I suppose it is possible that, out there in darkest Teesside - even possibly in North Yorkshire, South Durham and anywhere else that Boro fans live - there will be knots of people pulling their hair out during anguished discussions over when they might get to see a football match again "in the flesh". They might have been suffering withdrawal symptoms during that tiny gap between the belated end of the 2019-20 season and the one for 2020-21. How can they continue to survive without regular visits to the Cathedral at the Riverside, where their idols perform for their general entertainment? For how much longer must this enforced separation between the Club and its supporters be endured?
Well, I suppose there MIGHT be some groups of anguished supporters like that somewhere, in some different version of reality to the one I inhabit.
I live in a world where shops are open (though sometimes one might have to ring the bell and wait outside for the proprietor to answer the locked door to the prospective customer), and in a world where even those shops which still seem to welcome trade are required to ask customers to wear facemasks. A world where you might have to "book" a table at the pub (one of only three pubs I have visited since March this year), or leave a contact number for tracing purposes should a patron or member of staff later fall ill (all 3 of the pubs). The fact there have been only 3 pubs visited in 6 months shows how dystopian this world has become. It's a world where, although some offices are open, they are not "fully open". Social distancing means only a skeleton staff can attend at any one time, few clients are seen face to face, and most tasks are undertaken "remotely" by laptop/email/telephone/Zoom/Teams/WhatsApp etc.
None of that should be read as a denial of the health situation, far from it! I am not a COVID-19 denier. I asked a client about the fact that a child had not had the usual childhood innoculations. "Don't believe in them - nor in COVID", I was told. I did ask whether the client also believed the Earth was flat but received no answer. For the avoidance of doubt I do understand the health (and economic) risks the country faces, together with much of the rest of the world. And the fact I am coming to the age when the risks start to multiply massively, to a point where I'm not far from having to "shield", concentrates the mind wonderfully.
I raise the above simply because it is the background to the situation in which we find ourselves at the start of this new, if belated, season. It might sound heretical to say so, but there are other things going on in the world than football. I suppose if you'd been caught in the 2004 Tusnami at Galle or Banda Aceh, or your business had been facing ruin following the Wall Street Crash, you'd have other things on the mind than wondering about the next football match. In the circumstances I find it difficult to believe that football is as high on the list of priorities, for most people, as it might usually be.
Health problems and worries surround us. The economy is looking "interesting". Crowds are not currently allowed to attend games. The finances of clubs are under massive strain. Players' contracts, at all but the biggest and wealthiest of clubs, are unlikely to be renewed at the same level when they expire. Many clubs will lay staff off and some clubs may cease to exist at all. To some extent a financial crisis in football had been foreseen for ages but we mightn't have expected it to come like this, or so suddenly.
I will come clean. I have renewed my season ticket. I'm not sure I did that with any real sense of keen anticipation - more out of a sense of duty, a hope I'd feel a little better about things when (eventually) we got underway. Yet the first games - none of which were open to the public - could hardly have been designed better to put people off the game. I have been decidedly underwhelmed.
We don't know whether others will come in for any of our players (I guess the manager isn't exactly expecting to be run over in the rush) and we don't know whether we will be able to strengthen the squad. If we do strengthen, we won't be shopping at Waitrose or M+S but at a discount shop where the stock is approaching its sell-by dates, or we otherwise wouldn't be able to buy anything at all. So the football so far has been nothing to shout about and the squad prospects wouldn't raise the spirits, either.
However, on top of all that, I now read that Boro might allow a crowd of 1,000 to attend the Bournemouth game. I'm not sure how they would select the 1,000 or whether the Club will be looking for "volunteers" to take the step forward themselves. However it is done, we will have a crowd of 1,000 (ie about 3% of the capacity), supporters will presumably have to sit several yards from the person nearest to them, and maybe (?) have to wear masks. They MIGHT be expected to be quiet on the basis that shouting etc may more easily transmit the virus, and this is all on the basis there isn't a further deterioration of the COVID situation (as we are told Middlesbrough is one of those towns where a further outbreak is possible). I guess, since the crowd will be so small, many of the people attending the match will have made their own way there. And the bars etc in the concourse(s) might be closed.
I must say it is beginning to sound a fairly joyless experience. Or maybe I am having a glass half-empty, rather than a glass half-full, day? Maybe I will deel differently in a few weeks. But at the moment I must say that when I get up on Saturday morning, the football, ANY football, is hardly likely to be at the forefront of my mind. But in the past that might have been the case, not every weekend but certainly on some weekends. We will see. I will not hold my breath.
I think a lot of fans will be considering whether or not to return to attending matches in person. This period of “ Cold Turkey” may well have been enough to break the habit of a lifetime. Clubs are going to face an uphill battle to get attendances back to a pre Covid level. Particularly now that for some households money may be tight and football will have dropped down the pecking order.
Great post Dormo and it's really hard to second guess whether supporters will indeed now be allowed back into grounds given the rise in Covid cases - plus as you say why should football games be given priority over other more pressing cases.
Although, for many clubs in Leagues One and Two they will struggle to survive without gate receipts, whereas the PL clubs don't seem overly affected and are still spending and planning to spend millions on players.
I think these 1000 fan test runs are pretty meaningless as they wouldn't provide much in income and yet still risk infections - it's also hard to see how clubs would be allowed to get to the stage of having 30 percent capacity, which could amount to 10-15,000 people in a small space, all coughing and sneezing as they leave the ground in the winter months ahead.
Hopefully those in power haven't forgotten how back in March it was those European games that helped spread the virus and it's doubtful if mask wearing and adequate social distancing would make the difference with such large numbers.
There's also still as far as I'm aware any agreement on what to do if the season is once again suspended due to Covid - I've not found whether the proposed vote to end the season was ultimately passed or more likely the covid can was just kicked down the road!
btw I hope you didn't mind me moving your post and giving it a title, which I know was not what you were essential arguing for but while is not existential question for most worried about the pandemic it still is ultimately the question that threatens the existence of football as we knew it and the future existence of many clubs.
@werdermouth - No problem at all, Werder. I was going to send a short post and it sort of grew.... but I can see it presents a topic on which people might have views one way or the other. Anyway, it's good to be back on the Blog, if not in the ground, as yet.
I was almost feeling nostalgic after reading your post as it was the kind of post that I remembered as almost being a staple of the old blog as you explored a subject in your inimitable style!
The fundamental, simple truth is that we can't have everything. Until such time as the virus is brought under control and its impact reduced to nothing worse than seasonal flu, we have to decide as a society what is most important to us.
We know it spreads easily indoors and the more social we are, the faster it spreads. Eating, singing, shouting, exercising hard, all these things help it spread. Until we have a treatment then we have to reduce the number and type of social gatherings.
People often talk about the R number but get misled. A virus can be more or less infectious but the R number is, as much as anything, a function of the environment in which it spreads. If we open schools, we increase the R number. If we open pubs and clubs, we increase the R number. Once the R number gets over 1, we have a problem.
The other side is the prevalence of the virus. The R number might be 10, but if there is no virus around, it can't spread. COVID zero is not practical outside of small islands with limited border points but you can get COVID prevalence close to zero and have first class test and trace so that the minute it pops its head up you can isolate everyone present and prevent onward spread. That requires COVID close to zero because otherwise test and trace is overwhelmed and the virus spreads through the community.
This is literally an approach that has been around for centuries. It's well-known and simple. All it takes resources and competent organisation. It buys you time until you have treatments. Until that point, we have to keep the environmental R number below 1 and that means we have to decide which social gatherings we can do without and which, such as schools, we have to open.
Much though going to a football match is a huge part of many peoples' life, it's hard to justify the increase in the environmental R value that it will add at this time. My old stomping ground in south Wales has just been locked down again partly because of a cluster from Doncaster races.
I always get the impression that the PL often cry wolf. It’s long been established that with the TV money, clubs could exist on that revenue alone. Clubs like Bournemouth on gates of only 10,000 have proven that. The real sufferers are the lower league clubs, perhaps this will open the PL’s eyes to how fans spending contributes to a clubs revenue , from match day attendance and ancillary purchases.
Can you imagine if this behind closed doors football had come about because of a fan revolution and a refusal to attend matches unless they were given a bigger say in how football is run.
One to bear in mind for future reference methinks.
Thanks FD for a great post and as Werder said it’s a blast from the past showing what a talented bunch of bloggers we have on here.
Up the Boro and up Diasboro.
PS
you wouldn’t catch me going to see a match anytime soon until all this COVID-19 has cleared up. I’m still wary of opening the post with my vinyl gloves and mask on never mind doing anywhere near the bogs at the riverside !
OFB
Great post, Dormo.
Like you, I have just renewed my season card (‘pledge to renew’). I told the lass in the office on the phone though that I didn’t want to be entered into the ballot, as my wife has been shielding because of her vulnerable immune system issues. After several months, she is only now starting to venture out to the shops and between us we have only been in one pub since March. A return in October would likely be too soon for me, however safe they say they’ve made it. The office lady told me it wasn’t possible to opt out of the ballot anyway, as ‘you’ll be entered automatically.’ I renewed anyway.
Today, I learn that I have been successful in the ballot, so I am eligible to return to The Riverside once the crowd is raised to 10000 or so. (Boro have not said, of course, whether I was just lucky or whether insufficient people took up their pledge offer, which I suspect may be the case, given the quality of football seen thus far and our not very appealing prospects!)
However, as that hopeful day draws near, I shall face a real dilemma:- do I return to The Riverside and risk catching Covid and passing it on to my wife, or do I sit it out a while longer? I travel up with my brother, whose wife has also been shielding. Do I give it to them as well, or does he give it to me? If I do sit tight, how much time do I give it? When would it be safe to return? I really owe it to Mrs H not to put her at any risk, so I’m thinking of ringing the ticket office and asking them to give my ballot place to the next person in the queue, but if I do that, how many matches will I then be unable to attend subsequently? It seems highly likely, if we ever get to allow 10000 in, that that will be the absolute limit for some time, given the worsening national situation and tonight’s announcement that much of the North-East is to be placed under tighter sanctions. So potentially, if I opt out of my ballot place, I might be shooting myself in the foot, with little chance of having the wound heal any time soon.
Selfishly, I find myself hoping that this useless government will decide that October is far too soon to allow substantial crowds back in, which would give me a get-out clause, and at least I could go on streaming all the matches online. Or that local circumstances and infection rates will determine which clubs can have crowds in, subject to review. However, they seem determined to push ahead with these pointless trials, which seems to me to be just opening one more route for the virus to spread.
I always get the impression that the PL often cry wolf. It’s long been established that with the TV money, clubs could exist on that revenue alone. Clubs like Bournemouth on gates of only 10,000 have proven that. The real sufferers are the lower league clubs, perhaps this will open the PL’s eyes to how fans spending contributes to a clubs revenue , from match day attendance and ancillary purchases.
The problem with the PL is that they can never have enough money and it's just empty rhetoric from the Chief Executive, Richard Masters, that it's "absolutely critical" that fans are allowed back in stadiums as soon as possible. There's no financial justification given the least well off club in the PL will have income of at least £100m - plus many club owners are also billionaires, who could easily offset lost gate income out of their own pockets rather than risk adding to Covid cases and the rest of society.
Maybe you should write to the club and explain your situation as it must surely be an oversight that people who are either vulnerable or shielding others who are can't opt out of the ballot and would subsequent be penalised by not being allowed to live stream games despite paying for a season ticket. Nobody should be forced to risk infection if they don't want to and surely being able to opt out of a scheme that isn't proven to be 100% safe should be your right as a customer.
I'd have to agree with Deleriad view that ultimately we shouldn't lose sight that we're still in the midst of an active pandemic and shouldn't be undertaking relaxation of restrictions lightly - there will be a price to pay if football is given priority over other more essential needs. Nothing is really going to change until there is a Covid vaccine available to the general population and until there is the idea of "returning to normality" before we have one is only wishful thinking.
Interestingly, I was listening to The Life Scientific podcast on Radio Four yesterday, where physicist, Jim Al-Khalili, talks to scientists about their life work - this week he was talking to Sarah Gilbert, who has been a key figure in the development of the Oxford Covid vaccine.
In the interview she explained where they are currently at with the development of their Covid vaccine - after a successful Stage 1 trial that basically tests on a small group of healthy individuals between 18-55 that it is both safe and works, it then completed successful Stage 2 trials, which increases the size of the group and tests the vaccine on a wider age group.
The vaccine is currently in Stage 3 blind trials, where it is tested in field so to speak in four different countries - with half of those taking part are not given the vaccine and also nobody knows if they have been given the 'real' vaccine. These trials last until a certain number of people in the test have caught the Covid virus so they can measure if having the vaccine was actually successful in either avoiding catching the virus.
Sarah Gilbert expects the Stage 3 trial to be finished around early next year and if it was successful then it would gain approval to be used. Whilst they are already producing vaccine doses ahead of approval in case it is successful, she said the first group to get it would be health workers, followed after by vulnerable groups.
So realistically, if all goes well then a vaccine for the general population won't be available until the middle of next year. This timetable also fits in pretty much with what the German epidemiologist I listen to has been predicting based on his knowledge of where other vaccine development is at. Therefore, everyone will be living with the risk of catching Covid for most likely another year and measures to avoid its spread and testing and tracing is all what we have until then.
Nevertheless, it's still an outstanding achievement that thanks to the hard work of many scientists and labs that they've been able to produce a safe vaccine in around 12 months without cutting corners - they've basically been running all the stages in parallel and are building on years of research on vaccine development. They also are planning to make this vaccine as cheap as possible so that poorer countries can also afford it - a price of just 1-2 dollars a shot was mentioned.
Anyway, if you want to listen to the interview, here's the link below...
The Life Scientific: Sarah Gilbert on developing a vaccine for Covid-19
So much information on this blog it amazes me! Thank you
OFB
The club can confirm that our manager Neil Warnock has returned a positive test for COVID-19 and will be spending a period in isolation in accordance with guidelines.
I wonder now that if Neil Warnock has tested positive for COVID-19 does that mean all the Boro squad and coaches go into isolation and the game called off for Saturday ?
OFB
@original-fat-bob - In view of the Manager's age, he will have to be careful, on a personal level, quite apart from worrying about the spread of COVIV-19 to squad members.
And Werder's comments about The Life Scientific: it does look as if we are in this until well into 2021, even on the base the research proves successful. That programme on BBC Radio 4 is excellent - a different scientist every week, talking about their journey into science, their careers so far and how they ended up specialising in their particular field, often by chance (biologists, phsyicists, astronomers, medics....).
As if to highlight the point of about the continued risks of contracting Covid, Neil Warnock has tested positive. Since the club say none of the other coaching staff have tested positive then I presume the game will go ahead as the players are also regularly tested. Having said that I'm not sure how long the incubation period is so hopefully everyone will be tested again to make sure - the worry would be if any staff members subsequently test positive and then what are the risks to Bournemouth players?
Anyway, let's hope Neil Warnock makes a swift recovery as we shouldn't forget he's in the higher risk over-70s group!
I “pledged to renew” and, like Clive, got lucky(?) in the ballot, a high probability when you subsequently discover only 2500 did so.
I felt I was making my contribution to shoring up the Club’s finances and was not expecting to be attending this side of Christmas, if at all.
I am also apprehensive about returning to the Riverside. In our “bubble”, all but one of us is over 70. If we were asked to shield again, I’m not sure where that leaves us and the poor sod who would have to go on their own.
It really is a complicated situation.
I’m just hoping that common sense prevails and that the decision to allow fans to return is delayed until it is safe for all to do so.
I can understand Bob’s fear of visiting James Cook Hospital, it’s bad enough at the best of times. I’m fortunate that I haven’t had to visit JCH since March. As long as I have regular blood tests at my doctor’s surgery and have my hormone injections there every 12 weeks, my prostate consultant now gives me a telephone consultation every month or two depending on the results of the blood tests. Also the ‘controlled’ drugs only available at JCH are now sent to me by courier post. The urologist is now peripatetic and visits me every 2 months to change my catheter tube, and as I’m now prone to dizzy spells I’m now on a Home Call bleeper in case I fall again in my house or garden, although it’s very sensitive and I’ve had a few false alarms.
I do my own shopping even though I’ve received plenty of offers as I prefer to see what’s on offer, but that is the only time I venture out. I’ve been lucky prior to lockdown in having several holidays, but can’t travel abroad again as I can’t cope with airports even with assisted passage, but wouldn’t contemplate doing so anyway under the present climate. However I do miss a drive in the country, not being able to visit my brother who lives near Helmsley, or going out for meals. I should be used to a certain amount of isolation living on my own, but this pandemic leads to a certain amount of boredom, concentration and depression, not to mention tiredness even having cut down on my red wine intake to half a glass a day at mealtimes. I used to say I’m alone but not lonely, but I guess that’s not true anymore as I can’t see an end to this pandemic any time soon.
Any way well done to Bob for shedding so much weight. I hope you feel better for it.
Thanks Werder for your advice. Because I missed a few games in the 2018-19 season due to circumstances beyond my control, Boro contacted me to ask why. I was given a gentle ‘rap over the knuckles’, implicitly if not actually stated. So, I would really need to let them know if I decide to sit out the first few games until such time as it is safer to return. My problem remains, though! As soon as I let them know, I shall probably have to forfeit my place. And perhaps it’s only right that I should.
I was a bit surprised to read in the Gazette that clubs don't have to test players unless they show symptoms and it was speculated that despite Neil Warnock's positive test it's unlikely that the players would be tested. Surely this is a bit complacent given it's well known that many cases are asymptomatic and the object is surely to prevent further spreading of the virus.
The article also stated that Warnock could be back in the dugout for next week's game at QPR as government guidelines say you only need to isolate for ten days from the day you started feeling unwell and not when you tested positive. Again, I find this extremely complacent as surely you'd want someone confirmed with Covid to have tested negative before returning to work - why take the risk of returning almost on the ten-day deadline?
I hope the club err on the side of caution as presumably Warnock caught the virus from someone he's been in close contact with - which presumably expect most of the players have been.
@clive-hurren - I didn't realise attendance was compulsory! Maybe you could get a sick note 😉
Really sorry to hear about your health problems. We love you on here, so please keep on posting your brilliant articles. Researching and producing them should help to relieve your boredom, hopefully. They certainly relieve mine!
Stay safe and well.
Yes, I was a little miffed myself when I got the call from Boro. After all, I pay upfront for my season card, and it’s not as if I’m allowing anybody to use it in my stead. I suppose you could interpret the call as a courtesy thing, perhaps enquiring as to my well-being, but as the lady asked me why I had missed 6 games over the season, it didn’t feel like that! She didn’t seem to appreciate either that I live 130 miles from Middlesbrough, which means I’m actually making a huge sacrifice in terms of time and costs for my commitment to Boro!
I think a sick note is a good idea, especially as I’m shortly moving even further afield to North Wales, which will mean a round trip of nearly 400 miles, or a lot of long and complicated train journeys!!
It’s not even as if the product currently and recently on offer has been value for money or enjoyment! Truly, I must be mad!
Or a “ Sick of it” note....
I wonder now that if Neil Warnock has tested positive for COVID-19 does that mean all the Boro squad and coaches go into isolation and the game called off for Saturday ?
Only our Strikers will be in isolation come Saturday Bob!
Spare a thought for Shamrock Rovers fans. They get a dream draw against AC Milan and they don’t get to see it.
@ken Thanks for the nice words. They were considering fitting me with a pacemaker before all this COVID-19 business started and most times I’ve had to talk by phone as well and send daily reports of BP and pulse rates taken at various times. JC hospital said although I was poorly they were only admitting life or death cases....Perhaps we should start a new thread on the blog with medical ailments ! You keep fighting Ken you are really an inspiration to us all and we are with you all the way OFB
@steely if Diasboro was a bubble I would suspect a lot of us would be in the senior generation !
OFB