Matt Williams: Players’ sacrifice must outweigh the rest of society

This week the French rugby clubs Stade Français and Lyon confirmed that they have multiple players infected with Covid-19, putting the commencement of the Top14 into serious doubt.

While our main concern must be for the health of the players, it is a chilling example of the troubles that will lay ahead for pan European rugby.

If rugby is to be played while we live alongside Covid-19 then the off field choices of the players and coaches will be of crucial importance.

In the past, “biosecurity” was a term that was related to the medical and scientific environments. Biosecurity is the “procedures designed to protect the population against harmful biological substances.” Today’s professional rugby players must now live in environments that are cut off from the rest of society and governed by biosecurity protocols.

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National unions in Europe are negotiating with the governments of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, France and Italy, hoping they will grant rugby teams exemptions and allow them to travel across international borders without having to enter into 14 day periods of isolation because their players have been living and training in biosecure environments.

As Stade Français and Lyon have demonstrated, that argument is not yet watertight.

Rugby in Australia is being played while Covid-19 is still active in the general community. The Australian players are inside their biosecurity bubble 24/7. Restaurants, bars, cinemas, even attending church or meals at home with friends and family are all off limits to all players and staff.

In the past I did not believe in the concept that sportspeople "make sacrifices" to achieve their goals, they simply made choices. That has now changed

To play, the teams in Super Rugby AU, the NRL and the AFL have two options. Travel to and from away venues, by charter flight on the day of the game or arrive 14 days before the match and isolate as a team.

Teams from Melbourne, where the pandemic is in a deadly second wave, are leaving their homes and relocating to the relative safety of Queensland, New South Wales or Western Australia and establishing biosecure training hubs.

The players and coaches have a choice. Leave partners, children and family behind for several months of hotel rooms and Zoom chats or don’t participate. While it may sound glamorous to be on the road with a professional sporting team for months on end, the reality for those living that existence is very different.

It is a lonely and repetitive life. The reward for this monastic existence is that the teams get to do what they love most and play.

As a community, we need to start playing rugby again, primarily because rugby gives us joy, which in these dark days is something we could all do with. Secondly, the professional game in Ireland generates jobs, pays taxes and VAT which are essential in this pandemic induced recession.

At the turn of the 21st century, the then Minister of Finance, Charlie McCreevy, awarded tax breaks to those working in the equine industry, to ensure that those beautiful horses remained in Ireland. To Charlie's everlasting credit, those tax breaks were also applied to rugby players.

No one predicted what followed.

Ireland’s talented generation of the 2000s did not depart to play in the UK or France. They stayed to play with their provincial teams. What followed in Ireland was a boom in spectators, participation numbers exploded and the unparalleled period of on field success for Irish teams began.

The Finance Department were also big winners as rugby in Ireland jumped from being a "cottage industry," into a full blown economic powerhouse, that generated millions of euros in VAT revenue from jersey sales, match tickets, travel to games, hotel rooms, food, taxis and pints, that flowed into the coffers of the state. A single weekend of the Six Nations or a Heineken Cup playoff match can bring in hundreds of millions of euros into the economy of the host city.

With the growth of the Irish provincial teams, especially Leinster based in the nation's capital, rugby as a business created jobs and revenue, not only by contracting players but also indirectly in sports marketing, hospitality and the media businesses.

To bring back the joy of playing, jobs and revenue, this current generation of players and coaches will have to make a lot of tough decisions, that previous generations were never asked to even consider.

How treacherous this path is can be seen in this week's events in Australian rugby league. Wayne Bennett, the game's highest profile coach, who has won the NRL Premiership seven times, broke the biosecurity bubble and has found himself smashed by criticism from leading administrators and the media.

He is now on a compulsory 14 days of self isolation, away from his team. A life long non-drinker, Wayne’s sin was to have a meal at a restaurant.

Being in professional sport is a privilege. In the past I did not believe in the concept that sportspeople “make sacrifices” to achieve their goals, they simply made choices.

That has now changed. The ramifications of restarting the game for today’s players and their families is real.

While we live amidst the Covid-19 virus, players and coaches will have to carry the burden of being held to standards of biosecurity far higher than rest of society. For rugby to be sustained into 2021, this generation will have to make genuine sacrifices for a prolonged period of time.

Rugby’s perilous journey along the twisting pathway, created by Covid-19 is about to commence.