Steve Evans has been talking to KSN as the National League cancel the rest of their season with the Football League still waiting for news over any potential restart to the season.

The Gillingham boss told us, “I think in Lock-down we’re lucky that the sun is shining because its already depressing that we’re all sat at home twiddling our thumbs as I’d suggest that it be even more depressing if we looked out of our windows and it was hail, rain and snow!

“We’ve been fortunate in that sense but we won’t kid ourselves we just all need to continue to take the Government’s advice and hopefully we’ll get allowed out a little bit and we can, certainly from our perspectives get back to playing some football and get season 19/20 completed and that’s my view quite clearly.”

“I think no-one expected us to be in week five of Lockdown when they announced it at the start, so its going to be interesting. I listen to the government briefings every day like we all do; they’ve been very clear that the numbers need to continue to come down in four or five key areas and we’ve got to hope above hope that in the next two and a half weeks that that shows that because if we get another extension on that then I fear for football this season. 

“Hopefully, I’m a positive person rather than a negative person and hopefully we can get through that and we can get some sort of lee-way to get back to football and play behind closed doors and get our season finished and at the same time be working on a strategy for the new season.”

“My focus is very much on making sure that we are ready the best we can if we do go back in two weeks’ time and my focus is also to make sure that we’re preparing for eventualities because come the end of June, we’ve got seven, eight, nine, ten players out of contract and we need to have a plan.” 

“Now that plan is a moving plan all the time because obviously if get am extended lock-down again we’ll have to plan what’s happening this season again. So, we just need to take it every few days at a time.

“I think we’ve still got to as managers and coaches have plans in place and do things. I’m speaking to the players as they’ll tell you; I’m still in meetings, I’m still talking to them making sure everyone is staying on top of their fitness levels and at the same time just making sure that they’ll be fit and ready for when we do come back.”

The whole effect of the Coronavirus crisis has been brought even closer to the Gills boss following the death last week of former England international Norman Hunter. Evans admitted, “It certainly does because he was a big strong man. My first recollection of Norman Hunter as in meeting him was – and I hadn’t met him before I went to Leeds – when I was in the club about a week and I’ve seen him come through the club on a matchday and I was terrified at the fact he was coming towards me. 

“It wasn’t because he was going to tackle me or anything, it was that I had such respect for him and he came up and said “from one ex-Rotherham manager to another, how’s it going?” and we went in a had a drink and chatted away about everything and after that, every time there was a home game, and Norman was at the stadium, he’d always come and seek me out, we’d have a little ten minute catch-up and he was brilliantly supportive and days when it wasn’t so good when we didn’t get a good result, he was the legend he is to Leeds fans.

“He was that legend to me not because he was Norman Hunter because the way he treated me and respected me; the way he accepted me and that goes for Eddie Gray, Peter Lorimer, absolute legends but more importantly just great men and great people!”