Premier League clubs are back to group training after the league received six positive tests for COVID-19. What need to happen for the season to resume?
Workload behind the scene to enable the return to training was complex and involved medical protocols, sports administrators and government officials. The resume to training however, is tentative and rules have to be clear and be well exercised if the return to the pitch is to be expected.
Should group training not encounter major obstacles such as increase in COVID-19 positive cases, or coincide with an increase in positive tests among the public, then the “Step 2” of the return protocols becomes more of a probability than a possibility.
After the League tested and published COVID-19 testing data, out of 748 tests, 6 were positive. Further testing results will however be made public. The results will provide medical experts with the raw data needed to begin the analysis on the effect a return to training is having.
Tasked by the central government to draft documents on how a return to the training needs to look, the innate focus will be on how to make the second step after training. In reality, this is the part most of the Premier League managers are looking forward to as it allows contact.
At the moment, two footballers can be within two meters of each other at the training round. If contact is allowed, this will bring the training session back to where the reality came to a stop in March.
To arrive there, COVID-19 statistics need to fall from both the sports world and the society as a whole as the government has made it clear no sector in society can be treated differently from another.
Moreover, the work behind the scene continues. Never before have so many experts in varying fields of sports come together. As it is, it’s a matter of “getting all the right people in the right room at the right time.”