully things will be much better in the autumn and we might get back to something resembling a normal season.