Player Care through the COVID 19 Pandemic
As we're approaching the 5-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, I wanted to do a series of posts looking back at how that unfolded within sports. At the time, I was Head of Player Care at West Ham and the operational lead within the 1st team - so a combination of myself, the medical team, the stadium ops team and the 1st Team Manager were dealing with the uncertainty, confusion and fear that was gripping the nation.
I will preface this with the fact I know we were in a privileged position compared to many in this pandemic, but my posts will reflect my experiences - some of this may bring back difficult memories for some and so here's your trigger warning too.
Hugo Scheckter was the Head of Player Care at West Ham United from March 2018 to December 2020.
The first mentions of COVID were early in 2020 - I remember it being something far away that we didn't really consider as a threat. David Moyes had joined, and we'd done a big family event for the staff & players in Central London to build morale in the team. Our first touch with Covid regulations was for Arsenal (A) on the 7th of March 2020 - where we had full stadiums, no masks or social distancing - but the ceremonial pre match handshake had been removed. My core memory of that game is a member of medical staff from our team sarcastically greeting their opposite number on the Arsenal staff with sarcastic elbow bumps - it felt all like it was a bit of a nothing and a bit silly.
Mikel Arteta & David Moyes embrace during Arsenal vs West Ham, shortly before Arteta tested positive for COVID - March 2020
That quickly changed when the Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta, tested positive for Covid. Suddenly, the player's informal group chat that I was a part of was filled with images from post-match of Mikel high fiving each of our players as we walked off the pitch, and a sharp change of mood to joking to 'we're all going to die' washed over some of the playing squad. We couldn't get Covid tests easily - this was before the Government's had the capacity and tests were reserved for those in hospitals - so there wasn't much we could do other than try calm people down, though not before one player did an interview slamming the government & football decision makers, which was less than helpful!
We then realised that all our coaching staff had joined Mikel for a post-match drink in his office at the Emirates - a long-held football custom. At the time, the guidance was for anyone in contact with a positive case to isolate at home for 14 days. We had Wolves at home on Saturday, 2 days later, with nobody to coach the team.
The U23s manager was put on standby but it was hard to track what was going on - the Premier League released a statement saying the games would be on that weekend - but we'd already cancelled training on the Thursday. Players drove into the stadium where we were training only for us to tell them to stay in their cars before driving home.
The coaching staff understandably weren’t happy with being taken out of coaching the game – at the time we had 9 games left of the Premier League season and were level on points with relegation – and all sorts of creative discussions were discussed, including them coaching from their cars in the large tunnels at the London Stadium.
Once training was cancelled, I stayed at the stadium for meetings with the SLT from the stadium – we discussed plans for full stadiums, empty stadiums – and everywhere in between. Events were starting to fall around Europe but nothing much had moved in England, so we assumed the game was going ahead. My main concern at this point was making sure player tickets were in the retained allocation if we ended up in a socially distanced fan game! There still was no real feeling that the country would go into lockdown.
The next day, Friday 13th March, football was finally cancelled. There was a lot of chat on the Player Care group chat I’d set up a few years back on how different teams were doing things – we were all in the dark and reacting. “Lads have been given 2 weeks off, everyone is f*cking buzzing” was the reply from one club! The virus really hadn’t hit yet in terms of seriousness – the original plan was to shut down for 3 weeks or so and then come back. Working with the medical team and the fitness coaches, we were trying to keep the players ready for an ever-moving deadline of when the league could restart. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but it was the first time that we had no idea when we would play again. I remember getting a call from the PFA, asking if I’d got the ballots done for ‘Player of the Year’ - I couldn’t have rolled my eyes any harder…
The first week was an odd time – work was cancelled but the country was still open. I remember rumours of a 2-week lockdown coming and I went to Soho in Central London the day or two before – half the venues were shut already; half were full of people trying to get a final pint in before what came. We kept training between the 13th and the full government shut down, with reduced staff on site and all non-essential activity cancelled.
British PM Boris Johnson speaks to the country on 23rd March 2020 to announce a full lockdown.
Then on the evening of 23rd March 2020 – our PM Boris Johnson addressed the nation announcing a full and total lockdown. Before he’d even finished, we were on a group call at work working out the messaging to players and staff. Ultimately, we had as much information as the general public, but the feeling was that this was short term. We agreed the rules we’d work to as a club – Safety first but keep everyone working hard and be ready to hit the ground running as & when the league resumed. We were told we’d get 3 weeks’ notice to our first game.
All our roles shifted – I became much more operational and internal comms, my two Player Care team members dealt much more with the individual welfare issues of the players & families from home. The grounds team became an essential operational force, delivering gym equipment to homes. The club’s doctors were tracking every piece of guidance and reassuring people, the fitness coaches worked to deliver remote sessions for the first time. The chefs helped sourcing groceries and deliveries – and the kit staff trained in sanitising equipment and keeping us all safe. Everyone stepped up – amongst their own uncertainties and family struggles – and I’ve never been as proud to be a part of a club as I was in that month.
West Ham player Albi Ajeti shares his view of the zoom sessions with his social media followers
We tried to keep Players engaged through daily zooms – sometimes they would be yoga or workouts (which I’d just watch and admin the tech, rather than embarrass myself!), sometimes less formal – we joined in the keepy-uppy challenges on social media – I even did a cooking Instagram live which got over 1,000 viewers at one point – it was light hearted, but seemed to help. We sent out a list of online learning courses for players to keep their minds engaged too – we had one do a marketing course; another do a property development course – and a few start languages too – something we’d encouraged them to do before and so were delighted they took it up. We had a good partners community and so the Player Care team would find home schooling tips, resources and other help to send out, and quickly they started to support each other too.
We had some players who really struggled – there was one who was living in his flat alone, his family were abroad, and his country had been hit hard – he was desperate to go back to see his father who was ill, but we just couldn’t let him. Even if he got there and break the law, he likely wouldn’t be able to get back, even with private planes – so he was forced to stay put. Making those calls was really hard – thankfully his father pulled through in the end, but it felt very difficult to be making those decisions. Some struggled with childcare, with the lack of routine, with the lack of timelines, with the ever-changing detail – but the weather was good, and it was new, for a while.
However, the good will started to erode. We weren’t letting players leave the country – we felt that our precarious league position meant we couldn’t afford to have players be stuck in self-isolation if the league returned – whereas other clubs let them go. That was tough but it was the right decision. My title of “Player Care” seemed to never be less apt in that period – but in reality, we were all just trying to hold it together. We knew the job losses that would come if we got relegated – and we knew that we had to hit the ground running at the restart. My team were frustrated that they were working from home when I was in - it was tough, as I was one of the few ‘non football’ people in so was covering a number of jobs, whilst trying to support my team at home who would get delegated fairly thankless tasks without human interaction. A kilo of Pick & Mix sweets was quickly dispatched to them but not sure how much it helped morale - though I enjoyed mine!
The public atmosphere was strange too – we had footballers clubbing together to raise funds for NHS, in response to the Health Secretary calling on footballers “to cut their salary in order to fund the NHS”, which was a bizarre thing to call for as privately they were telling us to get back to playing ASAP to give the public something to look forward to. Each club was seemingly trying to out PR each other – one club would announce that it was furloughing staff, or its players would defer wages only for the rest to announce they’d never do that.
I returned home to my family’s house – my parents were farmers and so we had space, and it beat my London flat and worked from there. One rare positive was that I got to be home for my mum’s 60th birthday – an occasion I almost certainly would have missed had the season still been going. I arranged for a virtual party for her, with friends across the globe sending in video messages – a memory I wouldn’t trade for anything.
Part of the difficulties we had with the messaging was the club’s geography – at one point, the country moved to tiered restrictions based on location – and we kept having it where our players living in Canary Wharf or Wapping had stricter restrictions than those living in Essex – it was a nightmare to track, keep people informed and be correct. I remember one time, a senior coach came to me and said “Christ, this is totally the opposite advice you gave us last week, can you make up your mind?!”out of frustration. I had to remind him it wasn’t me changing the rules, but the government – and I was just relaying the information.
The Prenetics testing station at Rush Green’s Training Ground - it started with testing in vehicles and moved to pedestrian only as time went on.
As we got nearer to the restart of the season, the Premier League told us about the testing plan they had for us to get back to safe conditions. Fair play to the Premier League, who had seconded staff from across the organisation to deal with the clubs and Prenetics, the testing partner. We had a little hut set up in the car park and I was ‘volunteered’ to run testing. I’m glad I did – as it was chaos trying to manage it – but it became about 50% of my job once we were back training. We initially had 35 people we could get tested which would be then classed as ‘relevant’ persons – and everyone else was ‘non relevant’. This was a terrible choice of terminology, as we had to tell several players and staff they were deemed to be ‘non relevant’ – you can imagine how that went down. The tests were tough to watch – we had a lovely nurse in Victoria and site manager in Donald who made it as easy as possible, but having to watch your colleagues gag and choke twice a week as long q tips were inserted into them constantly was tough. Some people were better than others and I really felt for the handful who really hated the process. I think I must have been swabbed over 100 times by the time I left the club – my nose is definitely wider than it was before Covid!
The way the process was, we had to work out who would be needed 48 hours before – so it meant more planning with the coaches and medical team to work out which academy players or staff may be needed – and often going short if we didn’t plan it right. A quirk of the system meant that once tested, people could stay in the bubble – but if they missed their test, they were out until the next testing zone. We had to plan the testing to get the results during training – we had one game- Hull at home in the cup- where David Moyes and two starting players all got their positive results back 30 seconds before going out to warmups and we had to deal with all of that. It wasn’t great planning – but we never knew how long the results would take. Sometimes it would be a few hours, but it could be up to 30. We ended up having spare vehicles around a lot of the time to quickly isolate people and take them home if any issues.
We were constantly trying to second guess other teams and what they were doing – we always wanted to be the most ready coming into Project Restart – and we safely pushed the rules a few times. We had a great stadium operations team who brought in a Covid consultant and so we make sensible risk assessments while also prioritising performance – and I think it showed – we ended up easily avoiding relegation, with some great results including a 3-2 win over Chelsea, a point at Old Trafford and a 4-0 win over Norwich. I remember Mourinho at Tottenham training in a park, which we weren’t supposed to do – then prompting us to look at how we could legally ‘take our daily exercise in the same place at the same time’. We didn’t do that in the end!
What was surprised me was how different each of the teams approached COVID – some had very conservative approaches, some had more relaxed approaches and I think those that were successful were those that balanced it out. There were constant tweaks and pressure from the clubs to make changes and I felt for those at the Premier League making the rules. We had some quirks which were tough – for example, non-selected players on a match day were banned from the red zone – so often we’d travel with 20 or 21 players (because of the risk of infections) and then as we got to the game, 2-3 players would have their passes deactivated and have to be escorted away from the team, only to come back on the same bus after the game. It was hard to get it right and we did our best. I have a photo framed in my office of our 3-2 comeback win – Andrey Yarmolenko scored a late winner and we’re all celebrating on the bench and trying to maintain social distancing at the same time, all in front of an empty stadium! I also started doing the subs board at games - the rules were we couldn’t have physical contact with the 4th official and I was nominated to do the subs board - it’s a lot heavier than it looks! It also lead to my bizarre featuring on MOTD2 when Issa Diop lost his wedding ring and a mad search ensued… a story for another blog maybe!
Andrey Yarmolenko scores a late winner against Chelsea (H) in 3-2 win during ‘Project Restart’ and celebrates in front of a socially distanced bench.
The end of the season was another setback – at this point, the restrictions on a full lockdown had lifted but we had different level countries – and those on the red list meant people had to self-isolate for 14 days on returning. We were given 2 weeks off ahead of the new season, and on the day before our final game at home to Villa, the government put Spain on the red list. We had a good contingent of Spanish players and so many had been desperate to get home and see their families – there were genuine tears at the prematch meal when it looked like they wouldn’t be able to go home and get back in time for preseason. We tried to organise for them to meet their families in safe 3rd countries (you could meet someone from Spain in Switzerland and not have to isolate for example), but it wasn’t ideal. In the end, we took the approach of telling them the rules and then ‘not asking’ for more details – I don’t know if they did or didn’t go home, but I wouldn’t blame them either way.
I’d usually have 3-4 weeks off between seasons, and after a 14-month season, to only have 2 weeks off was brutal personally – it wasn’t anyone’s fault, but it was what it was. I couldn’t really leave the country and so did a staycation in England – but my team and I were constantly having to track which countries were going on the list. A few days before we were due to report, we received wind that France was going on the red list, and we had 12 hours to get the French players out. A first world problem, but all the commercial flights were booked and the charter flights impossible to find, we ended up having to get them to drive urgently with their families to reach the border before midnight hit. In hindsight, it all seems crazy, but it was the reality we were living in.
Building team morale in a bubble with competitive intrasquad competitions
As preseason started, we had all sorts of odd technology being proposed to us by the community. I remember being shown a ‘fogging machine’ that looked like an airport security scanner but that would puff air on you as you walked through. It felt like everyone was trying to make a quick buck and shortcut our way out of pandemic. We were getting used to the realities of the situation by now – out was Tiger King, Banana bread baking and zoom yoga, back in were player appearances, travel restrictions and the cold winter setting in.
The balance between the stadium staff and the training ground staff was strained - and as the traditional link between the two, I began to get more and more frustrated. I felt for the staff there, they had fans who didn’t have anything to watch, no tickets to sell, no activations for sponsors - but I remember a particularly tense conversation over the time it was taking to get a signed shirt turned around from a well meaning member of the partnership team, but at times it felt like all the commercial focused departments were just coming up with ideas for me to do. I was grabbing selfie messages for sponsors and season ticket holders inbetween covid swabs, we had to disinfect the pen each time a player signed a shirt which meant they took so much longer. When we did finally get back to in person player appearances, we had a 15 min rule with testing before hand - and we still had a photographer who was shooting content with our entire back 4 suddenly test postive 3 mins before the shoot and a mini meltdown ensuing!
Preseason training in a bubble, St Andrews, 2020
The government messaging was confusing and frustrating – at the same time as Spanish players were blocked from returning home, the government was pushing ‘Eat out to help out’, a subsidy programme designed to get people to go back to restaurants. Footballers were still getting criticized by the government – they were able to change the rules to allow the footballers to play more games but couldn’t allow them to have a proper break. First world problems, sure, but still I think there was substantial resentment from the footballing community to the government.
I came back for preseason still totally burnt out. The first 6 months of the pandemic had been really tough – from the days stood in the sun organising testing, to the constant battles of rules vs reality – I was pretty much done mentally. We organised a great preseason tour to St Andrews in Scotland – somewhere out the way, where we could separate from the public and train well, but also enjoy the time away. I remember hosting a ‘drag’ karaoke night one evening as part of the entertainment – a night which has remained in West Ham internal folklore! We were limited to what we could do but wanted everyone to work hard and build that team spirit too – and we really achieved that.
Last day at West Ham - 24th December 2020
However, a regular season is taxing enough, but an elongated season with no real break finished me off. Following an internal clash with senior leadership, I handed in my 3 months’ notice and started to prepare for life after – The Player Care Group. I’d done my best but following 2.5 years of ups and downs, I wasn’t the right person to lead the department anymore. You need to be 100% committed and motivated and I wasn’t any more. I wanted the club to push forward, and I couldn’t deliver that anymore when I wasn’t operating at my best.
One challenge we did have before I left was, we had 1 game with fans – Manchester United at home. It was the first game to have fans back – 2,000 in total (out of about 60,000 seats) in December 2020. It was one of those time I look back and I got it wrong – I remember being in meeting after meeting about what fans would have to do to get in the game. They needed a full questionnaire, covid passport, proof of a negative test etc – was going to be chaos, especially with many of our families not speaking English. We had a handful of tickets each for players families – I stood up in front of the team and said that probably it would be easier if they didn't come. It’s the one-time David Moyes was genuinely furious with me – and he was right. It was so important for the players to have their loved ones there - and any logistical issues were for me and my team to sort out. I took the beating, went back in and changed my tune pretty quickly. We got through it, had a great experience despite losing – and shortly after the games were closed again to fans due to increased covid numbers.
If I took one thing from that period, it's that crisis reveals character. You see the best and worst in people, but the teams that succeed are the ones who rally behind a shared goal. Planning is important, but the reality is, in moments of real uncertainty, adaptability is everything. Sometimes, you can have the best-laid plans, but the job is about reacting well, thinking on your feet, and keeping people together when everything feels like it’s falling apart. Football has always been unpredictable, but COVID took that to another level – and those who handled it best weren’t the ones with the perfect strategy, but the ones who could pivot when strategy became irrelevant. We did that at West Ham - we stayed up comfortably, kept everyone safe - and started the next season absolutely flying.
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