Poor show from Welsh Labour as they arbitrarily close down indoor and outdoor sporting events for spectators.

It’s become harder and harder to keep politics out of sport in recent years as just about everything has to be seen as political in some ways today it seems. However, I’ve managed to do so on here for the twelve years plus of this blog’s existence I believe. Unfortunately, following the decision to ban all spectators from sporting events held in Wales announced overnight, I feel I must have my say about something which the Welsh Government have made a very poor job of explaining in my opinion.

From a Cardiff City perspective, the decision has little immediate impact because the Boxing Day visit of Coventry City has joined Saturday’s game with Derby in being postponed (the first of the matches was called off because of a Covid outbreak in both camps, but Coventry are Covid free seemingly and it’s not being played solely because of the situation at City).

To return to the ban on attendance of sporting events. Around a week ago, this story appeared as an exclusive and was roundly denounced by Welsh Government sources and supporters as not being the case in reality. The story has been changed now and an apology added for some of the things it got wrong, but there were certain aspects of it that were proved to be correct.

One of the things which no longer appears in the article is the claim that attendance at sporting events which draw a crowd of more than 1,500 will be banned – this was also wrong, but only because the ban, apparently, extends to the proverbial one man and a dog watching a parks game!

The way these measures were announced leaves a lot to be desired as well. Not for the first time, the Welsh Government has copied the cowardly line often adopted by the UK Government in announcing what will be unpopular measures late at night so that they will not be covered in the following morning’s national newspapers.

This doesn’t stop things appearing on newspaper publisher’s websites though and here is Wales Online’s fairly straightforward reporting of the facts on the decision. The bland words of Vaughan Gething in announcing the restrictions contain no sort of justification for the decision (although the piece does say that more details will be announced after discussions with the affected parties) and, in my view, this is simply not good enough.

I say this as someone who has always tended to be on the side of Government intervention concerning Covid, someone who thinks the UK Government’s repeating of the same mistake over and over again of acting too slowly in the face of rising infections and hospitalisations has cost thousands of lives. Therefore, it’s not the ban as such which I find most annoying, it’s more the swingeing nature of it, the way it was announced and the gaping holes in the whole thing which irks me.

For example, while I can be persuaded on the need for stopping the attendance of events where thousands would be present, stopping all attendance seems over the top based on what I’ve learned about Covid over the past two years.

However, what seems absurd is that, with the game at Bournemouth a week today still going ahead as of now, a thousand and more Cardiff fans will be able to go to that match, and the one at West Brom on January 2, but will be locked out of FA Cup tie with Preston at Cardiff City Stadium the following weekend.

Of course, if Omicron proves to be as virulent as expected, there is every chance that the UK Government will make a similar decision to the Welsh one in the coming days and weeks, but, for now, there’s a huge inconsistency between the two bodies and, speaking as a City fan, the approach of the Welsh Government is certainly not helping our bid to stay up.

I appreciate that, given our pathetic home results while there have been supporters in attendance, playing in an empty ground may not be too big a handicap for the City team, but, surely, we could not go on losing so many home matches throughout the whole of the season?

Let’s face it, in political terms, the £3 million put aside to “compensate” those who will be hit by the ban is chickenfeed and the small part of that which will find it’s way to Cardiff City will be as of nothing if we were to go down.

As mentioned earlier, it’s not the banning of spectators from relatively well attended events like City home matches that I’m most concerned about. Although the rationale behind it has to be far better explained than it has been so far, I can certainly be persuaded of its necessity, but I must point out that in the country where Omicron appears to have originated, there are signs that it is not as devastating as UK scientists keep telling us it is.

These figures relating to information released by the South African Health Board late last week point to a much lower Omicron hospitalisation rate than the Delta variant which, surely, cannot be explained away solely by the younger population than the UK and immunity from previous infection lines followed by British science when questioned about South African figures that are not as bad as feared.

You won’t catch me making out I know better than “the science”, but the figures from South Africa are for the fourth week since the Omicron variant was first observed and I remember at the time being told by the experts in this country that we’d know much more in three or four weeks time when you would expect to see hospitalisations and deaths rising.

Yes, it’s still probably a bit too early to draw firm conclusions on what is happening in South Africa, but was it even a consideration in the decision taken yesterday by the Welsh Government? If it was and it was still felt that the shutdown was necessary, then tell us why that is because the current situation is a very hard one to defend – indeed, they don’t seem to be defending it so far, they’ve just imposed it and that’s an end to it!