What was football like during Covid?

The temperature gun was pointed at my forehead. “35.8,” proclaimed the friendly Lancastrian stood in a makeshift tarpaulin shelter, set up in a small car park. He smiled and nodded. Entry to the stadium was permitted. 

With the pang of anxiousness which briefly washed over me vanquished, I picked up my commentary equipment and shuffled on.

Instructions were read out by the person who handed me my media accreditation, not that I paid attention too intently. Though each stadium was laid out slightly differently – turn right for the toilets, left for the coffee and so on – it was never that hard to tailgate, within reason, someone who had listened.

Truth be told, for the 39^th game of a truly bizarre season, I'd heard it all before. And yet, I could not have wished to be anywhere else but here. The Crown Ground, home of Accrington Stanley, the club that wouldn’t die.

The homely, reassuring Crown Ground

They are the very antithesis to every column inch and every second of sports show phone-in chatter about a vanity project which had just been proposed; the European Super League.

If this modest – but well run – third division football club could survive through a global pandemic which saw no fans come through the turnstiles, what difference was it whether the nearby Manchester clubs went off to play Juventus and Barcelona every other week?

They may as well have said they were going to play on the moon for all the difference it made.

Reporting on football in empty stadiums throughout the season never become any more normal, just more commonplace. Games have been endured, rather than enjoyed. The whole season was a catalogue of rearranged fixtures and a longing from everybody in football to get it over with as soon as possible.

Many fans I’ve spoken to have said how much they’d love to be at matches. Not like this though. The sporadic “man on” cries were often swept away with the wind only to echo and reverberate around the shell of an empty stadium.

Initially, the quality of the football started out as carefree and expansive. No supporters cries of “get it forward” or laments of a sideways pass. By the same token, no caution or emotion with which to get wrapped up in. These were training games with points attached.

I was in the privileged position of watching football in person virtually week in, week out as a freelance reporter for the BBC - save for a run of nine league games between January and March 2021 when the Beeb's edict outlined that local radio reporters were not permitted to travel to away games on Covid-19 grounds.

That period banished me from the cosy seats of the press benches to watching at home and having to experience a match as most fans had done all season. I do not envy those who have had to, through no fault of their own, and would like to think that I haven’t taken attending games for granted. Something I have previously alluded to in my review of Doncaster Rovers 20/21 campaign.

Someone once said that “football without fans is nothing” and while the season being completed in its entirety punched holes in that notion, the sentiment remains – bring on August!

No fans saw Norwich lift the Championship title