Bolton Postponement and Morecambe’s Covid Policy

Morecambe should be travelling to Andy Burnham’s Christmas Covid Kingdom of Greater Manchester on Boxing Day to visit the University of Bolton Stadium at Horwich and celebrate the festive season. But they won’t be doing: the match has been postponed due to an outbreak of Coronavirus at the host club.

Bolton as both a place and a football club has been severely hit by the latest Omicron version of the pandemic. The Trotters had to postpone their last fixture against Wycombe due to the impact of the virus on its squad, when it was unable to raise the requisite thirteen fit outfield players and a goalkeeper which current regulations demand is a minimum for any game to go ahead.

The EFL produced figures last week which – very alarmingly – said that 31% of professional footballers registered with it did not have even a single anti-Coronavirus inoculation. Bizarrely, 25% of professional players in the EFL have apparently stated that they don’t intend to get one either. That’s one in four; the figures for the population at large suggest that only one in ten people over the age of twelve have not had a first jab and eighty percent of us have had two.

So why this massive discrepancy? Footballers have kids who go to schools, where Coronavirus is widespread. Footballers have friends and relations. Footballers socialise. They don’t live in a sanitised hermetically-sealed bubble. They are not immune. So why have so few of them been vaccinated and what on earth persuades so many of them that getting a jab isn’t necessary?

I don’t pretend to know the answer to this but I find the figures actually mind-boggling. Given the lack of protection which clearly exists in most squads, nobody can be surprised that the pandemic has ravaged so much of the recent fixture list. In my view, it’s amazing that even more games have not had to be postponed. In Bolton alone, 1,156 people are known to have contracted the virus between the 7th and 13th December despite 79% of residents over 12 having had at least their first anti-Covid inoculation. Since then, almost two thousand cases – 1,955 – have been detected and four deaths recorded locally due to the infection. (In Lancaster & Morecambe, the figures were a mere fraction of this at 371 cases in the same period and 79% again. Very worryingly though, the infection rate has leapt in one single week to 972 known cases by December 21st, with three recorded fatalities.)

Source: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ You can enter your own postcode at the bottom of the page to see the situation in your own area.

Wanderers remain tight-lipped about how many players and staff have been infected but Manager Ian Evatt has gone on record to say:

“Football players, staff, and the club’s workforce could be related to someone that is at risk. When they come into work every day with that on their mind it isn’t easy for them but for now it just feels slightly morally wrong that we’re continuing as normal when the rest of the UK is where it is.”

Morecambe FC has been far more forthcoming and proactive about the Covid status at the club. Manager Stephen Robinson announced after the Fleetwood game last week:

“It’s a worry when you see the amount of games that have been called off recently. We are very lucky here that we have every single player here double vaccinated. Every player will have their booster on Tuesday (21st December) as well, so we are really counting ourselves lucky on that front. In terms of the general aspect of football, we have seen a lot of games called off this weekend and it is a concern. Hopefully we can get through this period. No-one wants to see football cancelled, no-one wants to see football without fans because it is not real; that was certainly something that was really unenjoyable. We want fans in stadiums, we have to find a way around it but ultimately people’s health is the most important thing.”

Wise words indeed. Ernie would be proud of them. But seriously though folks: do be careful. Some idiots have told us that the Coronavirus pandemic is a conspiracy or a myth or whatever and refuse to take the inoculations even though they know that not doing so means that they pose a risk to other people’s health. But they clearly don’t care about other people. Many of these morons are now in hospital suffering from an infection which they have previously claimed doesn’t exist. It’s a hard lesson to learn – and for some of them, it will be the last lesson they will ever learn. So if you haven’t had a jab – get one now for your own sake and everyone else’s. If it’s good enough for Robbo and his players – it’s good enough for you…