Sittingbourne have cancelled all football activity until they have a restart date from the Isthmian League.

Boss Darren Blackburn sees no value in putting anyone at risk in the current climate.

Two Brickies fans have died from Covid-19 during the pandemic and Blackburn was also hit hard by the death of Laurence Plummer, a club legend at his former side Hollands & Blair.

Some things are more important than football.

“We’ve cancelled all training and we won’t play any friendlies until there’s an announcement from the league,” said Blackburn.

“Once we know where we stand we can formulate a plan.

“We’ve got lads living in Tier 2 who are not sure whether they should be travelling to Tier 3. Yes, you can travel to work, but what constitutes work when we aren’t paying them? Is it stretching the rules?

“I’ll be honest, I know we can have fans for friendlies now but I don’t see the point in putting people’s health at risk for a friendly that means nothing to either team or either set of fans.

“That’s the stance we’ve taken and the board agree with me. We’ll support each other until we have clearer guidance or there’s a need to let fans in.

“Others do what they want to do but I just feel it’s inappropriate.

“We’ve lost two fans and when Laurence Plummer died it really hit home and we’ve got his funeral on December 23.

“He may not have caught the virus at football - we’ll never know - but when you see the effect it’s had on his family, you sit there as a manager and think is it truly worth it?

“I was at Blair for 12/13 years and I was really close to Plum and I’m still friendly with his family.

“This is a guy who gave his life to football. He’d have done anything for the game of football and when you lose someone like him, it really puts things in perspective.”

The Isthmian League hope to give a clearer picture on a restart date after the government’s tier review today.

Blackburn added: “If the season doesn’t get done, it doesn’t get done. I’ve stopped stressing about it as a manager.

“With the best will in the world, we all want the season to finish but it hasn’t really started. We’ve played five league games.

“It’s easy to say football needs to carry on but does it really when people are dying? Does it really?

“If we do get going my instinct tells me mid-January and then we’d have time to play Saturday-Tuesday to the end of May with spare dates if we lose games to bad weather.

“If it’s not got going by February, can you cram a season in? You might have to null and void the season but then how does that affect the leagues that have carried on?

“One suggestion I’ve seen mooted is you play every team once but I’m not sure that works.

“If you spoke to every manager in the league, if you knew you were only playing each other once, you’d have gone into the games you’ve already played with a very different tactical plan.”

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