The clamour to allow spectators into Non-League football continues to gather apace, we’ve been talking to the Chair of the SCEFL about the current position and the likelihood of clubs being allowed to let fans back into grounds soon.
Denise Richmond, who just last week was also elected to be the Chair of the Kent FA, has told KSN of her hopes – and ongoing frustrations – for the coming weeks and months.
She told us, “We’re still governed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) as to when we can allow fans back into games. The FA are still waiting on responses to whether people can go back to watching football from September first.
“Personally I’m not sure that that will happen – if it doesn’t happen, we as a board at SCEFL have agreed that we will not start our season if we cannot have spectators as our clubs cannot afford to host games without people watching them, attending their bars and drinks and food etc.
“So, we’ve agreed that we will make a decision on August 22nd as to what notifications have come out and then at that point we can start to defer the start of the season accordingly. One thing that that will effect is that we can’t announce a season full of fixtures initially that we’d normally publish won’t happen initially as we just don’t know whats going to happen.”
“Personally, I don’t believe that we will start in September given all of the spikes happening around the country. I’m not sure that they will agree to spectators to cine back in – that said though, when you see the pictures of people on beaches and at our level of football with spectators who can distance themselves quite easily at the sides of our pitches, it’s a bit on an anomaly I think!
“To me that’s where common sense should prevail – we all know that the higher you go, some clubs have more spectators than others. So your Sheppey’s and your Tunbridge Wells’ will both be conscious with what they will have to do and how they need to do it.
“The primary focus must be about the health of well-being of people coming into the club’s ground and I think that when you’ve got fifty to one hundred coming into, that’s easier surely. And the thing is that clubs are already allowed to open their bars but they can’t have people into watch a game of football – its bonkers!”
Because fans have been starved of live football since March, questions have been raised about out non-league grounds being “flooded” with fans desperate to go to a game if the lower Leagues return before the professional game – a point that the SCEFL Chair was only too well aware about.
“It was one of the reasons that the FA have said that all football will start at the same time at the meeting we had back in June,” she told us. “They were talking about what would happen with the proposals that they had for starting football again. They said that the National League system would start at the same time – but it’s not!”
“I honestly think that its something that could well happen – clubs could benefit from a spectator point of view, but then its something that they’re not prepared to handle as they work on getting just the usual gate of fifty to one hundred people through the gate.”