Sweet: Football can help patch society back together again

Luton's players applaud their supporters at Wigan during the club's last match before the the season was suspended

Hatters chief executive Gary Sweet believes that football will help ‘patch society back together' once the country finally resumes some sense of normality after the coronavirus pandemic has eased.

The football season, and sport in general, is postponed indefinitely as the UK remains under lockdown for another three weeks, confirmed by the government on Thursday evening.

However, with EFL chairman Rick Parry issuing a desire to finish the 2019-20 campaign once restrictions are relaxed in an open letter to supporters yesterday, Sweet believes the beautiful game will play a big part in getting the country back on track again.

He said: "When we get back to a sense of normality, it’s products like football, it’s that kind of entertainment that’s going to patch society back together.

"So it is vitally important that we do try and get this season complete for those reasons, but not at a compromise or detriment to people’s health or the resources of the NHS.

“Ultimately that’s not going to be Luton Town’s decision.

"We are bound by the regulations of a competition and if the competition says we have to do something in a certain way, then ultimately we have to do that or risk being excluded from that competition.

"So while the Football League is a collective of 72, currently 71 shareholders, and effectively we run it, there are 71 different opinions around the table.

"You do need an executive board to take that lead sometimes and we’re relying on them to come up with a solution that is going to enable us to finish the season.”

Sweet also reiterated his belief that if the campaign cannot be concluded, it would represent a massive blow for the sport, and one that a fair few clubs might not be able to bounce back from.

He added: "In all of this, I’m a chief executive of a football club and the one thing I’m not at the moment is the chief executive of a football club.

"We are constantly posed with very difficult situations and questions and debates and challenges that we’ve never been faced with before

“Everyone is the same, mistakes will happen and people are going to say things that they regret.

"But in these particular situations it is such a moral dilemma, with contracts the way they are, ultimately, if you close this season and do not conclude it, then there are severe impacts on the game of football itself.

"You do risk whether the game of football can be repatched, and that is from player contracts through to broadcast contracts, sponsorship contracts, almost every single contract we may well have, not as a club, but as football.

"It relies on the season finishing, so there has to be a will within football to get this season finished.

"For that reason, however, football doesn’t come before society, and society and the health and safety of people, it has to come first, always.

"Clearly, even if we as a society risk losing football, it is a conversation that is taking place between football clubs at the moment, how do we protect football in all of this?

"As I said this last time, football is the most important unimportant thing at the moment."