GAME OFF: City finished for Christmas

Credit Graham Burrell

The Imps will not kick another ball before Boxing Day, after Doncaster Rovers suffered an outbreak of Covid-19.

The bad news keeps coming as well; tonight’s fan forum has also been called off, to be arranged at a later date. These are (again) scary times we live in, with Christmas looking increasingly likely to be impacted for a second year running. Let’s hope Downing Street have got their parties on lockdown this year. Perhaps that’s a bad turn of phrase.

Anyway, here’s what the club had to say on their official site:

“The Imps’ home game against Doncaster Rovers scheduled for Saturday has been postponed after the visitors informed the EFL they would not be able to fulfil the fixture due to a number of Covid-19 cases in their squad.

“In light of the increased transmission rate of the Omicron variant, the EFL will now review the circumstances surrounding the postponement.

In addition, it will assist affected clubs throughout this challenging period to help them mitigate against the risk of infection amongst players and staff, while ensuring their obligations to the EFL regulations are maintained.”

It also means the scheduled fan’s forum has been lost. This is interesting as the club, at present, have not got recorded cases of Covid, but it seems they’ve taken practical steps to ensure that remains the case. My belief is they desperately wanted the forum to go ahead; it would have doubtless been tricky at times given the recent results and I’m sure the desire would have been to get in front of the supporters.

There’s not much more to add to the news, it’s a Saturday off before Christmas, which might help out some people, but it is a desperate shame for supporters. after last weekend’s positive result, the last thing Michael and the team needed was a delay between games. Actually, that’s not the last thing they needed; the very last thing they needed was a Covid outbreak, because last season it robbed us of key players and some, like James Jones, didn’t come back the same. I know it’s common sense, but it sucks that we seem to be teetering on the edge of lockdown and restrictions once again.