A LITTLE over a week ago Liverpool faced Atletico Madrid at Anfield in the second leg of their Champions League last-16 tie. Not behind closed doors, but in front of 52,267 fans.

Just last weekend, matches were taking place across non-league football in Britain, not behind closed gates and turnstiles, but in front of the biggest crowds some of these clubs had seen all season.

If these events took place just a week later they would have been postponed, and it’s almost unthinkable that such public gatherings could take place now. But the coronavirus hasn’t changed since then, so what has?

The British government is now advising that “large gatherings should not take place,” but seemingly still leaving it up to event organisers to make the final call.

Further down the leagues, just down the road from Anfield, Northern Premier League side City of Liverpool FC decided that their game last weekend could not go ahead. 

By that time the Premier League, Football League and Uefa had all called a halt to their competitions based on advice from public-health experts. 

The Welsh FA, just across the border from Liverpool, had issued a blanket cancellation of all football, but the Northern Premier League came out and issued a statement saying that games should go ahead, commenting that: “Our primary concern, as always, is to protect the financial stability of our 62 clubs.”

In reality, there were, and are, far more pressing concerns than the financial stability of football clubs. The games should not have gone ahead, regardless of the financial implications of postponing them.

“We were in a position where we had two players, one diagnosed, one showing symptoms, who had been isolated from the squad but both had attended training that week,” City of Liverpool FC director Peter Furmedge told the Morning Star.

“We informed the league and, fair enough, the league granted us a postponement, but our position was that if we were not granted a postponement we were not playing. We didn’t think it was safe to play.

“Particularly with no Premier League games, we were expecting upwards of 450 fans and the possibility of social distancing at Vesty Road for a crowd of that size is nil. 

“We had looked at PFA guidance and it was virtually impossible for us to work to that level. How do you deal with things like dirty kit, bandages, tape, water bottles and then the prospect of putting 20 men in a changing room?

“We were particularly worried about our older and disabled supporters. Most of us get mild to moderate symptoms if we catch it, but what happens to the older guys? Would we end up potentially losing one of them for the sake of a football match?”

The people making the decisions at league level are not medical or public-health professionals and weren’t receiving the appropriate directives from above.

There was no blanket ban from the English FA as there had been in Wales and the government was, and still is, shirking responsibility. At the time they were not listening to the medical professionals and were even going against World Health Organisation (WHO) advice. 

Public-health expert Professor John Ashton says measures which are only now being merely advised should have been taken over a month ago, telling the Guardian: “We have a superficial prime minister who has no grasp of public health. Our lot are behaving like 19th-century colonialists playing a five-day game of cricket.”

“It’s pathetic. The government doesn’t seem to understand classic public health.”

Ashton is highly regarded and trusted in Liverpool due to his work as a doctor on the pitch during the Hillsborough disaster and his support of the Hillsborough families from that moment onwards.

He described an “almost complete lack of any systematic approach” at Hillsborough, and there are worrying similarities in the government’s approach to the spread of the coronavirus.

“We certainly didn’t believe the government strategy,” says Furmedge. “We didn’t believe that taking it on the chin or spreading this virus in a controlled way throughout the community, as Boris Johnson was talking about at the time, was a viable proposition.

“We knew that John Ashton was a trustworthy voice, we saw what the WHO were saying and we also knew that our government was flying in the face of that.

“Subsequently, the Financial Times reported that the government had been modelling for the wrong disease and a U-turn was on the way. 

“What had been driving a lot of the anxiety and what was driving a lot my discussions with colleagues was the fact that the government was doing this wrong.

“It has subsequently been proven that they were doing it wrong to the extent of potentially seven million people needing hospital care and potentially 250,000 people dying [according to Imperial College research].”

Those figures are also a best-case scenario which presume the NHS would have the capacity to deal with all the new cases.

The government went with this incorrect model while ignoring advice from the WHO, as well as experiences in China, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea of successfully beginning to control the spread of the disease.

The government took its U-turn and the Northern Premier League followed other organisations and postponed fixtures indefinitely, but did so “reluctantly” and reasserted the stance that its primary responsibility is the financial sustainability of its clubs.

“We are not happy with the FA,” adds Furmedge. “Other associations took decisive action, ours didn’t and hid behind government guidance.

“There should have been access to people with medical knowledge to point them in the direction of people like John Ashton, and the WHO.

“Or even have a look around and think: ‘Why isn’t the Premier League going ahead? Why aren’t EFL games going ahead? Why have Uefa cancelled games and why have big businesses taken social distancing measures?’

“We firmly believed, as was later proven, that the herd-immunity strategy was wrong. We also believed that sporting events and schools were part of the herd-immunity strategy. 

“The government was working to a policy of turning on and turning off the tap of the spread of the virus by allowing events to take place and by keeping schools and universities open.

“I was absolutely horrified that the Liverpool game went ahead as it did.”

There was a sense of realisation that night in Anfield which should have come sooner. This sense was heightened when mingling with supporters and colleagues from Madrid where the spread of the virus was escalating quicker than almost anywhere else in the world.

Today it is thought that 80 per cent of people in Madrid will get Covid-19 at some point, and at the time of Atletico’s trip to the UK last week, Spain was the country experiencing the sharpest increase of Covid-19 cases in Europe outside Italy.

That game should not have taken place, and that any football matches took place after that, with fans in attendance, seems unbelievable just a week later.

Next week’s and future columns will look at how football clubs including City of Liverpool FC are contributing to their communities during this time. Follow City of Liverpool FC In The Community on Twitter @COLFCcommunity for related updates.