SPECIAL FEATURE: Rugby clubs coping with Covid-19 - Old Northamptonians

While other sports managed to return to action before again being put on hold for the current second lockdown, aside from organised training sessions, rugby has been in hibernation since early March due to the amount of close physical contact there is in the game.

It is nine months since teams were able to play any competitive fixtures, and clubs have thankfully been able to keep things ticking over thanks to grants from the Government and Sport England, as well as some RFU funding.

But it has still been a very difficult and concerning time, and there is still no date set in stone for when teams can start playing again.

So how has the pandemic, the subsequent lockdowns and lack of competitive rugby affected the area’s clubs?

Prior to Thursday's news of the Government will be providing a substantial and welcome bailout to the sport, sports editor JEREMY CASEY contacted clubs to find out how they have been coping, what they are doing to keep things ticking over, and their hopes for the next few months and the long-term future...

We begin the series with OLD NORTHAMPTONIANS

IT has hardly been an ideal scenario for the sport of rugby, but the Old Northamptonians are maintaining a positive outlook for the club’s future post Covid-19.

ONs have obviously been hit by the closing down of the sport since the middle of March, but are remaining optimistic that there won’t be any long-term damaging effect.

With senior men’s teams and thriving women, youth and mini sections, the current four-week national lockdown has seen the club’s Billing Road base go all quiet once more.

But up until the beginning of the month, it had again been a hive of rugby activity, despite the fact there had been no competitive games since March.

Players of all ages had returned to training, sticking to the regulations laid down by the RFU, and although chairman David Howland admits it has been a hugely frustrating time for everybody, he is taking a pragmatic approach to how things are going to pan out.

“The thing is there is not a lot you can do about it is there? You do what you can, the age groups are keeping themselves as busy as possible, and as soon as this lockdown is lifted we will go back to whatever the RFU lets us do,” said Howland.

“Numbers have been good, all the age-groups and teams have been doing what they can, and we have been as busy down there as we can be.”

Financially, the ONs are in a pretty good position as, because they are part of the ONs association along with ON Chenecks football and the ONs cricket clubs, they are not as reliant on the clubhouse and bar takings as others may be.

That means the rugby club is totally focused on just getting players back and playing again.

Like representatives of other clubs, Howland does have concerns about the possibility of some walking away from the sport to try something else if they can’t get game time.

There has been talk of a restructured type of game, lessening some of the close contact, to allow matches to be played in the new year.

Howland would welcome that to get people on the pitch again, but he also believes that if nothing can be sorted until the start of the 2021/22 season - then players might be just desperate to get back out there and running into each other once more.

“There has been some talk of the RFU trying to come up with some form of game that people can play, but not touch rugby,” he said.

“They are talking about perhaps doing away with the scrum and the lineout, which basically turns it into Rugby League, but the thing is people play rugby for contact.

“So whether people will start drifting away, I don’t know, but we have been quite lucky with numbers.

“The worry is that if people drift away because they’re not playing rugby then they might find other things to do, but it could also be a case of absence making the heart grow fonder.

“If they say we can start playing again in September, then we might have numbers coming out of our ears because people want to play, but who knows where it is going to go?”

ONs is a big rugby club, with a very strong foundation.

They had close to 700 players registered ahead of the initial lockdown in March, and no matter what happens over the coming months, Howland is confident the ONs will emerge from the other side of the pandemic in rude health.

“I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t,” he said.

“We have got a lot of good people down at the club, a lot of young players, and having a year out might almost benefit us playing-wise because we have a very young squad.

“This will give them another year to grow and get themselves very fit, so that when we do start again, certainly first team wise, we should be more than able to hold our own.”

And he added: “We will return, we will look back on this and say these things happen, and everybody is in the same boat. And then we can get back to doing what we enjoy - having a smash up with the Old Scouts now and again!”