So here we are…
It is with a heavy heart that we feel that now is the time to put Ballers on hold for the foreseeable future. This has not been an easy decision to make, Ballers is my only source of income and we really don’t know how long this is going to go on for, but the health of the local community has to come first.
Yesterday the FA responded to the governments half hearted call for people to maybe consider not doing some things, by taking the decisive action to cancel all grassroots football.
While we were hoping that the governement would provide the required guidance in this situation to create a scenario where we had no choice but to shut our leagues down for now, they provided several shades of grey and effectively put the onus on small business owners (pubs, restaurants) to make a call with two possible outcomes.
You could choose the first one, where you remain open in an attempt to survive financially, but come across as putting short term profit ahead of the health and safety of your customers and the wider population until forced to do otherwise, or choose the second one whereby you voluntarily close down and have no money coming in at all and no government support.
In my opinion, it’s a disgrace. What small business owners needed more than anything at the minute is clarity and support, not difficult decisions that can affect their long term chances of financial and (potentially) literal survival.
Thankfully the FA have stepped up, and we support whatever needs to be done at this time to ensure that as many people as possible have the best chance of coming out of this on the other side.
Other businesses out there who offer something very similar to us may intend to carry on regardless, however we absolutely do not want to be seen as being irresponsible. This thing is just getting started. We had a number of teams cancel their games yesterday as they had lads who were ill or in self isolation, and it’s only going to get worse. If we were to continue running leagues you can pretty much guarantee that within a week we’d have lads playing there who had the virus, whether they knew it or not.
Hopefully when this is all over and we are ready to get going again, people will remember who it was that put their customers health first!
We will be back, hopefully sooner rather than later. Let’s face it, there’s not going to be any other suitable jobs out there for anyone like me at the minute!
Please take care of yourselves and each other, and please treat this situation with the seriousness it deserves. The one plus point for us is that by the time this is all over we can only imagine that everyone will be busting for a game of football!
In the meantime I’m going to pick up that dusty guitar and spend the next few months seeing if I can actually get any good at playing it…
See you all soon!
Mike