St Johnstone’s new coronavirus testing machine is expected to arrive from Korea very soon.
The Perth club’s head of football operations Kirsten Robertson has confirmed that the equipment is on its way to McDiarmid Park and a timetable to get pre-season training underway will fall into place after that.
Premiership clubs are allowed to start the first phase of non-contact work later this week but Saints don’t anticipate having their players back on a football field that quickly.
Making sure they feel comfortable in their new environment is the priority and no short-cuts will be taken.
In the grand scheme of things, a couple of extra days won’t make a difference.
“I’ve spent a huge amount of time on this and had more conversations with medics and experts than I ever possibly considered,” said Robertson.
“The restrictions ease this week and we’ve got a testing hub en route from Korea. It was organised by the SFA and we take it over for the implementation stage.
“We’re going to err on the side of caution. We want to make sure that our plan works in practice as well as in theory.
“No doubt there will have to be changes made as we go on.
“We’ll be testing the coaches first, then the players and they’ll all come back and do it again. Then reduced training will start in pods – a maximum of five, with support staff in every pod.
“How long that stage lasts will be guided by government policy as well as SFA medical policy.”
She added: “The most important thing we can stress is that the players and the staff have to feel comfortable with it.
“We’re not forcing anyone to come in who has any concerns. We’d far rather take our time, albeit we do potentially have a limited time-frame to stick to. We have to make sure we have the guidelines and procedures in place to keep everybody safe.
“So potentially testing will start at some point next week but training won’t – it will be a few days down the line after that.
“The players won’t a sense of normality but this is going to be a very different pre-season. It will be step by step. There will be no double sessions.
“The players will come in with their own kit, their own water, their own hand-sanitizer. They won’t get access to the stadium apart from the testing area, which will be carefully and clinically monitored.”
It won’t be until August at the earliest that Premiership football will return behind closed-doors.
Live streaming of top flight matches will be fans’ new match-day experience until they are allowed back into grounds. And Saints are finalising the details of their virtual season ticket package.
“The virtual season ticket will apply to home matches,” said Robertson. “But not if Sky were broadcasting it live.
“Our current system for international viewers will remain exactly as it is. We’re working on a second site for our season tickets, which is linked.
“We need to speak to Stream Digital to put that in place.
“We’ve got the systems already in place. Implementing it should be relatively easy.
“It’s important for us to know exactly what we’re selling before we start putting it online.
“We’re working on the back end of the season tickets at the moment. We’re hopeful that in around seven to 10 days the system will be up and running.
“It’s not that we’ve been slow with these things, necessarily. We’ve been making a lot of changes to make sure we are future-proofed in many regards. I don’t think we’ve used online systems as much as we could have previously.
“Hopefully it won’t take much longer.”
Other clubs started selling traditional season tickets before there was clarity over what the 2020/21 Premiership season would look like.
Saints chairman Steve Brown is glad that they took the decision to bide their time.
“You really have to understand what you’re selling,” he pointed out. “You need to know what’s on the tin – which is still hard to say.
“I certainly wasn’t selling something we couldn’t deliver. I just don’t think that’s right.
“We’re grateful to Sky for lifting the broadcast exclusivity because it gives every club an opportunity.”
