The GAA has responded to a question posed by Off The Ball as to what the new government restrictions means when it comes to attendance of parents at under-age games.
The Government released a raft of new measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, one of which was to make sure that outdoor sporting events were carried out behind closed doors.
As to whether this meant that parents cannot attend under-age matches, a GAA spokesperson said: “We don’t have clarity on this yet. There are many questions arising from the latest measures that require elaboration.”
Government restrictions
Earlier this evening, Professor Anthony Staines painted a stark picture of what the restrictions do and do not do.
"A couple of things have become clear, we had 190 cases of COVID today and 200 on Saturday. These are numbers that we haven't seen for several months. So what the Government has been doing in this 'living with the virus' strategy has failed and it is time to do something else.
"Eamon Ryan and Stephen Donnelly are quite right to say that if we don't get on top of this briskly then we could have hundreds and hundreds of cases a day.
#GAA invite Dr Ronan Glynn "to present the empirical evidence which informed the requirement for the Association to curtail its activities."
— John Fogarty (@JohnFogartyIrl) August 18, 2020
"Hopefully, because we have got better at treating it and there hopefully won't be so many people severely ill [...] but the hit to the economy will be horrific. There is a lot of information that says what hits the economy is not so much the restrictions, or rules on movement, but the virus itself because it changes how people behave.
"People don't go out as much, they spend less money and less time in public spaces."
As it pertains to sport, Staines was stark in his call for personal and collective responsibility: "[there] is nothing magic about what you're doing - it doesn't matter if you're training with 15 or 30 of you."
"If you're training, you have to stay apart as much as possible. I used to play rugby and know the difficulties in staying apart - other sports it is easier. There may be sports that you just can't do for a while and I suspect rugby may be one of them.
"Look into your own heart: what are the risks? Part of the concern is that people who are exercising are breathing hard, and we know that strong breathing produces a lot more droplets. They are what seems to be infectious."
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