THE soon-to-start Jamaica Premier League will be like none anyone in Jamaica would have ever experienced as it will be the first played in a pandemic and under a plethora of protocols that will include no home games, no fans, playing in a bubble, and a short season of just one round before the start of the play-offs.

Club football in Jamaica was the first team sport allowed to restart after the shutdown last year following the discovery on the island of the first few cases of the novel coronavirus, and was only allowed after the Government was reasonably satisfied that the season could go ahead without endangering the health of those taking part, as well as their families.

One man has previously experienced similar conditions, however — Mount Pleasant Football Academy’s Technical Director Walter “Wally” Downes in one of his stints in India — and he says the teams will be in for a big adjustment to the conditions under which they are used to playing.

The clubs have been given a wide range of protocols under which the games and training will be allowed, including transportation and even living conditions.

Additionally, because of strict curfew measures put in place by the Government, games will be played in the mornings on Sundays to ensure the 2:00 pm curfew is upheld.

Downes told the Jamaica Observer last week that the absence of fans will have a massive impact on performance. “I have had some experience like this when I coached in India and there with no fans, the difficulty is how you cope with the first goal,” he said.

“If the first goal goes against you, there isn’t a backlash of fans initially cheering to get you going — it’s about the team having the inner strength to want to come back on their own accord,” he explained. “And certainly any team goes two goals down, that is a big test as well; if you go 2-0 down at home the fans obviously will barrack you a little bit,” he said.

Downes, who also has an extensive coaching record in England, added, “If you start playing well and you get the next goal then there is some momentum, and then the fourth goal in that game will be critical. You get it to 2-2, whichever club you are at, the fans will have played a massive part of it and they can get you over the line, so it’s a test for the players.”

It tests the players’ strength of character, he stressed. “So if they let a goal in, their heads don’t go down. And if they go two down, even more so that is when the team needs to pull together and stop the game fizzing out; that was the problem in India. If the game got to 2-0 there was no atmosphere, no drive from the fans, and the games tended to peter out quite comfortably.”

It was not just in India where that happened, he pointed out. “I noticed with the Premier League in England this year as well, when games got to 2-0 not many teams came back from that scenario because there were no fans in the stadium, and it became more of a training game. It’s very difficult, no matter who you are, to create an atmosphere and make an atmosphere when there isn’t one there. It’s synthetic and not real, and it’s difficult to make it happen.”