For weeks I’ve been bemoaning the lack of a Plan B at Sunderland, now I find myself wincing at the announcement of a formal Plan B from the government. The last two years have been taxing on all of us still fortunate enough to be here and devastating for those who have lost loved ones. As uncomfortable as Plan B may be, we do need to keep one eye on the bigger picture. What’s all this got to do with football though? Well, it transpires, quite a lot but let’s talk about football first.
On Saturday we played Oxford, another draw which we needed to win and a draw which saw the woodwork rattled a few times. Unlucky is one description, improvement is another. There were times when passes were going astray though and a distinct lack of invention. There was, however, tenacity. Alex Pritchard was a tough little battler in midfield and won the ball back countless times, there seemed to be a boost in the team somewhere and, credit where it’s due, that’s probably down to Lee Johnson.
There were negatives of course, our defence looks weak without any proper full backs. Completely disorganised. At one stage Bailey Wright was playing centre forward and had to lumber back as quickly as he could manage as Oxford broke. January needs to see us address our defence as it is costing us points and confidence. Tuesday night was great, but it was Morecambe so needs little analysis beyond the fact that we did what we should have done. The same thing we have done before, beat the lesser teams convincingly, draw with the more challenging teams.
One thing I did notice when I was entering the stadium on Saturday were the signs on the turnstiles. I had it in my head that prior to Saturday the signs recommended face masks. On Saturday they were required. I have to admit that I’m a bit of a sheep in this and I peeked through the turnstiles to see that nobody was wearing a mask so decided the sign was to be ignored. Who wants to wear a mask for that long if we’re honest? Yesterday Plan B was announced by Boris who looked like he had combed his hair for the occasion, maybe he had a party to go to. Work from home, yeah that was expected, face masks again, expected; wait… what’s this stuff about Covid passes?
We live in a society that is incredibly divisive at the moment. It probably began with the Brexit “debate” and has rumbled on since with people finding new things to become incredibly passionate about. New hills to die on. New reasons to get offended. As a kid who used to wrap a hankie round his face and pretend to be a cowboy, I have no problem with wearing a mask, but there are many who will see it as an infringement of their liberty. As Oxford took the knee on Saturday a small section of the Roker End booed. Presumably because they objected to the idea that someone was insisting they think in a certain way and the indignation was to let them know that it was the people on their knees who should be thinking another way. The hypocrisy is almost ironic. The new debate dividing the nation is around vaccination and even the existence of Covid entirely.
Let’s start with the rules though. In any gatherings of 10,000 or more you need to provide a Covid pass from Monday. For the Plymouth game you’re fine, but from Monday it changes. This means that you might be able to go to away games, but possibly not home games. It also means that the queues at turnstiles are likely to be bigger as the passes will, presumably, be checked on entry. The next question is, how do you get a Covid pass?
This is where it all starts to enter into that divisive territory. The first point I will make on this is that there are many supporters who attend the Stadium on a regular basis who are not tech savvy. There may be some who do not even have a smart phone. I don’t know what plans the club have to look at this issue, but I would be disappointed if a fully vaccinated octogenarian season card holder was denied access to the ground because they couldn’t figure out the technology. That’s the first way you can get a covid pass by the way, get your vaccines.
I’m fully vaccinated, because I made the choice to be fully vaccinated. I have had my booster and everything, but that’s my choice. I would implore everyone to stay away from the conspiracy theories on social media and rely on scientists when making that choice, but it is ultimately your choice about whether or not to get vaccinated. I chose to get vaccinated because I have kids and an elderly mother and if this reduces my chances of passing the virus on to them then that’s a good thing and I’m going to do it. Your choices are framed by your life so I would not judge that.
The next way to get a covid pass is a PCR test. We had to do PCR tests the other week because my daughter had a persistent cough and a high temperature. They took nearly a week to come back as we did the postal tests. My advice, if you’re going down this route, is to leave yourself plenty of time. Demand for PCR tests is going to increase on the back of this. It was also announced, however, that a negative lateral flow test would be enough. Now far be it from me to suggest that this would be open to manipulation but there were some schoolkids out there who figured out that you could produce a false positive and get some time off school if you introduced some lemon juice to the lateral flow test. It remains to be seen how this process would work, but I see little to stand in the way of getting someone else to do a test for you or even storing up loads of negative results just in case.
Again, if you want to do that, to make that choice, that’s up to you. If, however, this latest variant does produce a big wave of new cases and we’re all queuing hopelessly outside supermarkets in search of toilet rolls again then I’m not sure how much more any of us can take. We have already seen the Spurs squad decimated by an outbreak. We do not want this season to end as the one two years ago (how are our PPG looking by the way?) with teams playing behind closed doors before finally giving up. Most importantly though, we do not want our hospitals overwhelmed. That isn’t even just about Covid cases, it’s about people waiting for hip operations, it’s about ambulance response times, it’s about NHS staff working to the point of exhaustion. Like I say though, it’s your choice.
As always, FTM
