Castleford Tigers beat St Helens in the solitary top-level sports fixture in the United Kingdom on Sunday.
Rugby League is known for its hard-nosed approach on the pitch, but over the last weekend it used that ideology off the pitch to battle the coronavirus outbreak.
50% of the Super League’s scheduled fixtures in the last four days were postponed, but only Leeds Rhino’s visit to Catalan Dragons was due to the coronavirus outbreak. All matches were played with fans in the stadium.
But that hard-nosed approach can only become so firm. Today [Monday 16th March], Super League clubs are due to meet and discuss plans for the rest of the season.
RFL chief executive Ralph Rimmer said they had “adhered to the guidelines” set out by government in allowing games to go ahead.
“It’ll be huge. The clubs base their business models on a certain amount of home games. If they don’t get those, not unreasonably, that’ll threaten their businesses. But that’s the case through the nation at the minute, the knock-on effect of what is happening is huge.”
Ralph Rimmer told Sky Sports News
Impact on businesses
Most of the top-flight clubs rely on matchday income. Of course, if matches get postponed fans will be expecting some sort of refund for those missed games on their season tickets.
Yet while all this goes on, players and staff members through the club will be expecting payments. Money will soon run low if this continues.
If the buck doesn’t stop somewhere, then it’ll cause a few clubs to go under.
“Financially, football can probably cop it but I don’t think rugby league can so there will be some serious thinking going on behind closed doors to see what needs to be done.It’s a tough situation and everyone needs to come up with contingency plans and if it gets worse and worse they might be extreme.”
Rimmer continued
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