Specter of health issues leave cloud over players return to Melwood training

Everyone wants football to restart. Everyone concerned wants to see Liverpool play, and get back to the business of playing football.

Liverpool will be looking at a derby at Everton If the current season is continued. And this becomes a monumental ‘if’; as no one can agree on virtually anything.

The details and minutia of playing a game (even closed to public audience) during a medical pandemic is, in and of itself, a Herculean task of Olympian proportion. The number of people involved quickly numbers in the hundreds.

And this raises primary questions like the hundred or so that came from the league health organization yesterday.

Do players stay in hotel quarantine, to safeguard family? Do goalie gloves or even the ball itself become instruments of transmission? Who becomes responsible and liable if a player, staff member, family member etc. becomes infected and dies.

No one can agree on any of these and a myriad of other issues.

This is why there has been such a hue and cry to follow the Belgian path for concluding the season: simply end it now with the table as it stands.

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The Bundesliga is returning to play the remainder of their season on the 18th…all eyes will be focused on this reopening of play, to see just how well they can pull it off and retain some modicum of a safe environment for all concerned.

I look for the EPL to seek a restart in early June at the latest (having learned from the Germans how to progress with a restart); or it begins to become more time sensitive as the 2020/2021 season is slated to begin in mid to late Aug. This start date can and probably will be rearranged to fit the end of play this summer should it be definitively decided to play.

But the 800 pound gorilla in the room remains. Should they? Resume play? If they cannot guarantee the health of those involved and their families and others that these folks may infect?

The choice is between a known prophylactic – not playing: and a less safe option of playing regardless, while attempting to maintain a relatively safe playing environment.

So players have returned to Melwood this week for individual training; team training to follow in a limited way next week. And other clubs are in the process or are already engaged in training. All in the hope that there can be a mutually beneficial resolution to all the underlying issues surrounding restarting play in the EPL.

It really says a lot about us, and who we are as people, as human beings how we choose to resolve this ethical dilemma. Of course we want football for Christ’s sake!! We are bleeding football fans, football fanatics we are!

But are we so driven, so fanatical, so in love with sport that we knowingly risk the health and safety of others, in its pursuit? Hmmm…

Sounds a tad like that old Circus Maximus gene rearing it’s ugly head or so it would seem. I want the lads to play, I want the lads to win…every time they step onto the bloody pitch, I want them to win.

But I do draw the line when it comes to life and death – matters. Gods holey trousers; no one should have to risk their life in the pursuit of a game to entertain us, me!