LAST UPDATE | 23 Mar 2020
“THE STREETS WERE absolutely deserted on the drive home,” Roy O’Donovan tells The42 over the phone after helping Newcastle Jets to beat Melbourne City.
Today’s 2-1 home win for the Jets – played behind closed doors at the McDonald Jones Stadium – looks likely to go down as the last game to take place in the A-League before a suspension of play, which many understandably feel should have been called sooner.
While the spread of Covid-19 has left the football world largely dormant over the past week or so, it’s been business as usual in the Australian top flight.
O’Donovan and compatriot Wes Hoolahan have both played three games in the last nine days for Newcastle Jets. Their previous two fixtures – away to Adelaide United and Brisbane Roar – saw them clock up over 4,500 kilometres.
However, Football Federation Australia have called a press conference for later this evening, at which they’re finally expected to bring a temporary halt to a season that had been due to conclude on the weekend of 16/17 May.
At the time of writing, Australia – a country with a population of approximately 25 million – has 1,717 confirmed cases of Covid-19, with seven reported deaths.
“The virus hasn’t touched Australia yet in the same way that it has ravaged places like Italy and Spain, but obviously the whole thing has still been very scary,” says O’Donovan.
“I suppose playing games has kind of kept life normal for us at a time when the world has been turned on its head. We’ve been travelling but we’ve been in separate rooms and we were kept apart on the plane and all that kind of stuff.
“From the football side of things, the game is all about the fans and the passion. Playing in an empty stadium with no people there, even though they’re competitive fixtures and you’re playing for points, they’ve had the feel of pre-season games in that sense.
“It’s a very strange experience. Your senior players and your leaders are driving things on, but I don’t think anyone wants things to stay this way in the long-term. The fans want to be in the grounds watching their favourite players and teams, and we want them there too.
“But as a human race now we’ve got a responsibility to make sure that we stop this thing, flatten the curve, and to do that I think everybody is going to have to go into lockdown for a little bit.”
O’Donovan says that although the Newcastle Jets players have not been tested for the virus, their temperatures are being monitored daily by the club’s medical staff. They have also been urged to report any symptoms, but no one has had to do so yet.
“We’ve just had to get on with it,” the 34-year-old striker from Cork says of playing games amid the pandemic. “We’re contracted to do a job so we have to do that until the situation changes. Everyone is healthy and we’re being checked every day so there’s been no real problems.
“As an organisation and a league, we’re obviously getting a little bit of abuse because we’ve played on when the whole world is shutting down around us.
“But as players I think we had a responsibility in that regard to play on for as long as we could in a safe environment, and it has been that. The second that it’s not, that’s when the league should be stopped. None of the lads here have shown any symptoms whatsoever and it seems to have been managed well.
“Everything seems normal at the moment because we’re still playing games, but I’ll probably realise in a couple of years when I look back what a strange experience it has all been.”
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Delighted for the lad! Would be great if in the future more young Irish players could come back for half a season play some LOI and go back with that bit of experience, seems to have done Eoghan no harm
Ambrose and boyata are both a liability,simunovic still an unknown quantity so I’d say it’s a toss up between o Connell and kolo to partner sviatchenko.would be great to see eoghan nail down a regular spot and continue his progress
That is brilliant news for Celtic and Ireland.
I watched the match – O’Connell showed great character throughout the game.
Can’t but read Rogers interview in his voice
Lads…. were ye watching a different game,,, he was 100% to blame for the goal…. lost his man completely
Blueman, you’re right, the goal was his fault but his head didn’t go down after it as most young players would and he went from strength to strength as the game went on.
It’s a zonal marking system, therefore no man to lose. Although he could have been better for it so could every other defender in the box and if Gordon stayed on his line maybe it wouldn’t have been a goal so 100% is very harsh on the the young fella. For a 20 y/o making his first European start in a notoriously tough place to go he done very little wrong and was one of Celtics better players. If you were watching the match and not just the goal you would have seen that!
O Connell did well all things taken into account,good result to take back to glasgow
Fact is the goal was his fault, you can dress it up anyway you want,… football at the highest level is a harsh game, and goals decide games, if he wasn’t a young irish player playing for celtic , people wouldn’t be raving about his performance and making excuses for his defending for the goal… think we need to take off the green white and gold glasses here…. and I did watch the full game
Blueman there’s nobody bigging him up.if simunovic can be kept fit and playing regularly,o connell won’t get much game time.at the moment he’s the pick of a bad bunch and just a potentially good defender
Blueman get a grip ffs. He’s 20 years of age, made one or two small mistakes in the biggest game of his career to date. Start blaming the young man now and giving him abuse about the goal could shatter his confidence, that’s why he’s being praised. Attitudes like yours is the reason a lot of talented youngsters don’t make it in the game!
Hahaha…. one or two small mistakes???… wouldn’t call losing his man for a goal in a champions lge game a small mistake. … its quite a significant one. If young pros can’t take a bit of criticism they may as well forget about a career in the game…. and I thought he he will let a bit of criticism on the 42 get to him… if he he was that type of character he would never have made it this far
You said people wouldn’t be raving about his performance if he wasn’t Irish or playing for Celtic. Well this is an Irish site and an article about Celtic, so obviously people who have a better understanding of the game than yourself (and people who really watched the game) think he merits praise for his performance! And if you’re a Celtic supporter you should be ashamed of yourself :-/
I am not a celtic fan … I am looking at the game… which I watched in full from an unbiased point of view… it’d obvious your biased towards him, , and if u can’t see he was at fault for that goal than it is you who doesn’t really know that much about football….