After the sudden shut down of nearly all sporting events globally in mid-March due to the COVD-19 pandemic, and the subsequent postponement and cancellation of others, including the Olympic Games, there are signs that live sports will be back soon.

At least one European league, the German Bundesliga, as well as the Costa Rican Premier League, have restarted, and have been played before empty stadia, while plans are well advanced for the restart of the National Basketball Association (NBA), under similar circumstances, soon.

The English Premier League, which is popular among Jamaican football fans, is set to restart next week, as well as several others in Europe, and later this year, there are plans for the playing of the National Football League (NFL) and college football.

While we read and hear of plans by these sports administrators, there is a deafening silence here in Jamaica, and just one organisation— the Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA)— has made any announcements of plans post- COVID-19.

ISSA has had consultations with their stakeholders about the possibility of staging the schoolboys’ football season, or a semblance of such, later this year.

Is it too much to ask the same of the Jamaica Football Federation, the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) , Jamaica Basketball Association, Netball Jamaica and others what are their plans when the lockdown is lifted completely or lifted sufficiently to allow sports to resume?

With its controversial plans to reopen the tourism sector next week, the Government has warned Jamaicans that they must learn to live with the coronavirus in the immediate and near future. It appears, however, that sports administrators are prepared to sit back and waste a good opportunity.

With more than two months being idle, it was expected that the administrators would have been using the time to see how they can improve their products, and how best they could be ready to grab the attention of the sports public when the country return to some semblance of normalcy.

Sports will play a big part in the return to normalcy, but the administrators cannot afford to just sit idly by and allow the opportunity to pass.

After having sports taken away so suddenly, fans will be hungry for action, and if the administrators fiddle and allow the opportunity to slip by, they stand the chance of losing that set of fans who are not the ‘die-hards’ as they will move on to something else, maybe sports on television or the Internet.

The JAAA has a wonderful chance to benefit by staging a series of all-comers meets in July, given there is no need for a National Championships.

The World Athletics (formerly the IAAF) has announced a global calendar starting in August, and in the absence of the Olympic Games or any other major international championships, the Diamond League circuit will be the highlight of the season for track and field athletics.

These meets would play a big part in helping the Jamaica- based athletes to prepare for the Diamond League or the other meets that will be held in the USA and in Europe, for those who will dare to take on air travel so soon after the pandemic.

JAAA-organised meets could also assist those who have no plans to travel outside of the country, as the events will play a key role in maintaining a level of fitness that could help athletes come next year when the Olympics are set to be held in Tokyo.

Organisers of various sports including football, basketball, netball, cricket must start, if they have not been doing so already, to think of how to re-engage their fans.

Most of the athletes would have lost match fitness, so rushing back into regulation events might not be the best thing to do given the risk of serious injuries, but rally-type events, played on smaller fields/courts with unlimited changes, could be an option in the immediate future.

I believe that when we do get back to hosting live sporting events, it might be good if the administrators were to think about limited crowds where social distancing can be observed, rather than no crowds.

That might be difficult to achieve, especially if schoolboys’ football is the first event out of the gate, but it would be worth considering.