Sportsound Watch

[mozam76]

1 hour ago, Dons_1988 said:

I'm now convinced English is just arguing in bad faith on these issues. He can't seriously believe everything he's saying is valid.

The harping on about Ian Maxwell saying all of football was paused, pretty obvious what he meant Tom. The petulance of 'it's YOU that's fixated with Hearts, Darryl!', the continual framing of the argument as this being a direct action against Hearts, and not a whole host of clubs and the refusal to acknowledge that there is clear reasons why the Premiership is being treated differently to all other football (not just Hearts).

I genuinely don't believe he's as stupid as he's coming across just now. I just don't really understand what his game is.

 

Far be it for me to defend English, but he has a point on what Ian Maxwell said. He's one of the most powerful mean in our game, therefore "ach you know what I meant" isn't really acceptable. His answer on why Hull were training at Oriam also left a wee bit to be desired - he sounded distinctly pissed off that he was being asked. 

[Jackie Chiles]

Just now, Dons_1988 said:

The questions were repeatedly 'why did you do this to Hearts?', when they are clearly not the only ones impacted.

Any club wanting to start training this past week was impacted.

Hearts were the only team who had taken players off furlough. It's clearly not the same impact.

[Aim Here]

9 minutes ago, Jackie Chiles said:

Hearts were the only team who had taken players off furlough. It's clearly not the same impact.

The Hearts apologists have repeatedly and tediously pointed out, the other teams had the choice of practicing this month, but chose to not do so.

Likewise, Hearts had the choice of not taking their players off furlough, but chose to do so.  Why should 'Hearts chooses to do something' need to be taken into account by the JRG when 'Teams that aren't Hearts chose not to do something' should be ignored?

Hearts still gets whatever benefits they had from practicing before the fairly brief halt to practicing, and it's only about 10 days and the first match is well over a month away, so the harm done is fairly inconsequential.

Edited August 19, 2020 by Aim Here

[Dons_1988]

2 minutes ago, Jackie Chiles said:

Hearts were the only team who had taken players off furlough. It's clearly not the same impact.

I didn't say it was the same impact.

I have sympathy with Hearts here, as I did over their relegation, but we've all got to suck a few things up right now. St Johnstone, St Mirren and Hamilton now have a fixture pile up because of the actions of Dons players and Bolingoli. It's shite but we're in a situation here, none of it is particularly fair.

[paranoid android]

19 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

It's been missed that this is a hugely embarrassing episode for Scottish football? You sure?

I really think it has, aye. 

[Dons_1988]

2 minutes ago, paranoid android said:

I really think it has, aye. 

You're entitled to your view, I suppose.

[paranoid android]

32 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

You're entitled to your view, I suppose.

As are you.

[craigkillie]

1 hour ago, Jackie Chiles said:

True that this was in the guidance notes but I didn't see it mentioned that it was purely just for journalists.

Point is ,hearts were specifically impacted,  so bit bizarre the all about Hearts angle.

I still don't see the risk of letting Hearts carry on training and avoiding this farce. If there is a good argument for it then all I'm all ears.

I agree with you on the latter part, if Hearts were training safely last week it was bizarre to ask them to stop.

[Aim Here]

1 hour ago, craigkillie said:

I agree with you on the latter part, if Hearts were training safely last week it was bizarre to ask them to stop.

Well there you go. Hearts weren't training safely. That's not a dig at Hearts, no teams are training safely. In this pandemic, there's no such thing as safe social activity. The idea is to cut down and restrict the unnecessary social activities so as to manage the risk as best as possible.

Shopping isn't safe  but people need to eat, so it's allowed with some attempt to manage the risk with mask regulations and so on. Football and training for football isn't safe either, but to manage the risk, you allow a small number of elite teams to play with their players given extra restrictions and the games played behind closed doors. Allowing 200 people to play football can be an acceptable risk where allowing 1000 or 20,000 people isn't.

However, it was discovered, after Hearts started training, that even with just 12 teams, it's a bit much to expect the players to not turn into plague-carrying halfwits so the restrictions were made tighter still, which inadvertently hit Hearts' training schedule. The top tier teams and Glasgow city still get to train because they have to play football next week. Hearts don't because they don't need to play football until October.

 

Edited August 19, 2020 by Aim Here

[craigkillie]

The training was deemed "safe" last Monday and nothing changed in terms of the safety of the training in the interim period.  The problems weren't caused by unsafe training practices, the issue was the behaviour of a small number players outside of football.

Most likely the incidents with the Aberdeen players and Bolingoli would have happened whether they were training or not, given that they occurred in their personal life. Stopping Hearts (or any other full-time club) training is not going to reduce the risk of their players catching or passing on the disease - in fact, if anything they might be more likely to undertake dangerous activites if they are not bound by some set of rules and are not being tested regularly. Bolingoli probably wouldn't have been the only one jetting off to Spain and not following quarantine if Scottish Premiership clubs weren't training.

I think the decision made last week was reactionary and was a case of the SFA and SPFL bowing to pressure from the Government on the basis of the latter's overreaction to a couple of incidents.

Edited August 19, 2020 by craigkillie

[Aim Here]

30 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

The training was deemed "safe" last Monday and nothing changed in terms of the safety of the training in the interim period.  The problems weren't caused by unsafe training practices, the issue was the behaviour of a small number players outside of football.

So what? The virus doesn't clock off whenever it gets close to a football pitch.

The training is considered a tolerable risk because it's expected that the players won't be going around the local pubs or in European coronavirus hotspots catching the virus when they're not at the training ground. The very nature of the problem is that when players who take risks get to the training ground, that risk is passed on to everyone. When it was demonstrated that players couldn't be trusted to behave, something had to be done about it.

Quote

Most likely the incidents with the Aberdeen players and Bolingoli would have happened whether they were training or not, given that they occurred in their personal life. Stopping Hearts (or any other full-time club) training is not going to reduce the risk of their players catching or passing on the disease - in fact, if anything they might be more likely to undertake dangerous activites if they are not bound by some set of rules and are not being tested regularly. Bolingoli probably wouldn't have been the only one jetting off to Spain and not following quarantine if Scottish Premiership clubs weren't training.

Come off it. Stopping players training will be very effective at stopping them passing the disease to each other. A game of football or indeed their training is a gathering of upwards of 30 people, many of whom are in close physical contact with each other. It's an excellent vector for passing on a respiratory virus among a group of people, and stopping it cuts that risk right out. Your point about the training regime stopping players from going out and engaging in risky behaviour is entirely contradicted by the events of last week - 9 players were caught engaging in risky behaviour despite actually training and playing football.

Also note that the halt on non-elite training was because the JRG was awaiting more guidance from the government - due tomorrow - as to how to proceed. When not all the information is in, it's surely prudent to err on the side of safety until that information does come in.

Quote

I think the decision made last week was reactionary and was a case of the SFA and SPFL bowing to pressure from the Government on the basis of the latter's overreaction to a couple of incidents.

Well sure. Welcome to politics. But the Scottish government had to be seen to do something, and so, by extension, did the SFA and SPFL. And if the worst of this "overreaction" is that they've stopped Hearts doing contact training for a week, something like two months before a competitive game, then really, it's hardly a problem for anyone. Despite all the mewling and puking, this is not going to have a material or noticeable impact on Hearts season start. It's only significant effect is to induce a bunch of rage and persecution mania in Jambo circles. It's just a whole bunch of  greetin' of the 'That's no fair' ilk that Hearts have been doing for the last 4 months. Let them greet.

 

Edited August 19, 2020 by Aim Here

[cmontheloknow]

6 hours ago, Jackie Chiles said:

The JRG statement only mentioned one male club by name. A little bit rich of Broadfoot to go down the all about Hearts route to denigrate the argument when a statement, I assume he helped craft, specifically singled out Hearts.

Personally, I'm not foaming at the mouth on the decision, just don't understand why they couldn't have let Hearts carry on training and avoid more tedious arguments.

Because Hearts are outwith the top flight and other Championship clubs wanted to resume?

[craigkillie]

1 hour ago, Aim Here said:

Come off it. Stopping players training will be very effective at stopping them passing the disease to each other. A game of football or indeed their training is a gathering of upwards of 30 people, many of whom are in close physical contact with each other. It's an excellent vector for passing on a respiratory virus among a group of people, and stopping it cuts that risk right out. Your point about the training regime stopping players from going out and engaging in risky behaviour is entirely contradicted by the events of last week - 9 players were caught engaging in risky behaviour despite actually training and playing football.

This essentially assumes that footballers were the only people "engaging in risky behaviour" over that period of time. In reality, many people are engaging in that sort of risky behaviour on a daily basis - the Aberdeen players certainly weren't the only ones in that pub who were in a group of more than four households, and Bolingoli certainly isn't the only person to ignore the quarantine rules. I would be quite happy to bet that the proportion of professional footballers who have broken the rules is as low, if not lower, than the same proportion in the general public. Moreover, the regular testing of footballers means that they are less likely to be asymptomatic spreaders, since they would be diagnosed far more quickly than most members of the general public (many of who will probably go completely undiagnosed).

There is professional football (and other sport) going on all over the world now, including in countries with much higher prevalence in the general population, and I'm not aware of a single case of players catching the disease from their opponents during a game of football. It certainly doesn't seem to be any more unsafe a workplace than many others (even non-essential ones) which are currently allowed to open as normal.

[Aim Here]

1 hour ago, craigkillie said:

This essentially assumes that footballers were the only people "engaging in risky behaviour" over that period of time. In reality, many people are engaging in that sort of risky behaviour on a daily basis - the Aberdeen players certainly weren't the only ones in that pub who were in a group of more than four households, and Bolingoli certainly isn't the only person to ignore the quarantine rules.

Firstly, footballers are under more severe restrictions than the general public, precisely because they're spending so much time in relatively large groups, and then travelling across the country and mingling with other large groups, and the perceived infection risk is so high. That's part of the reason why football is allowed to proceed. You can't compare footballers to the general public since they're in a different category and a different regime.

Secondly,  you're onto a loser trying to minimise the effects of the issue of player behaviour when, of the 9 players who we know broke the rules, two of them actually contracted the virus.. Everyone they came into contact with was put at risk of catching it. All it would have taken is for a test to come up with a false negative (medical tests are far from infallible) or for them to be as lax about testing as they are about obeying the other guidelines and they'd have sparked off another outbreak. As well as there being a risk of catching the virus, there's the risk that some of your safety measures don't work. Here one measure - telling the players to not go out and be dafties - failed, but another - testing - happened to work. That's no argument at all for being more relaxed about the measures. If anything, it's a wake-up call to be more strict because one of your measures has been shown to be inadequate, and you do need some level of redundancy in your safety systems.

1 hour ago, craigkillie said:

There is professional football (and other sport) going on all over the world now, including in countries with much higher prevalence in the general population, and I'm not aware of a single case of players catching the disease from their opponents during a game of football. It certainly doesn't seem to be any more unsafe a workplace than many others (even non-essential ones) which are currently allowed to open as normal.

The only countries of any size which have had a much higher prevalence of coronavirus deaths in the general population are Belgium and Peru. The UK's response to the virus has already been inadequate.

And I suspect you're not an epidemiologist - you haven't studied at all the possible vectors by which people catch the virus, you couldn't tell me how many people catch the virus in restaurants as opposed to airports or public buses or offices, and you can't tell me what proportion of the population plays football and what proportion of the time they spend doing that. It's not surprising you haven't heard of people catching the virus from one relatively minor pastime which was pretty much shut down across the world once the pandemic kicked in. You haven't looked.

Even if you had, you can't immediately go from 'I don't know of any cases caught from football' to 'Playing football is a safe activity'. You have to divide by the fraction of the population that plays football under the coronavirus restrictions and again by the fraction of time they spend playing football. If only one person in a country of 300 million dies from playing Russian roulette in a given year, that doesn't mean that playing Russian roulette is safer than cancer or crossing the road - it's far more likely that not a lot of time is spent engaging in Russian Roulette.

We know what spreads coronavirus. It's respiratory activity - breathing, coughing, sneezing - in close proximity to another human being, or touching items that have been sneezed/breathed/coughed on - including other people.  There's a lot of that in football. It would be a huge surprise - approaching being  contrary to common sense - if it wasn't a risky activity - at least without all the safety precautions being taken to make it less dangerous.

Edited August 19, 2020 by Aim Here

[Green Day]

Apparently they had to apologise tonight for Leveins comments about Morton and Raith the other night.

[TheGoon]

1 hour ago, Green Day said:

Apparently they had to apologise tonight for Leveins comments about Morton and Raith the other night.

Does this mean we get the maroon pound back we’ve not had anyway since the 1980s? Their fans were very, very upset the other day.

[Mr Positive, sometimes.]

 

[welshbairn]

Levein trying to hide from his responsibility by continually blaming everyone else for what happened to his team is embarrassing. No idea what he thinks he's gaining by it, apart from occasional gigs on Sportsound and being mates with Tom English. 

[craigkillie]

17 hours ago, Aim Here said:

Firstly, footballers are under more severe restrictions than the general public, precisely because they're spending so much time in relatively large groups, and then travelling across the country and mingling with other large groups, and the perceived infection risk is so high. That's part of the reason why football is allowed to proceed. You can't compare footballers to the general public since they're in a different category and a different regime.

Secondly,  you're onto a loser trying to minimise the effects of the issue of player behaviour when, of the 9 players who we know broke the rules, two of them actually contracted the virus.. Everyone they came into contact with was put at risk of catching it. All it would have taken is for a test to come up with a false negative (medical tests are far from infallible) or for them to be as lax about testing as they are about obeying the other guidelines and they'd have sparked off another outbreak. As well as there being a risk of catching the virus, there's the risk that some of your safety measures don't work. Here one measure - telling the players to not go out and be dafties - failed, but another - testing - happened to work. That's no argument at all for being more relaxed about the measures. If anything, it's a wake-up call to be more strict because one of your measures has been shown to be inadequate, and you do need some level of redundancy in your safety systems.

The only countries of any size which have had a much higher prevalence of coronavirus deaths in the general population are Belgium and Peru. The UK's response to the virus has already been inadequate.

And I suspect you're not an epidemiologist - you haven't studied at all the possible vectors by which people catch the virus, you couldn't tell me how many people catch the virus in restaurants as opposed to airports or public buses or offices, and you can't tell me what proportion of the population plays football and what proportion of the time they spend doing that. It's not surprising you haven't heard of people catching the virus from one relatively minor pastime which was pretty much shut down across the world once the pandemic kicked in. You haven't looked.

Even if you had, you can't immediately go from 'I don't know of any cases caught from football' to 'Playing football is a safe activity'. You have to divide by the fraction of the population that plays football under the coronavirus restrictions and again by the fraction of time they spend playing football. If only one person in a country of 300 million dies from playing Russian roulette in a given year, that doesn't mean that playing Russian roulette is safer than cancer or crossing the road - it's far more likely that not a lot of time is spent engaging in Russian Roulette.

We know what spreads coronavirus. It's respiratory activity - breathing, coughing, sneezing - in close proximity to another human being, or touching items that have been sneezed/breathed/coughed on - including other people.  There's a lot of that in football. It would be a huge surprise - approaching being  contrary to common sense - if it wasn't a risky activity - at least without all the safety precautions being taken to make it less dangerous.

There isn't actually any evidence that footballers are under more severe restrictions than the general public - as far as anyone has been able to gather, the Aberdeen players were simply guilty of breaking the exact same rules that apply to everyone else, namely meeting with more than three households indoors. Right at the start when players returned to training while we were basically in lockdown there was definitely an expectation that they essentially self-isolated, but this appears to have been relaxed as the rest of the country came out of lockdown.

I have no idea what your argument about Belgium and Peru has to do with anything - the overall prevalence of covid since March is completely irrelevant, I am talking about the here and now. The prevalence of the disease in the general population in Scotland right now is much lower than it was in many of the European countries when they returned in June/July. Despite your suggestion to the contrary, I have actually been following the restart in most other European countries because I'm a bit of a geek like that. Something like 44 countries returned in June/July to complete their 2019/20 seasons (or to start their 2020 summer seasons), and there were only a small number of examples of clubs having to postpone games due to outbreaks. Of these, I'm not aware of a single one instance of the disease being passed from one team to the other.

I've already said this on another thread already, and I'm reluctant to keep mentioning it in case I sound like I'm boasting, but I do literally have a PhD in disease modelling. I'd generally describe myself as a statistician, but I have spoken at epidemiology conferences in the past and could definitely describe what I do as epidemiology. It's important to note that I didn't study infectious disease, but I do like to think that I understand risk factors and relative risk better than the average person. This doesn't make the actual crux of your argument any less valid, but it perhaps means that you can make the argument without the implication that I don't understand risk and that I've just jumped into my point of view without actually thinking about it.

I don't think there has ever been any doubt that playing football is a high-risk activity compared to many other things people do, and that's precisely why we stopped doing it for about 5 months, but there comes a time when the overall risk has been mitigated to a sufficient degree that we can begin to tentatively restart such activites (as has happened in many other non-essential industries). If the experience in Scotland proves to be vastly different from pretty every other country in Europe and we start to see outbreaks as a direct result of football, then we can look at stopping it again.

Edited August 20, 2020 by craigkillie

[Steve McQueen]

Scott Allan must be the most overhyped player in Scottish football.

Can't get a game for Hibs atm but should be playing for Scotland apparently.