WHEN Finland hosted the Republic of Ireland in last week’s UEFA Nations League game in Helsinki there were 8,000 spectators.
All masked up and socially distant.
On Wednesday night, Dynamo Kyiv hosted Juventus where a sizeable but restricted number of supporters watched their Champions League joust.
These are two examples of living with Covid19.
Here, in the north, we can’t get political consensus over accommodating a few hundred, socially distant spectators into Irish League grounds, just to remind ourselves that aspects of our lives can continue with important caveats.
The fact that the Irish Premier League and the women’s equivalent are currently able to play games because ‘elite’ status has been bestowed upon them niggles others.
These are examples where sport is prepared to live with Covid in a safe environment as possible.
But then the contradictions flow like an angry flood in northern society. After clarification was sought from the respective sporting bodies, teams can train in a non-contact manner in pods of 15.
For many sports clubs, they use council facilities.
But council facilities are currently closed under the restrictions.
So, for many, non-contact training is a non-runner.
As a consequence, the majority of sports clubs have to wait until the Stormont Executive and indeed Leinster House reach the stage where they stop battering the most Covid-compliant aspects of society and address the non-compliant constituency rather than lock us all down.
Take Ballinamallard United FC as a case study. The Fermanagh club plays its football in the Championship – the division below the Irish Premiership. They’ve been training since the end of June.
They have fastidiously followed every Covid protocol to ensure they are working in a safe environment.
In an interview with The Irish News, Ballinamallard goalkeeper John Connolly said: “We were doing everything correctly for ourselves. Anybody who was coming into the ground was getting their temperature taken, names and telephone numbers were given. I’ve no doubt all the clubs were doing the same and doing their bit.”
But the Championship clubs weren’t afforded ‘elite’ status even though they're following exactly the same protocol as Premiership clubs.
With each passing week without football and income, they move closer to the cliff edge. Once they’re gone they’re never coming back.
All these clubs that play below ‘elite’ level are heartbeats of their communities.
These clubs, these people can’t be allowed to be deemed collateral damage in a pandemic. It’s a failure of government and their inability to chart a tangible path towards living with Covid.
Up until new, tougher lockdown restrictions were announced by Stormont last week, the Solitude Football Youth Development League was thriving.
Hundreds of kids between the ages of four and eight play small-sided games.
It is one of the most successful soccer programmes in the north.
The programme, overseen by former Cliftonville footballer and club coach Marc Smyth, couldn’t have observed any more rigorously the rules and regulations relating to Covid.
Temperate checks, sanitising stations, one-way system, one adult allowed per child, socially distant protocols, no food or hot drinks allowed into the ground. A clear and concise 40-second video was sent to all participating clubs explaining and stressing the importance of following the protocols.
These are the rules that are strictly adhered to by coaches, parents and players. If you don’t follow these rules you will not be part of the programme.
As far as I’m aware no-one has been ejected since the programme returned, because people follow rules if they are forced to.
The programme ran like clockwork and couldn’t be any more Covid-compliant. But the plug was still pulled on it.
No-one, as far as I’m aware, has outlined how much of these similar type outdoor programmes are contributing to the ‘R’ rate.
In a year’s time, my guess is we’ll look back on these lockdown rules and wince at the obtuse, broad brushstroke approach that had an unnecessarily debilitating impact on people’s lives and livelihoods.
The Covid-compliant constituency can’t keep paying for somebody else’s sins.
A lack of planning at governmental level has played a critical role in shutting down sport below ‘elite’ level.
Once we emerged from the first, undoubtedly more gruelling lockdown, we should have entered immediately into a police-type state to combat the virus – a pandemic society where we forfeit our rights and accept, reluctantly or otherwise, the need for tougher measures - if only to avoid a series of meandering, self-perpetuating lockdowns.
The laissez faire approach to mask-wearing, for example, was one of the biggest mistakes government made.
The cliff-edge economic policies, practised by successive British governments, always left the NHS just a couple of ICU beds away from reaching its capacity.
All in the name of 'efficiency savings'.
To think our Covid cases were down to single figures at one point should have been built upon. Instead, a healthy ambivalence towards the virus was displayed by some our own governing parties here.
Rather than emptying billions into furlough schemes, that will yield only smouldering ash, huge resources (there’s always a magic tree) should have been ploughed into giving the state greater licence to come down hard on every non-compliant act in local communities rather than citizens casually cursing retail and shop workers for having the temerity to ask them the whereabouts of their face mask.
The softly-softly approach over masks and social distancing clearly didn’t work - to the point where the economy wasn’t fire-guarded, and the Covid-compliant aspects of society are now closed in order to ‘do their bit’ to get the ‘R’ rate down.
Just like the paused youth football programme at Solitude every Saturday morning, if you want to participate, you follow the rules. It's non-negotiable.
After the first lockdown, the rules were simply too loosely interpreted. Now, local sports clubs who jumped through hoops and complied with all matter of protocol and were safe environments have been shut down.
As the economy burns and millions of livelihoods are lost, it's time we looked at Covid19 from a different angle.
It's time we started living with it better.
