By Dave Langton
The Premier League has a huge decision to make.
The suspension of the weekend’s game after the death of Queen Elizabeth II has placed their decision-making under the microscope but more disruption may be on the way.
The late monarch’s funeral takes place next Monday, meaning that thousands of police officers are going to be redeployed to the capital.
That places this weekend’s games in London under very real threat: Spurs play Leicester at home, while Brentford host Arsenal and Chelsea play Liverpool at Stamford Bridge.
But that also raises the question of sporting integrity if the league decides to pick and choose its cancellations.
The Hammers’ game against Everton is likely to be unaffected because it is at Goodison Park but there is a possibility that the league could look to make a blanket decision to avoid any potential unhappiness among its clubs.
Suspending the three London games would leave those six clubs with two games in hand – one from last weekend, one from this – and there are questions of whether that would be deemed fair by those around them.
The messaging appears to be that the league will attempt to get as many games on as possible, but there is a very real chance that all 10 Premier League games this weekend are called off. Again.
Was mentioned on a previous post but the decision to call all games off as a mark of respect was total nonsense and has caused the premier league an issue. There’s a legitimate reason to cancel this coming weekends fixtures as emergency services will struggle to resource. All Forces will send officers to the Met and Windsor so it will be resource intensive nationally.
Instead of then having one round of fixtures to rearrange in an already disrupted year, they may end up with two.
The tone set by other sports was spot on, go ahead and pay tribute during the course of the event.
If football has been called off as a mark of respect, does that mean that all other sporting bodies who went ahead were disrespectful? The governments advice was for governing bodies to decide and therefore it wasn’t mandated or even suggested with any strong preference to cancel.
The worst thing above all, as annoying as it was to have no football and not be at the game yesterday, was to cancel grass roots football.
Without being disrespectful, the national mourning is a little outdated and not entirely appropriate to the circumstances here. Our Queen was 96, reigned for 70yrs and lived happily and healthy throughout her time, even her passing appears not to be connected to any long term suffering or illness. This is a real blessing and something I think we would all wish for any of our loved ones and therefore I believe we should be celebrating and reflecting on her reign in a positive light, not mourning in sadness. It all seem unnecessarily dark and negative
Beautful and thoughtful piece Hammerjk Thank you