LETTER: How will football clubs outside top league survive?
A reader discusses football clubs and the issues surrounding coronavirus.
Taking note that fans are forbidden to attend sporting activities at football, cricket, rugby - and many others, just how are, say for example, football clubs outside the Premier League going to survive with no paying customers? Yes the 'big' teams inside the Premier bubble will survive, no doubt thanks to the millions they get from the television companies, but how, are likes of Walsall, Coventry, Birmingham, to name just three local teams, going to survive in their present form? And this would be repeated all over the country, what will be their future? Semi-professional? Or will they just go out of business?
Empty stadiums with no one using them could be demolished and turned into housing - or shops and trading estates, if there is any call for these things if the recession bites really deeply into trade? And don't forget, it won't be just football clubs being affected, every 'junior' sporting club could very easily face such a future.
What can be done? Well very little, unless scientists can come up with some magic panacea or drug to zap the hell out of this horror virus. The only thing we can do in the meantime is to mask up, cover up and isolate and keep our distance from one another to try and prevent a second, or third, spike in infections. OK, so we don't see our friends and relatives or go to the pub. We don't get a seaside holiday, but which would you rather have? Surviving or either suffering, and possibly passing on the bug to everyone we meet?
A little inconvenience to us now is much more preferable to thousands of seriously ill or dead people. Melodramatic? Answer that when you've lost friends or loved ones before calling me a scaremongering Cassandra. Be sensible, take care, wash hands often, stay away from those we love. Yes it might be a pain in the neck, but that's much more preferable than the alternative.
M Gough, Wombourne
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