Derry City manager believes League of Ireland shutdown is the sensible approach amid coronavirus crisis

League of Ireland fixtures are set to go ahead as planned this weekend with Derry City hosting Sligo Rovers at Brandywell Stadium on Friday night but with football matches across Europe either being played behind closed doors or being postponed, it's expected the domestic game will experience a similar shutdown imminently.

Indeed, the prospect of playing behind closed doors or postponing League of Ireland matches is becoming increasingly likely with the UK's government scheduled to meet this morning (Thursday) with the intention of making dramatic changes to its action plan to deal with the pandemic.

The FAI met with the National League Executive Committee and the Professional Footballer's Association of Ireland yesterday to discuss the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the domestic game and established a steering group to monitor developments on a daily basis. No decision to cancel games has been made yet but the FAI will continue to take its lead from the Department of Health and will seek the assistance of the Irish government and UEFA to help clubs through the expected crisis period.

An FAI spokesman said after yesterday's meeting: “Today’s meeting was a productive one and allowed us all to focus on the situation facing our National League clubs and players. We discussed at length our serious concerns around Covid-19 and began to develop a contingency plan to help our clubs during this potentially difficult time.

“We are currently gathering all financial data and working with the clubs and the players on the financial implications they face. Once we have a true understanding of this, we will be approaching Government and UEFA on behalf of the clubs to seek their support.”

However, given the potential catastrophic financial ramifications for League of Ireland clubs, if it comes down to a choice between games being played behind closed doors or a league suspension, Derry City boss, Devine is very much in favour of the latter.

“The one thing that we have in our league is time to play with,” he explained. “We shut down on the last week of October but maybe we don't have to do that this year.

"The one thing I am concerned about is the welfare of the clubs. It's fine whenever you have multi-million pound TV deals and sponsorship deals. We need the revenue of our support and every club in Ireland does.

"My worry is first and foremost the health of the players and the health of the supporters and secondly that we are sustainable to have a professional football club.

“If it means postponing for a few weeks and looking after the safety of our players and fans, then so be it. For me, the safe option is to restrict but at the same time we know that we have a lot of football to be played this season and we have got to look at it that way and not panic.”

In the meantime, the FAI have issued a number of new match day guidelines and preventative measures for clubs, including that goal celebrations should be minimised, there should be no sharing of water bottles and towels and no holding hands of mascots.

Clubs are also taking steps to maximise supporter health and safety ahead of this weekend’s round of games.