Robbie Savage question: Former Premier League star grills Matt Hancock on grassroots football

George Flood21 May 2020

Footballer-turned-pundit Robbie Savage quizzed Health Secretary Matt Hancock and England's chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty at the Government's daily coronavirus briefing on Thursday.

The former Premier League midfielder - who also serves as a coach at grassroots level - was seeking to find out the reasons for the apparent inconsistencies in which sports young players are now allowed to receive individual coaching as part of the most recent guidelines, asking why it was not the same case for football as in other disciplines such as tennis and golf.

"It is Mental Health Awareness Week and we all know how important all sport is as a contributor to achieving healthy minds and bodies," Savage said after appearing via video link at the virtual press conference.

"Why, therefore, is it that in published guidelines by governing bodies that junior tennis players, golfers and athletes are able to receive one-on-one coaching sessions, but young people who play the working-class game of football are currently not allowed to?"

In response to Savage's question, Mr Hancock said he understood the issue, but stressed that current rules around exercise had to be in place across the population in order to "get a grip of this virus".

Savage then interjected: "So why are some governing bodies allowing one-on-one coaching with under-18s, whereas the [English football] governing body, the FA, aren't allowing the under-18s getting coached one-on-one? What is it different?"

Professor Whitty then reiterated that an outside football "kickaround" among people of the same household is fine, before adding: "The difference - and this is one of the issues that we need to think about a balance.

"I think with all of the things we are trying to do, it's about trying to release where we can but not take the risk that we actually start having the transmission again.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock
PA

"We were very confident that it's much safer to do the same thing outdoors than indoors. That's the first thing.

"But as you know, the rules are except within your own household, it's one other person at two metres. And that is a small increment from where we are.

"Now it is possible to play the sort of sports you are talking about at two metres with one other person or within your own household.

"Clearly, to have a kind of league football game, which is a contact sport and does involve a larger number, the risks are greater.

"So the question is at what stage - accepting than outdoors is safer than indoors - that a group of 22 people, many of them coming into contact with one another, linking their households, is a much bigger risk than two people who are at a two-metre distance.

"At what stage do we think the rate is low enough for that to be a safe thing to do?

"So that's the logic for this very, very gradual move, because we are very keen both to try and make it possible particularly for people to do sport and exercise outdoors for all the reasons you give, but also not in the process of that to link households again and start the process of the R going up again."

In Pictures | Liverpool at Melwood training centre | 20/05/2020

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Professor Whitty later suggested that members of the public may have to play football with rule changes before a vaccine is found.

In response to Savage, he told the briefing that having a vaccine on a widespread scale before next year is "very unlikely".

"So I definitely hope that football will be available - possibly with some degree of change of how it's played, there may have to be some ways we think it through - in advance of a vaccine," Professor Whitty said.

"My very strong hope, and I'm sure this is a strong hope of everybody's, is football is well before we get right out to that right-hand end of that path."

Additional reporting by the Press Association

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