Martin Smith: Lower league clubs need urgent help from the highest level

It’s not high on anyone’s list of priorities right now but in time it will be.
Lower league clubs are facing the daunting prospect of playing next season behind closed doors. Photo by James Chance/Getty ImagesLower league clubs are facing the daunting prospect of playing next season behind closed doors. Photo by James Chance/Getty Images
Lower league clubs are facing the daunting prospect of playing next season behind closed doors. Photo by James Chance/Getty Images

When the virus is being defeated by vaccines, discipline and the largely unnecessary sacrifice of our sick and elderly, it will return.

When the scandal of our leaders’ arrogance and their chronic underfunding of health care has had its reckoning - if it ever does - football will seem important again.

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After 150-plus years of glory, devotion and delusion football will resume its mildly hysterical and self-obsessed hold on our culture and social life.

And boy will we be glad.

Because when football becomes that important again it will mean the killer has been tamed.

But what will be left of the game and its structure when that great day dawns?

There will be a scramble to finish the money-rich Premier League and FA Cup and as flag-bearers for the sport worldwide that’s important.

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But what about the rest?Huddersfield owner Phil Hodgkinson and others fear a full season without fans due to social distancing measures may kill 50-60 league clubs if next season is played behind closed doors.

Clubs, already struggling, have been plunged into a no income nightmare.

If that nightmare drags on into next season Covid 19 will have done more damage to our sporting structures than any of history’s darkest eras could.

Football clubs will need tax and interest holidays from Government and banks also desperate to balance their books.

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Something has to give and league football needs help from the highest level.

It has far too rich a history and is far too deeply ingrained in our nature and culture to be allowed to die.

*Something even lower on anyone’s list is the state of Dominic Cummings.

Is it necessary for the Prime Minister’s chief adviser (at least for now) to look like he’s just being evacuated to his nearest sports centre to escape flooding?

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OK we’re fiddling while Rome burns but what was he wearing on Sunday and why?

Few people still equate the qualities of competence and honesty to the quality of the suit their political figures are wearing.

But get a grip lad.

Couldn’t he be bothered to put on something that made him look like he was actually working for the highest political office in the land?

Would he be easier to trust if he had shaved and put on a suit?

No.