WITH each relaxation of the lockdown, the question gets louder: When can we go back to the games? All the time, psychological milestones are being passed.

The cover of the latest edition of the Racing Post has a full page photo of Frankie Dettori in a sinister looking black face mask, with a quote from the great jockey saying he wants to equal Lester Piggot’s record of riding at the highest level until he is 59.

We look to the Germans as models of common sense and scientific logic (“Vorsprung durch technic”) with a leader who is herself an eminent scientist and an exemplary approach to the pandemic.

We see that their Bundesliga is already up and running. We see that snooker and horse racing resumed behind closed doors on Monday past. Golf, cricket and rugby league are slated to restart in August. They may just be television events, but the virtual world is a seamless part of our reality.

Most immediately, 20 Premier League soccer clubs have resumed full contact training and the full range of games will recommence on the 17th June, kicking off with Manchester City v Arsenal, and the rescheduled FA Cup final on the 1st August.

In South Korea, where their state of the art contact tracing and public health systems have largely bested the coronavirus, their K football league has been on the go since mid May.

They have yet to allow spectators at games, but have filled the gap imaginatively. For FC Seoul’s recent home game against Gwangju, the stand was populated with blow up sex dolls waving FC Seoul’s flags.

When the club was fined 100 million KRW (roughly €80,000), there were those who suggested that the event was “blown out of proportion.”

This is nothing new to us. Anyone who watched the 1993 All-Ireland semi-final between ourselves and the Dubs on lockdown TV will have seen the blow up doll being waved about and passed around Hill 16 throughout the game.

Perhaps a Hill 16 full of blow up dolls in Dublin jerseys could be utilized for Dublin’s 6 in a row game?

Unlike the Premier League and other pro-sports, the GAA is in a very strong position of trust. Since the beginning of the Covid outbreak our leaders have acted swiftly, decisively, correctly and all round in a way that makes us proud to be Gaels.

As Peter Canavan remarked, in the North we take our leadership from the GAA, not the government, and up here there has been what one senior Croke Park official recently described as “an incredible compliance with the GAA lockdown rules.”

So, when it comes to loosening up those rules and creating a path back to the games, the GAA is in a position of strength.

Colm O’Rourke, for example, has bemoaned the fact that the pitches were closed and remain closed.

But closing the pitches altogether made a powerful statement at a time when we had no idea how catastrophic this virus might be.

Of less importance, it also meant that our kids couldn’t gather in large groups and that the GAA wasn’t being battered on social media with clips of rowdy gatherings and the like.

Instead, we sucked it up for the common good and for our elderly and infirm and if we were going too far, well it was better than not going far enough.

The net result is that the GAA has come through this pristine. So far.

I was briefed by two eminent doctors in the North on or about the March 14 and it was simply terrifying. What they were describing was a potential plague, with catastrophic loss of life.

Predictions included over 100,000 dead in the North, over 500,000 in England, etc etc.

The WHO, the Imperial College London team advising the UK government, and the Irish government’s advisory group were all on the same page.

In the face of an unknown and unknowable enemy, those warnings were entirely appropriate and the steps taken since then were correct.

But as citizens, we can now see for ourselves what the reality is. Construction workers are back. Meat plant workers never stopped. Most shops and businesses have reopened.

Large tracts of the workforce are travelling on public transport daily. All the time, milestones are being passed.

It is now certain, for example, that all our school kids, North and South, will be back at school come September 1.

This – subject to the science – signposts the way back to the games. Cul camps could be held in August.

Indeed, it is difficult to find an argument not to hold them. There is an element of risk in human life, and the risk involved in this must be very small indeed. Socially distanced classrooms are impossible. If they are going to be in school all day from nine to four, why can they not play the games? Starting with this we can see how – again subject to the Covid situation – we might have a phased return to games.

The word coming from the GAA is that the first step will be to reopen the walking areas at our pitches. This may seem a small step, but it is a very important one, since it emphasizes the community aspect of the GAA and allows members of all ages to exercise, subject to compliance with social distancing guidelines as set out by the club monitors. This would be the prelude to a return to non-contact training, possibly in July, with games resuming in August. Again, the word coming from Croke Park is that club championships are unlikely to run beyond the county this year. Sadly for Corofin, they will not win a four in a row.

I have spoken to several insiders and well-placed delegates over the past fortnight and there is little doubt that the aim is to run a 2020 provincial and All-Ireland championship, with the caveats that we would probably return to the pre ‘Super Eights’ model (meaning the resumption of the qualifier system) and that the entire championship would be condensed into around eight to ten weeks, the final being played in mid December. A one-off All-Ireland knock out series would be very attractive but I think there are two things that will prevent this happening. One, the TV companies would be looking for significant discount. Two, the provincial councils would be strongly opposed since a successful All-Ireland series would diminish the argument for retaining the provinces.

I have looked at the 2018/2019 accounts and in the last financial year, the GAA made almost €21 million from media rights and sponsorship, the vast majority of this from championship. Not playing any championship (even without spectators) would therefore have an enormous impact on finances. The overall loss including media rights, sponsorship and gate receipts would be roughly €55-€60 million.

Then there is the issue of spectators. On this front, the current thinking is that the capacity be divided by around three, only seating areas can be used and the seats that can be used will be marked out to ensure the safest possible social distancing. So, for example, Croke Park’s capacity would be around 25,000, allowing the games to proceed with the necessary connection between supporters and team maintained. We are not, after all ,soccer.

What we cannot do is allow county football to proceed but not club football, something that would represent an enormous breach of faith, shatter the idea of a shared journey, and finally divorce the elite level from the rest of us.

We see this clearly across the Irish Sea, where Premier League clubs have carried out more Covid-19 tests (2,752) than the entire UK did in the first two weeks of the outbreak.

However the grassroots are being largely overlooked.

As Jonathan Liew put it in his Guardian column, “Football, the original people’s sport, the sport anyone could play anywhere, has been shrunk into an elite pursuit, the preserve of the very richest alone. We know what the real story is here: the billion-pound hole in the broadcast deal needed to be filled with something, anything. Football has never been entirely free of the profit motive but rarely has it felt less like a vital service and more like a commodity: a commercial obligation.

The GAA has difficult decisions to make. They must continue to be made on the basis that we are all in this together. x