NICOLA STURGEON has insisted that the decision to reject Celtic’s proposal and grant Scottish Rugby’s plans for a test event was not preferential treatment but instead it was a case of using the Edinburgh versus Glasgow Warriors match as a test event for all future events.
As reported by STV, The First Minister said at her briefing today that this was not a football over rugby issue but just a sport issue.
“We’re not trialling how it works with rugby versus football.
“I’ll let you into a wee secret here; the virus doesn’t care about the shape of the ball at these events.
“What we are testing is how we can operate within a stadium with spectators, and maintain and comply with all the physical distancing and other hygiene rules.
“The learning from rugby will apply to football because it’s not specific to rugby versus football.
“The virus really doesn’t care what sport it is, it just cares about having people to transmit from, one to the other, around, so the test event that will go ahead tomorrow night at Murrayfield with rugby will allow us to learn and to apply those lessons across different sports.”
700 supporters were hopeful that they would be allowed into Celtic Park for the first time in six months but Sturgeon pulled the plug on this idea meaning that the club and its supporters may need to wait until the September 14 date given by the Scottish Government.
Sturgeon continued, saying that they would continue trial games in the future once they have a better idea of how they work using the Murrayfield example.
“Hopefully in the not so distance future we’ll be able to move into having albeit limited number of spectators in stadiums or a variety of different sports not on a test and pilot basis but on a more general basis.
“So I would ask spectators and fans, whether it’s football or rugby, to bear with us just now.
“We’re trying to find the safest ways of giving as much normality back as possible.
“It’s not about preferring rugby over football or football over rugby or any sport over any other sport.
“It’s just about trying to keep people as safe as possible as we try to get life back to as much normality as possible.”
UEFA confirmed this week that the Super Cup would be played in front of a 30% capacity – this could be something which supporters are used to in the coming weeks and months. This would still be 20k and could maybe lift the lacklustre Celtic.
Celtic’s case was probably not aided by the recent antics of Belgian defender Boli Bolingoli which resulted (along with the Aberdeen players breaches) in Scottish football receiving a yellow card from First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Both Celtic and Aberdeen were forced to postpone matches as a result of these breaches.
