Health and wealth key, but can football decide? - Stuart Rayner on Football

If the Government is dithering, torn between responses, what hope football chairmen taking a decisive stand? As it is, after a week damaged by Covid-19 postponements, football plays on at Christmas – except in the case of a large number of coronavirus-affected games, such as at Bradford and Barnsley, where it will not.

One of the problems football has created for itself is from its habit of kicking the can down the road and only dealing with these matters when it has to. Two years ago, no one could have seen all this coming but the last couple of seasons have dropped some pretty heavy hints we needed clear rules for what should and should not be done if Covid ravaged squads. Finally this week the Football League put a number on how many players – 14, including a goalkeeper – were enough to plough on regardless of infections. Before that it was do what you think is right and cross your fingers we think the same. The Premier League is still falling back on a case-by-case approach.

Now, as chairmen thrash these things out, their vested interests have hardened. Clubs that might take a more distanced view in the summer when problems are hypothetical suddenly look at them through the prism of their own seasons. When Leeds United are without eight injured players, they would not be human if the thought did not cross their mind that not playing at Anfield until some recover might not be the worst thing. If they had no injuries, they might think that as pretty much their entire club is vaccinated, crack on and leave those who are not to suffer the consequences.

Others – Bradford City, perhaps – could think the fewer matches between now and the January transfer window opening, the better. Doncaster Rovers might like the idea of more time for their incoming head coach (it could be manager, but this seems more likely) on the training pitch before his first game. Some will look at the fixture list, see they are away on Boxing Day and not be so worried about lost revenue. Others, like Rotherham United, Middlesbrough, Sheffield United and Hull City, might take all the football they can get whilst on a roll.

Lord protect us from a third successive tear-up about whether or not to delay or void the non-league season if games end up back behind closed doors. All it needed was a cold-light-of-day rule to say this many matches constitute a season, points-per-game will be used in these situations, and otherwise the whole shebang is off.

Why not leave in-season decisions to a board or committee whose job is to look at the big picture, protecting the interests of the league and the clubs, who could even elect them?

There is also the question of how to deal with unvaccinated players with Premier League discussions on Monday about a possible two-tier system to treat them differently.

Everybody has the right not to be vaccinated, though hopefully only after considering the advice of medical experts, which footballers just happen to be surrounded by. It is the same for fans, some of whom seem to be under the misapprehension they cannot attend games now – they can, if they provide proof of a negative test less than 48 hours old.

But the truth is unvaccinated players risk costing their football clubs big money, and if there is one thing modern football chairmen care about, that is it.

“It seems inevitable that players who decline a vaccine and are unable to ply their trade effectively will begin to face broader and more punitive consequences”, wrote Leeds chief executive Angus Kinnear at the weekend.

So if players choose not to take the risks so many of us have taken in getting vaccinated – and let us be frank, there are risks, we just consider them better than the alternative – they have to accept the greater risks not only of illness or death for them and those (literally) close to them not just from Covid but the other things that might put them into overwhelmed hospitals, but also of being inconvenienced further by extra quarantining, travelling and/or changing separately and having swabs shoved up their noses even more often than their team-mates.

Simple choices are so 2019.