COVID-19 lockdown restrictions

COVID-19 lockdown restrictions are presented as a force that reorganized football rather than simply stopping it. Their most concrete effect appears at a ground straddling the England–Wales border, where the pitch and most of the stadium lie in Wales while a person standing nearby may be in England. Because the restrictions governed movement between the two countries, ordinary attendance became a matter of jurisdiction, geography, and public policy.

Border Geography and Unequal Access

The border is described as running directly across the stadium area, producing an arrangement that initially seems absurd to Max Best. Mike Dean explains that the pitch and most of the stadium are in Wales, but that the people speaking with him are in England. The pandemic turned this unusual geography into a practical problem: fans could not attend matches because lockdown restrictions prevented people from travelling from England into Wales. The stadium therefore became a visible example of how a line on a map could determine who was allowed to experience football in person.

The restrictions also revealed that football was not governed uniformly at every level. When Max Best asks whether fans had been present during lockdown, the answer distinguishes non-league football from the more restricted parts of the game: non-league was less restricted. The contrast complicates any simple picture of a single national football response. Access depended not only on the existence of restrictions but also on the level and institutional setting of the competition.

Football, Disability, and the Meaning of a Game

The pandemic restrictions form part of a wider examination of who gets access to football and under what conditions. At a Para football match, both teams include partially sighted players, players with hearing impairments, players with cerebral palsy, and players with Down’s Syndrome. The format is called pan-disability football, and Terry explains that its value lies partly in making competitive games possible: if players were limited to teams consisting only of people with exactly the same disability, far fewer fixtures could be arranged. Games, in this account, are the pathway to growth, and players who excel may progress to disability-specific teams.

That logic places the restrictions in sharper relief. A rule that prevents spectators from crossing a national border and an assumption that some players’ football is somehow less authentic both regulate participation, although they do so in different ways. When Max Best asks what should be said to anyone claiming that pan-disability football is not real football, Terry redirects the judgment to the players themselves. They experience the match as real: they show emotion, commit to tackles, work for one another, and try to move up the pitch. The scene treats football as a social practice sustained by participation, not as an activity whose legitimacy is granted only by conventional institutions.

Max Best’s Recognition of Internalized Exclusion

The restrictions are not only external background; they help frame Max Best’s realization that exclusion can be built into his own way of seeing. He remembers that, before understanding the match, school friends had watched a similar game in a sports hall, laughed at it, and agreed that it was not football. The memory forces him to confront the cruelty of turning disabled people’s attempt to play a loved sport into a spectacle for mockery.

This recognition changes his interpretation of the curse. Max Best concludes that it is influenced by his own football opinions as much as it influences him. Its choices, including the football figures it invokes, the renaming of the Tommy Tactics achievement, and the shifting prices of its perks, reflect his assumptions and desires. When the curse dismisses disabled football as unreal, it is therefore expressing a prejudice that Max Best himself has supplied. COVID-19 lockdown restrictions belong to the same network of questions: who may enter, who may watch, which institutions receive exceptions, and whose participation is treated as legitimate.

Institutional Consequences and Professional Entry

The pandemic’s effect on access is echoed by the formal barriers Max Best encounters as he tries to enter football professionally. Agents and scouts are expected to obtain tickets by contacting clubs rather than paying ordinary admission, showing that professional access depends on recognized status and relationships. Max Best initially pays full price to attend games and cannot even afford a three-pound student beer after doing so, until Jackie explains the informal procedure that distinguishes insiders from spectators.

Other institutions impose more explicit requirements. During his attempt to formalize his role, Max Best realizes that he has neither a Football Association Number nor the required licence. Statto tells him that the number is needed immediately or the Football Association will intervene. Mike Dean later offers a gradual route into Chester FC: Max Best cannot be appointed Director of Football without experience, but he may expand his scouting duties and help with youth recruitment while a role is created around the overlap between his skills and the club’s needs. These episodes show a common structure across football: rules and credentials determine access, while practical arrangements sometimes create narrower paths through the barriers.

Lasting Significance

COVID-19 lockdown restrictions make football’s dependence on movement, institutions, and shared spaces unmistakable. At the England–Wales ground, they convert a border into a barrier to attendance; in non-league football, their uneven application leaves room for matches that might otherwise have disappeared. Set beside pan-disability football, the restrictions also support the book’s broader argument that the game is defined by the opportunities made available to players and communities. Football becomes most revealing when its boundaries are tested—by a national border, by disability, by professional licensing, or by Max Best’s own inherited assumptions—and when those boundaries are shown to be constructed rather than natural.