Match postponed

TOP-LEVEL football in the UK will not return until 30 April at the earliest as the coronavirus pandemic continued to cause carnage to the sporting calendar this week.

All games in the Premier League and the Football League, and all fixtures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, are currently postponed.

However, at the same meeting on Thursday, the Football Association agreed that the current season can be "extended indefinitely".

Liverpool fans - having seen their team build up a 25-point advantage in their search for a first league title for 30 years - can rest a little easier perhaps.

Earlier, on Tuesday, Euro 2020 was postponed by UEFA until the summer of 2021.

UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin announced the delay of exactly 12 months to avoid "placing any unnecessary pressure on national public services" in its 12 host countries.

Sensibly, the postponement will also provide a chance for European leagues that have been suspended to be completed when action eventually resumes.

For now, though, it is unclear when exactly that will be.

Only last week, the Premier League and the Football League suspended their respective programmes of fixtures until 4 April, after confirmed positive results for Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta and Chelsea midfielder Callum Hudson-Odoi.

But the exponential increase in cases in the UK has already caused this further four-week delay to the resumption of the action.

The latest figures released by the Department of Health and Social Care show there have now been 3,983 positive cases of COVID-19 in the UK and 177 deaths from the virus.

Meanwhile, in terms of the numbers on a worldwide basis, there have been over 11,000 deaths from more than 270,000 positive cases.

In terms of declared fatalities, Italy - with 4,032 deaths - has now overtaken China (3,248 deaths), the place from which the strain is thought to have originated.

Back here in the UK, Prime Minister Boris Johnson held a press conference on Monday in which he advised that everyone in the UK should avoid "non-essential" travel and contact with others.

Mass gatherings in places such as bars, restaurants, theatres and sports arenas should be avoided, he added - and, yesterday, these venues were ordered to close their doors completely.

Of course, much of the sporting world had already taken matters into their own hands - and the presence of the Italians in the Six Nations meant it was unavoidably among the first competitions to be affected.

At first, only matches involving the Azzurri against Ireland on 7 March and England on 14 March were postponed - but eventually all three of the games in the final round fell victim to the virus.

Elsewhere, the England cricket tour of Sri Lanka was abruptly ended midway through a warm-up match with captain Joe Root admitting to "an element of relief" that the decision had been made to bring the squad back home.

In the meantime, the season in Formula One has not yet even got off the start line.

The Chinese Grand Prix was postponed as far back as February - but it took until the very eve of the season opener in Australia for the race at Albert Park in Melbourne to be called off.

Even then, it was only hastily announced by motorsport governing body the FIA after McLaren had withdrawn from the Grand Prix following the return of a positive result for a team member's coronavirus test.

Delays to the races in Bahrain and Vietnam were also confirmed last week.

However, just this week, the Dutch and Spanish Grand Prix have also now been postponed - and the blue-ribbon event in Monaco has been cancelled completely.

Nevertheless, an already-congested calendar could still be bursting at the seams when - or, maybe at this stage, if - the campaign eventually gets going.

Eight Grand Prix need to be completed in order to constitute a Formula One season.

Unsurprisingly, the worldwide tennis and golf tours have been suspended with the French Open tennis at Rolland Garros moved, merely in hope at this stage, to the autumn.

And, although the Cheltenham Festival was somehow completed last week, the big Grand National meeting at Aintree at the start of April is off.

In terms of individual sports, snooker perhaps took longest to react to the developing crisis - and the Gibraltar Open still took place last week behind closed doors.

Yesterday, however, World Snooker bowed to the inevitable and announced a delay to Judd Trump's world title defence at the Crucible until July at the earliest.

Rather remarkably, the Tokyo-based 2020 Summer Olympics are still scheduled, for now, to go ahead from 24 July until 9 August.

"We will overcome the spread of the infection and host the Olympics without problem, as planned," Japanese PM Shinzo Abe said.

But, while the situation in Asia may have stabilised and even improved, Abe appears to be totally deluded if he thinks Tokyo 2020 will simply proceed without a hitch.

The Japanese reluctance to cancel or even merely delay the Games is understandable considering their outlay of around 1.35 trillion yen (£10.26bn).

Nevertheless, it is currently impossible to envisage anything except for the Olympics being added to the great sporting scrapheap of 2020.

Now, of course, football and sport carry no particular importance while the whole of the human race fronts up to a virulent pandemic. 

Legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly was sadly misguided when he famously declared that football was more important than life and death.

But, another great football man - former Italy and AC Milan head coach Arrigo Sacchi - was spot on with his assessment when he said: "Football is the most important of the least important things."

At the moment, it is much missed along with the other sporting events which allow otherwise inconsequential weeks to trundle into months, and months into years.

Worryingly, though, coronavirus is not going away any time soon - and, as the peak rapidly approaches, it is going to get worse far sooner than it gets better.

Stay safe, keep well everyone, and remember to wash your hands regularly.

The Weekend in Review

A review of the sporting weekend...

Formula 1
The return of F1 was well worth the wait as Brawn GP made a dream start with a one-two in their opening race.

Jenson Button rammed this correspondent's words down his throat by living up to the tag of favourite by leading from start to finish, but this was far from a boring procession.

While Button got off to a flier, team mate Rubens Barrichello was slow off the start and got involved in the usual first-corner mayhem at Albert Park which took out Heikki Kovalainen and ruined Mark Webber's home race.

Instead it was left to Sebastien Vettel in the Red Bull to carry the fight to Button but the main hindrance to the man from Frome was the appearance of the safety car on lap 19 which wiped out his lead.

Nevertheless, Button built it up again but Vettel looked good value for second place until a late crash with BMW's Robert Kubica which was followed shortly after by them both spinning out, promoting Barrichello back to 2nd.

World champion Lewis Hamilton confounded expectations and was classified as third after Jarno Trulli was handed a 25-second penalty for passing Hamilton under yellow flags.

He had started in 18th on the grid in his under-performing McLaren but had managed to find his way to 12th after the first lap before avoiding the carnage in the rest of the race.

Timo Glock finished fourth in another impressive race for the German and Fernando Alonso got his wish for a top-eight finish by coming in fifth.

Nico Rosberg's sixth-place finish would have surely been higher, had he not been let down by his pit team on lap 15. Debutant Sebastien Buemi and Torro Rosso teammate Sebastien Bourdais finished 7th and 8th in the final point-scoring positions.

It was an engrossing spectacle and the Beeb did a good job in its first coverage of F1 since 1996, a particular highlight being Richard Branson calling himself "a lucky bastard" live on air after seeing his investment pay immediate dividends.

Football
Mixed fortunes for the home countries with wins for England and Northern Ireland but losses for Scotland and Wales.

While Scotland's 3-0 loss in Amsterdam was to be expected - and was indeed a significant improvement on their last showing in the Dutch capital when they lost 6-0 - it leaves their qualification hopes resting on them beating Iceland on Wednesday and picking up enough points in their remaining matches to finish as one of the top eight second-placed teams.

At least Scotland have qualification in their own hands. Wales' meek defeat at home against Finland in front of a pitiful 22,600 has left their World Cup dreams in tatters already, although it was never a likely proposition considering they face Germany and Russia in their group.

But the only way Wales, who face the Germans next, will get easier draws is by improving their qualifying performance and home losses to Finland completely undermine any other efforts.

The Welsh could learn a lot from Northern Ireland who have had excellent home form in recent qualification campaigns and continued this with a fine 3-2 result at Windsor Park against Poland, for whom Celtic goalkeeper Artur Boric had a nightmare.

The result lifted the Irish to the top of their group although this is a somewhat misleading position considering they have played more matches than any of their rivals, including two games against group minnows San Marino.

The Republic of Ireland took the lead within a minute against Bulgaria through Richard Dunne but threatened rarely after the goal and will be happy that the draw keeps them seven points clear of their opponents.

The chase is not over yet, however. Bulgaria have a game in hand and the Irish must play Italy twice and Cyprus away where they have previously had problems before the campaign is over.

England could just about finish off their campaign on Wednesday if they beat Ukraine and they warmed up in convincing style with a fine 4-0 win over Slovakia with the two goals from Wayne Rooney particularly delightful.

The England forwards, however, failed to heed my warning about 'skating around Slovakian challenges' as Emile Heskey, Carlton Cole and Peter Crouch all limped off, although Crouch should be fit.

Cricket
England and West Indies traded victories over the weekend with the Windies the first to strike on Friday after another England batting collapse.

England were bowled out for 117 in the 42nd over, which the Windies had no problems chasing down.

Indeed, captain Chris Gayle looked set to record the fastest ODI century but his stunning attacking display was brought to an end on 80 when he was bowled by James Anderson.

The embarrassing loss for England came in the wake of comments by Kevin Pietersen in the Mail on Sunday, expressing his desire to go home.

And so it is to Andrew Strauss' great credit as England captain that he replied to Gayle's onslaught with one of his own in the next match.

Although it was less extravagant than Gayle's effort, Strauss hit an unbeaten 79 to level the series at 2-2 as England comfortably chased down a readjusted target of 136 from 20 overs.

The series decider on Friday in St Lucia will determine if England have anything at all to take from this hitherto fruitless winter.

Other sports
In ice hockey, the Elite League playoffs mainly went to form with Sheffield Steelers emerging victorious against Edinburgh Caps in a high-scoring tie (12-7 on aggregate: 8-2, 4-5) but one which was won in the first match.

Nottingham Panthers also did most of the damage in their home first leg against Manchester Phoenix, winning 9-5 on aggregate (6-3, 3-2).

And although Newcastle Vipers held Coventry Blaze to a 2-2 tie in the first leg, the Blaze were too difficult to overcome and won 6-4 on aggregate.

Cardiff Devils beat Belfast Giants in the most competitive of the ties, winning 6-5 on aggregate. The Devils beat the Giants 2-1 away before a 4-4 tie after OT in the return.

Thus, the semi finalists are Sheffield, Nottingham, Coventry and Cardiff.


Great Britain finished a disappointing third in the medal table at the World Track Championships behind Australia and France.

They managed just two golds from the efforts of Victoria Pendleton and the women's team pursuit trio of Wendy Houvenaghel, Joanna Rowsell and Lizzie Armitstead.

But the absence of Sir Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins and Rebecca Romero must also be factored as a genuine reason why Britain did not perform better.


In non-league football, Gateshead stayed top of the Blue Square North on goal difference with a smashing 5-0 win over Hinckley United, the best home win of the season. Lee Novak got two of the goals and an assist.

And Whitley Bay will take a 2-1 lead to Lowestoft after the first leg of their FA Vase semi final.


Finally, Oxford beat Cambridge by a comfortable three-and-a-half lengths on the Thames in the 155th staging of the Boat Race.

The victory was Oxford's fourth win in the last five years, although Cambridge still lead the series 79-75, with one dead-heat.