And as it turns out, so does Coronavirus.
So, “a number of positive results” for the lurgy has been reported at AFCW, meaning our trip to Barrow tomorrow is postponed.
I know it’s a long journey up there, but that’s a bit of an extreme way of getting out of playing.
Anyway, hopefully it’s not too damaging, professional athletes seem to be some of the most resilient in dealing with it.
It seems like all the first teamers are self-isolating, and everyone else is getting tested.
Presumably, that also means those at PL on Tuesday (ie media and other dignitaries) have to get swabbed up too?
Just think – our new home is a Coronavirus hotspot.
Before I go on, I spent a couple of hours this morning doing a post-PL opening update, so I’ll put that up Sunday/Monday instead.
It’s not like you have much else to do under house arrest.
Back to our current issues, and judging by the OS the game is merely postponed rather than us having to forfeit it.
The second round proper is on the 28th November, so that’s still a good while away.
Assuming that it’s a 14-day isolation (though do pro athletes get tested more? If so, it might be sooner), that will take us up to Rochdale away on the 21st.
The problem is that we can’t play inbetween that time because we’re at Gillingham on the 24th.
So, will we have to forfeit after all? Or because of what things are at the moment, we’ll head to Barrow on second round day, and whoever wins catches up with the next FAC game midweek?
We’re not the first to be in this position, and we certainly won’t be the last. Accrington have been self-isolating too for the past fortnight.
And things being what they are at the moment anything to do with living is a risk anyway.
The protocols at games (and presumably training grounds) are as tight as anywhere – your editor has a whole PDF file of them somewhere, and you almost have to have three different sets of clearance simply to fart.
That said, it doesn’t seem to be happening across the board, which is why the games are continuing.
Individuals seem to be getting infected more than whole squads – Neil Warnock and Gary Rowett have recently missed action because of it, but Middlesbrough and Millwall have still kept going.
Darren Moore, the Donny manager, is having to self-isolate too – perhaps because of Tuesday night.
It now begs the question – who got it off whom?
It could easily be somebody non-football related, that’s the nature of this virus, and we could have hit unlucky.
We might have picked it up from Blackpool player Ben Woodburn last week, as he’s currently in the slammer.
Or we might have picked it up at the Frenzydome? Let’s face it, you can catch any number of diseases there at the best of times, and Covid is one of the milder ones.
Whatever, this is something that manages to be surprising yet unsurprising at the same time. Fortune has favoured us up until now.
We might have been lucky even as far back as Gillingham in late February, when it was first swishing around in society.
Somebody who celebrated on the field that day had been part of a school group that caught it in Italy a week before,.
As said above, we won’t be the last ones it happens to this season, and I fully expect some more games involving us to get called off in due course.
I think we can assume Wigan next week is going to be postponed, although with the amount of games recently we might need the rest anyway.
If nothing else, Coronavirus is a good a reason as any to explain our current defensive shiteness…