Seán Kelly appeals for two-week lockdown on all sporting events

Former GAA president Seán Kelly has recommended playing all sporting events in this country behind closed doors for the next fortnight.

All League of Ireland soccer and GAA National League games fixed for this weekend are, at the time of writing, scheduled to go ahead without restriction, but Kelly is in favour of all fixtures being closed off to the public for a period of two weeks in a bid to lessen the spread of the coronavirus.

The Fine Gael MEP believes what might be described as a short-term “overreaction” would deliver positive results in the long-term.

“Games behind closed doors for two weeks should be looked at. It takes two weeks to incubate and so this might be one way of getting to grips with the coronavirus,” Kelly explained.

“In fairness to the sporting bodies, it is hard for one organisation to do it if the health authorities say it isn’t necessary.

“But I think if you are looking at this and you want to get rid of [the coronavirus] quickly, if you were able to reach a situation where you had a lockdown [on public gatherings] for two weeks, the figures will hopefully peak and then start reducing because people wouldn’t be moving as much and cross-contamination would probably come to an end.

“By doing this then you might potentially be in a better position in a few weeks’ time, especially for an island nation.

“It should be easier for us to deal with it than countries who have several more countries around them.”

He accepts that any one sporting organisation will be reluctant to act unilaterally and so the decree to move all games behind closed doors, or even widescale postponements, must come from the relevant health bosses.

A number of GAA league fixtures scheduled for this weekend, including the two Division 1 hurling quarter-finals and the four Division 1 football games, will be expected to pull in crowds of 5,000-plus.

If they are going to go ahead, said Kelly, then they should be behind closed doors.

“You could still go ahead with the games, but with no public paying into them.

But you would need direction from the health authorities and you would need to apply it to all public gatherings, sporting and non-sporting.

“That makes it easier because if you are putting pressure on one organisation to act, that organisation could then be criticised for playing games behind closed doors when others aren’t, especially if the incidences [of coronavirus] increase and there is no (visible) positive benefit from closing off access to the public.

“You have to take the pressure away from the sporting bodies, have a good look at it and say, maybe for a fortnight we will just have to close things down where public gatherings are concerned, limiting any such gatherings to a maximum of 100 or so people, and then we might all be better off by the end of March.

“It is better for the health authorities and everybody to maybe overreact in the short-term.”

Kinvara GAA club in Galway has notified its members of a cessation of all club activity until further notice.

“Having discussed and reviewed the increasing incidents in our locality of Covid-19, we’ve made the decision to cease all local Kinvara GAA events, including training and matches for the foreseeable future,” read a post from the club’s Twitter account.