England is in Lockdown Mark 2 for the next month. Pubs and restaurants are closed and so are hairdressers. We are told that we can only meet up with one other person from another household but not indoors or even in our gardens. We have to meet them outside in public places, keeping two metres apart. We are advised over and over to wash our filthy hands and to wear masks to smother our viral breathing.
Okay, if this will help I am happy to "get with the program" as our North American cousins are wont to say. Anything to reduce risk and frankly to stave off the possibility of a premature death. It's awful that we cannot keep visiting our beloved daughter who is now heavily pregnant and working from home. But rules are rules.
Now here's the rub.
While Lockdown Mark 2 proceeds, live football continues. The full programme of professional games advances in almost empty stadia. Players are still hugged when they score goals. Sometimes they even pile on top of each other in heaps of joy.
Teams travel up and down the country to play their matches and the best teams board aeroplanes to fly to every corner of Europe from Finland to Malta and from Moscow to Moldova.
There are also club officials, coaches, physios, TV and newspaper reporters. For all of these people Lockdown Mark 2 seems like an irrelevance. The games just keep happening thick and fast. The squads keep travelling.
Now I am a big football supporter. I love the game but I recognise that when it comes down to it, football is just entertainment. It is not essential. So why does it have licence to keep happening when ordinary people are receiving heavy fines for flouting lockdown rules?
There's a hell of a mismatch. We cannot meet up with our pregnant daughter or sit in a pub but footballers can travel all over the place, score goals, shake hands, hug each other while we watch it all on TV. What kind of a lockdown is Lockdown Mark 2? The players do not even wear masks during games!
I just "justified" this text to make it line up nicely. I wish European governments would "justify" the continuation of professional football during a deadly pandemic but the truth is they probably can't. The fact that the players are tested regularly is a poor defence in my estimation. Could it really be all about the money? Surely not.
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/35h3hUn
