Paul Wright | Long road to normality

As we approach ‘month one’ of no live sports, the possibility of no return to a normality of sorts before the end of the year looms real and large.

Different sport groups are coming up with ideas/proposals that will see officials and athletes agreeing to dramatic reduction in contractual remuneration legally due, but realistically impossible to maintain. The sport of horse racing appears to be the one slated for the earliest return, internationally, as widespread testing of participants (jockeys, trainers, grooms and other stakeholders) and social distancing during a race meet should be easy to attain and regulate.

Locally, the absence of Internet/mobile betting would be an initial hurdle, as racing without spectators has been tried, and failed, as the economic power of the betting public was spectacularly ignored. Off Track Betting (OTB) parlours were seen as the drawing card that would enable punters to participate in racing, while Internet and telephone betting was seen as an ‘aside’.

BETTING TERMINALS

One of the terms of divestment, if I remember correctly, was for the promoter to place betting terminals in supermarkets and gas stations, thus facilitating betting without access to an OTB, and, incidentally, being able to maintain the new mantra of social distancing. So, failure to implement some of the agreed ‘bullet points of divestment’ has now come back to haunt the promoter, who has now decided to temporarily lay off staff.

A post-COVID-19 world will guarantee a welcome improvement in the way the punter is treated. ‘Power to the people’.

However, continued uncertainty, the complete shutdown of commercial activity, and ‘tan a yuh yard’ in the parish of St Catherine have drastically affected life at Caymanas Park – our only racetrack, with horses leaving the park in droves for care at nearby farms. Not pretty.

In football, the popular English Premier League (EPL) is having meeting after meeting with players, clubs and regulators, in an effort to salvage the season. Lower leagues have already faced the possibility of an inability to complete scheduled matches and have agreed that promotion and demotion from second tier to third tier, etc, would go ahead based on position in the points tables at the point when the competition was halted.

With Liverpool FC on the verge of their first league title in 30 years of trying, such a proposal would lead to not only global howls of protest but, I suspect, a long-drawn-out battle in the British courts.

SPECTATOR-FREE GAME

With only nine rounds of matches to go, Liverpool can argue that it is virtually impossible for them to be overtaken as league leaders. Last week, a proposal for a return to football on June 8 with league completion by June 30, without spectators, now awaits government approval.

Player fitness, virus testing of all participants, officials allowed in the stadiums included, and medical approval of a crowded schedule would also be mandatory. This is not impossible, but travel to venues and crowd control of fans outside venues where their heroes are playing will also have to be considered. With Britain being one of the countries with the highest rate of infection and death from the coronavirus, the lack of early and decisive complete shutdown of commerce will haunt the prospect of a return to normal in this calendar year.

This failure to apply commercial shutdown should be viewed by our own leaders as a portent of things to come, as this pandemic and the possibility of a ‘second wave of infection’ has lessons for all who wish to learn from the mistakes of others.

This pandemic can only be contained by mass testing and identification of those with the virus, symptomatic and asymptomatic carriers, their isolation for the proposed 14 days, and gradual return to some kind of normality, with the wearing of masks and social distancing being with us until at least 2021. Anything less is pandering to economics, vis-a-vis life.