CARGIN boss Damian Cassidy believes there should be more clarity and contingency plans in place if upcoming club championships are affected by Covid19 outbreaks.
The former Derry footballer expressed his concerns over the virus potentially stalling or derailing the club series and wants to know if the season can be extended should postponements arise.
A host of clubs in north Derry called a halt to their activities following a Covid cluster in Limavady.
A Banagher player tested positive for the virus over the weekend.
Club league games in many Ulster counties went ahead as planned last weekend with Cargin opening up their Division One account following an impressive five-point win over St John’s.
But Cassidy winces at the next few weeks ahead.
“It’s the worst-case scenario for everybody,” he said.
“You’re cramming in as much as you can and then the next thing a fella tests positive, what do you do?
“There is no clear-cut protocol when that happens. It’s okay at the minute. There were suspected cases in north Derry and clubs took the decision to shut down but if you’re slap bang in the middle of the club championship and none of them up there tested positive in the clubs, you wouldn’t be shutting down. You just wouldn’t do it.
“That’s where there’s an awful vagueness in terms of information coming out as the club championship will be up and running in a few weeks. What happens if there is a suspected case, does that club shut down for seven days?
“Do you get an email in from somebody telling you what to do? Do they reschedule the match? Does that knock back the calendar? There is no guidance on that.
“I know they’ve set the date for inter-county training starting back [September 14] but are there a couple of weeks’ flexibility in that?
“What happens if there are two or three clubs affected? I’d just like to know in advance. I like to the see the road and what’s in front of me: what happens, or what doesn’t happen? That’s how we run businesses. You need contingency plans. At the minute there are no plans in place to tell us what happens in those circumstances.”
Cassidy also bemoaned playing GAA games behind closed doors in the six counties. Aiming for a hat-trick of county championships with the Erin’s Own club, the former Derry manager says Cargin could easily have safely accommodated “300 or 400” people at last Sunday’s league opener.
“It’s very disappointing the logic they’re applying to it. I can understand when you look at big urban areas. Dublin, Derry Belfast – you could see how if things weren’t in place,” he said.
“But common sense has to apply. In rural communities you’re not going to have 1,000 or 2,000 at a match. Somebody has to apply a bit of logic to it; it can’t be just a broad stroke across the entire country.
“If we had supporters in here for the St John’s game, you could easily have had 300 or 400 people accommodated. That’s the problem I have with it – the broad brushstrokes of it. It’s about population bases.”
As it was, some supporters managed to catch the action by using a cherry picker and the roofs of vans without actually breaching any match-day regulations.
