Callum Robinson refused Covid vaccine: When will penny drop with star players?

Callum Robinson and Josh Cullen during a Republic of Ireland training session. Picture: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

Callum Robinson should know all about Covid-19 by now. Three international windows have been compromised or cancelled on him because of the virus. He has been a close contact once and contracted it twice himself. It has affected his club career, too. Yet still he opts against getting a vaccine.

When, you wonder, will this penny drop?

The reluctance of professional footballers to get themselves jabbed has made for a jarring soundtrack on the Premier League’s return. The exasperation of Jurgen Klopp and other managers in recent weeks is understandable.

Figures in recent days suggested that, though rates vary wildly between clubs, as few as a third of players in England’s top-flight have had the vaccine. Robinson is a Championship player now but his words yesterday offered a peek behind this flimsy curtain of contrariness.

There was no explanation, no rationale put forward as to his decision not to take a vaccine. Personal choice, he said, though there was the suggestion he could change his mind somewhere down the road.

There is a clear cognitive dissonance to the West Bromwich Albion player’s grasp of the bigger picture here if we rewind back to March when he spoke about the musical chairs foisted upon Stephen Kenny all too often.

“The team’s changing all the time because of all the Covid stuff and we can’t help that,” he said. This was prior to a World Cup qualifier in Serbia. A country with some of the highest new infection rates in the world at the time and in the grip of another major lockdown.

Clubs have drafted in medical experts to explain the benefits of vaccines and how they reduce the risk of infection for both individuals and communities while protecting against severe illness.

Footballers are wedded to the primacy of the three points but this win-win scenario seems to leave so many of them cold. Strange.

These same talks have addressed concerns over side-effects and tinfoil theories, but what hope when players cannot equate cause with effect and vaccine scepticism is rife?

Robinson spoke to The Times in December when he described his first bout of Covid. He mentioned hot sweats, cold spells, weakness, difficulty catching his breath, and headaches. Concentration was a struggle. The second spell, earlier this season, appears to have been worse. As it stands, he has missed out on seven Irish caps as a result of Covid, including a glamour friendly against England at Wembley and a World Cup qualifier away to Portugal.

His return from that first infection last November ended with a three-game spell on the bench. That included a half-hour stint against Manchester United at Old Trafford that he clearly wished would have been longer. If only.

Regrets? He has a few. Just not the obvious one.

“It’s obviously annoying that I’ve caught it twice,” he said yesterday.

If anyone has cause to be annoyed, it is Kenny. Robinson is right when he says the Ireland team has been cut and pasted too often. The virus ran a red pen through the manager’s teamsheets at a time when he needed wins and some early momentum.

Think back to the earliest of setbacks, when Aaron Connolly and Adam Idah were ruled out of the Euro 2020 play-off due to their proximity on a flight to a non-playing staff member who, it was later confirmed, had been a false positive. “It’s hard to believe but it’s something we’re just going to have to accept,” Kenny said around that time.

Sentiments that, it seems, have to apply this time, too.