It’s been a whirlwind of a year so far, and we’ve managed to see many sports return to our screen and back into our lives. Speaking to Saracens’ hooker May Campbell, who is the first team hooker, we discussed how Premier 15 continues on, despite lack of testing, until recently.
Saracen’s hooker May Campbell, who has been at the club since 2015 believes that Premier 15’s rugby has been “prioritized” by the Government, as they have been placed under the “elite sports umbrella”.
In the final two weeks of 2020, Women’s rugby, which had been placed under ‘elite sport’ status by the government, was postponed for two weeks. They called this a circuit breaker. Behind this decision was ‘player welfare’ whilst the league was already being played under revised laws to prevent excessive contact.
Law variations have been approved to reduce in-game face-to-face contact, along with a range of medical and monitoring requirements to mitigate potential transmission risks and to allow competition to start without weekly testing.
However May does continue to express confusion at that “testing has only just been brought in.
“It is just hard as many of us are having to continue to go into work, so individual ‘bubbles’ are a lot larger compared to people who are full-time”.
To ensure that the league can continue, the players in the league have had to take it upon themselves to ensure they are being covid-secure, leading to its own problems. As May explains: “I think that making players isolate after being in close contact has been especially tough on some.. some have had to isolate for more than 10 weeks, which is incredibly hard to cope with.
“But when players are in isolation, we do make sure that teammates are okay and check up on one another”.
However, it was potentially always going to be a stretch to continue any form of professional sport without regular and stringent Covid-testing and now that that the players are being tested every Tuesday and Thursday, May believes this is “stringent enough” and gives the players great confidence to “come into contact with one another”.
Whilst May is understandably frustrated like many, who are currently in lockdown, she believes that the continuation of Women’s Rugby Union is “great” for the sport’s growth stating:
“You’d hope in the 5 next years that all prem players would be full-time but I think that is slightly wishful thinking. We need to keep pushing the game as much as possible and making it easily accessible to a large audience regularly, but clubs and sporting brands have a huge responsibility in this too”.
