MOSTLY FOOTBALL: Covid-19 puts sport into perspective

We are entering a world unlike any other we have known before. Sport pales into insignificance, writes Michael Hannon.

It seems a little irrelevant to be trying to write a sporting column today. The world is battling Covid-19 and more or less all sport globally has ground to a halt, as it should. 

Gaelic football is important. It's a huge part of the lives of many of us but perspective is needed. No sport, including football, is more important than life or death. 

As a Maths teacher I found myself weeks ago studying graphs that highlighted rates of infection in various countries around the world for this coronavirus, wondering if there was something I might be able to use in class for my students. 

I didn’t really understand the disease or how it transmitted as a contagion, but I understood the maths and about three weeks ago the severity of the problem began to crystalise in front of me. 

The mathematical models I was looking at based on empirical data from countries like China, Iran, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Italy clearly illustrated a trend.

The data showed that where countries took drastic and draconian measures, the virus slowed down in terms of rates of infection, and where countries didn’t, it overwhelmed them. In short, social distancing worked. 

In some countries, the speed at which the virus doubled was three days; in others, where severe restrictions were imposed on the people, it was six. That stark contrast told its own story. 

Everyone infected with the virus went on to infect somewhere between 2.2 and three other people. Getting that number below one would return the exponential spread of the virus to a linear progression. 

Now, here's a really interesting thing: in some countries were they got a headstart on the virus, thanks to their prior experiences with SARS, rates of infection flat-lined! 

In Wuhan, the Chinese city where this disease originated, they have now reduced the number of daily new infections to single digits. 

So, social distancing is the only thing that truly works, and the reality was hitting me hard that all sport would have to be suspended as we unite in our attempts to slow the spread of the virus down. 

By the tail end of last week, the reality was also hitting everyone else involved in sport, with the exception of those punters at Cheltenham. And don’t get me started on what went down at Cheltenham. 

If there was another outbreak of foot and mouth disease the people involved with horse racing would cancel the festival like they did in 2001, but a real and present danger to human life? Unfortunately that just doesn’t seem severe enough for them. I thought the powers-that-be who decided to go ahead with their annual National Hunt showpiece made a terrible decision and one that will have major implications down the line.

Sports followers will naturally wonder about the conclusion of the GAA's National Leagues, the start of the club season, the football and hurling championships, the Masters in Augusta, and the Premier League in England. The list goes on and on. 

Unless a vaccine is discovered, what we are looking at is a very uncertain future where isolation is really our only option until the world develops immunity from the disease. That process could take six months to three years, according to some experts. Needless to say, this is now deadly serious.

Wuhan may have got new infections down to single digits but as people return to work all that really means is they’re only three to four weeks away from another serious outbreak. 

Therefore all the scenarios that people in the media are putting forward for how and when the sporting fixtures can be run off are mostly irrelevant because we simply don’t know. We may continue to experience mini peaks and troughs for weeks and weeks to come. 

The Spanish flu, for example, travelled round the world four times in 1918 before it eventually died out. And the world is a much smaller place now than it was a century ago, which brings with it a  lot of drawbacks when a pandemic like this rears its unwanted head.

And even if and when this thing fizzles out, the repercussions will continue. After the health crisis has passed, the world will be faced with the economic fall-out from Covid-19 and once again sport will have a price to pay, just like everyone else in society. 

The GAA, as an amateur organisation, won’t be as badly hit in this regard when compared to professional sports and leagues around the world but there will undoubtedly be an economic price to be paid that will trickle down and be felt by clubs around the country.

Because the GAA does work on a trickle-down financial model, with the vast majority of its income finding its way eventually to counties and clubs. And when income is reduced at the top, there can only be one outcome.
The severity of that will be linked to the length that this crisis exists. Television money and gate receipts are just two ways that sport will feel the pinch. 

But when the economic toll is added up, there is no getting away from the fact that the less money there is in the economy, the less there is for clubs fundraising for their own little patch of the world. 

There are no contracts in the GAA but soccer and rugby players plying their trade around the world may find their employers struggling to pay their wages. Not such an issue for the multimillionaires at the top of the tree but a serious issue for those further down the line who, like the rest of us, depend on their wages to meet their monthly mortgage repayments and put food on the table. 

There are, at the moment, just too many unknowns to contemplate anything - anything that is outside of what is the best thing to do to stay healthy and to keep your loved ones healthy.

What we do know is people love their sport. Sport stirs the pulses like very little else. It will be top of many people's list of things to do for when we return to some degree of normality. 

In fact, it will speed up that process. Until then, all we can do it sit tight and follow the advice we have been given.