How Many Of The Staff Will Be Deemed Key Workers?

When do you think rugby might restart? With lockdown easing just a little, hopes will rise, but I can’t see it happening for a long time to come, despite Wednesday’s announcement that elite sports can return to individual or small groups training.

- Colin Boag

If I’m right, then the Premiership will be a very different place when play eventually restarts.

Rugby’s big problem is contact, because without it we have touch, an entirely different and much less interesting game. Leave aside the issues with rucks and mauls, and get to the heart of the problem, scrums. Can anyone honestly see scrums taking place safely this side of a vaccine being discovered, or the virus deciding to disappear?

I’ve been reading World Rugby’s guidance on Covid-19, and while they’ve done their best, it’s an utterly thankless task. Players will fill in daily forms, but if, as we’re told, a lot of people are asymptomatic, then social distancing will remain the answer.

Should players train together – which will have to happen before matches are played – and someone catches the disease, then testing and quarantine will be needed. So, if a match is scheduled, and the day before one of the players displays symptoms and subsequently tests positive, then surely the game has to be called off? How do you run a calendar safely in that environment? And we haven’t even mentioned that players have families, and some members will have underlying health issues.