THE GOVERNMENT HAS advised that all outdoor public events in Ireland with more than 500 people in attendance should be cancelled, a move which could shut down sport here until 29 March.
The announcement was made this morning by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar as efforts to curb the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus intensify.
“Our advice is that all indoor mass gatherings of more than 100 people, and outdoor mass gatherings of more than 500 people, should be cancelled,” Varadkar said.
Sport’s national governing bodies, including the GAA, FAI and IRFU, will now have to consider whether they can move their games behind closed doors or if fixtures should be postponed indefinitely.
“The Football Association of Ireland will make an announcement on plans for all footballing activities under its jurisdiction after a meeting with Government, Department of Health officials and other national sporting bodies this afternoon,” the Association said in a statement.
From a purely sporting perspective, a blanket shutdown of Irish sport would have significant implications.
Firstly, the GAA’s fixtures committee will now an additional problem to solve, namely when to play the national leagues. It may not be possible to do so at all, given the pressure the GAA is under to facilitate club fixtures throughout Ireland, with the inter-county and club scene each given a designated timeframe to run off their fixtures.
One leading source suggested January 2021 could be a possible date to finish off this year’s competition – just weeks before next year’s league begins. There is a distinct possibility the concluding stages of the league will simply not be played.
Financially, every sport will be hit – the concluding rounds of the football league and knockout stages of the hurling competition being the most lucrative games in the spring calendar for the association.
In soccer, teams will be even more severely hit with League of Ireland clubs dependent on income from matches to pay players’ wages. Their players union, the PFAI, will seek a loan from Uefa to deal with this shortfall.
