US researcher fears sporting shutdown will continue until Christmas

In the end, it took an obscure researcher from Georgia to doom the GAA championship season, not to mention the Airtricity League, the Guinness PRO14 and every other sports event from now until Christmas.

In a Sports Illustrated piece by Stephanie Apstein which was circulated widely in recent days, Zach Binney of Emory University broke down the reasons sports will not be able to be played behind closed doors in the absence of a credible vaccine for the coronavirus.

Binney states bluntly in the article: "We will not have sporting events with fans until we have a vaccine” and goes on to outline the logistical nightmare presented even by events with no supporters present.

Any such events would need those in attendance, he states, from participants, officials, support staff, security, media, drivers, turnstile operators et al would need to self-isolate for two weeks before the event to ensure they were free of the virus.

Even if all of them test negative - itself a challenge with the problems of testing in sufficient numbers - then social distancing would prevail even in the stadium, and physical contact kept to an absolute minimum away from the playing area.

If this can be overcome, though physical contact is the cornerstone of practically all sports, then there are other issues.

Any player getting injured, Binney adds, would need to begin self-isolation for two weeks - from scratch - if removed from the playing area for hospital treatment, though that raises another obvious question: how urgent is ambulance attendance at a voluntary sporting event when a country is lockdown?

On top all that, the challenge of keeping tabs on all involved to ensure that they are remaining isolated even when not playing - through invasive phone apps, as the piece surmises - is yet another problem which may prove insurmountable.

But as the experts quoted in Apstein’s piece point out, if someone delivering food, for instance, to an athlete involved in one of these events tests positive for the virus, the whole deck of cards collapses and the 14-day self-isolation period begins all over again.

If, as Binney suggests, there’s at least a 12-month wait ahead for a vaccine, then it’s difficult to see how even the ‘behind closed doors’ option can possibly work.