From the moment football was suspended in March, to the moment it was brought back in August, the decision making, leadership and communication of the Football Association has been called into question. For many football fans, the FA are perennial pantomime villains, but is that enough to justify the criticism of their handling of the Coronavirus crisis?Football’s introduction to Covid-19 came in March on Friday 13th, a date synonymous with bad luck. At the outset of the crisis, it appeared that the non-leagues would be unaffected, with the National League signalling their intention to go ahead with fixtures scheduled for the Saturday, despite the decision of the professional game to suspend matches. When the FA’s guidance eventually came, it handed the responsibility for continuing competitive matches back to the Leagues – but why would the national game’s governing body, with all its resources, leave such a high-profile decision in the hands of amateur football?

With the benefit of hindsight, the FA should have followed the lead taken by the professional game and suspended all football with immediate effect. But hindsight is a wonderful thing, and all the FA could reasonably have done at the time, like any of us, was to follow the Government guidance.

Fast forward to Halloween and the Prime Minister announces a second national lockdown. 18 million people were already living under the harshest coronavirus restrictions when the PM called last orders at the bar, closed non-essential shops and outlawed households meeting. With the new lockdown not starting until Thursday, 5th November, the FA announced the suspension of all fixtures and training from Saturday, 7th November to Wednesday, 2nd December.

As with so much of the Coronavirus messaging, there is something counter intuitive with the idea that it is safe to play and watch football on a Wednesday, but not a Thursday. Should the FA have announced on Saturday evening that if the Government believes the threat to public health and the capacity of the NHS, to be so severe to warrant a second national lockdown, all forms of football should have been halted with immediate effect? A minority in the game might agree, but as before, all the FA can reasonably do is follow the Government guidance.

However, there are some decisions to which the FA is not reliant on following the Government’s lead. As far back as July, the FA gave the non-leagues a scenario planning presentation, setting out their thinking on re-starting football, the potential for further lockdowns and possible mechanisms for concluding a curtailed season. So, why did the FA launch an

“information gathering” exercise, assessing what Clubs feel is “the best and most appropriate route to determining a final” league table, on October 28th?

The one option missing from the FA’s “information gathering” exercise was the option many now consider to have been in the best interest of the game last season. Is the sporting integrity of this season, or the last one, best served by scrapping all the results and starting again? Wouldn’t it be better if the fixtures were finished, no matter when that was?

In the case of the Toolstation Western League, 24% of First Division fixtures have been completed this season. Added to the 66% of matches completed last season, that means we could have completed 90% of last season’s fixtures by now. With the lockdown lasting until December, combined with the poor winter weather and potential for further lockdowns during January and February, the prospect of finding time for only 10% of League games is looking far more appealing than trying to fit in more than three quarters of a league schedule.

Th FA need saving from themselves. They are the ones citing May 15th as the designated end of the 2020/21 season, a position that clearly needs to be reconsidered. They are the ones seemingly reluctant to consider suspending last season, enabling it to be played to a conclusion now. Yet they are also the ones committed to restructuring the non-league pyramid, creating new leagues and laterally moving Clubs.

Playing last season to a conclusion would have delivered the opportunity for the FA to reshuffle the pack, but as things stand, the 2020/21 season appears no more certain to finish competitively than its predecessor.

A genuine dialogue with the Clubs, like the one they started in July, could have found a way out of this mess for all parties, but now football is mired in its own self-interest, incapable of articulating a clear message on how it evolves after Covid.

The unprecedented events of March, have now set a precedent, so now is the time for the FA to learn from the lesson of the past and chart a new, brighter future for both itself and the game it proports to represent.

Marcus Brody