Buying testing kits a ‘non-starter’ for lower league clubs, says top manager

Aberdeen are committed to getting a Covid-19 testing machine but lower-league clubs have been told the costs of the screening regime will be prohibitive.

Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack. Picture: Ross MacDonald / SNS

Celtic and Ross County have bought their own testing kits – which are said to cost between £25,000 and £35,000 plus about £50 per test on top of that.

But other Premiership clubs are still getting to grips with the costs ahead of their return to training, which is allowed from 11 June.

“We are still pinning down the exact costs associated with this but we have budgeted for it and we have been conservative,” said Dave Cormack, the Aberdeen chairman, pictured. “But there are 50-100 pages of guidelines that have been put together on exactly what each club will do and we will follow this to the letter of the law.

“At this stage we are finalising how we will do the testing but certainly our plan is to have one of those testing units there so that we can do it on site.”

The SPFL is still hoping to secure a donation from Edinburgh-based investment manager James Anderson to help all clubs through the pandemic but Stoke City boss Michael O’Neill believes a constant testing regime would be “nigh on impossible” for part-time Scottish clubs.

The former Brechin manager told the BBC’s Scottish Football Podcast: “I don’t mean to be harsh, but for me, it’s a non-starter. The cost of testing we are doing twice a week at Stoke is approaching five figures. That amounts to probably about 50 per cent of a lot of clubs’ weekly budget in the Premiership.

“I think it’s going to be extremely difficult, or nigh on impossible, for clubs to do this.

“In week one, we were bringing players in groups of five, half an hour apart, we were doing a 75-minute session that was taking us four and a half hours to get through it. I just can’t see, having been manager of Brechin, that a club at that level could do it. The only way to do it is not as stringently, which obviously increases the risk.”