Sheffield Steelers’ players scramble for home as coronavirus triggers Elite League shutdown

Friday saw Elite League bosses take the unprecedented step to cancel the rest of the 2019-20 season due to growing concerns over the coronavirus.

It came on the same day as Premier League and EFL football authorities postponed their seasons until early next month, while a host of other sports and specific events – including the Wales-Scotland Six Nations encounter – were also cancelled.

The Steelers, who were sitting second in the regular season standings when the plug was pulled and last Sunday won the Challenge Cup for the first time in 17 years, have used a truly multi-national roster under head coach Aaron Fox.

Three Czech-born players – goaltender Tomas Duba and defencemen Josef Hrabal and Marek Troncinsky – are keen to get home before their homeland closes its borders at midnight on Sunday.

The Steelers also have two American-based players in their squad, in centre Michael Davies and No 2 goalie Jeremy Brodeur who are looking to get home while flights from the UK are still allowed to land in the USA.

The majority of the Steelers’ foreign contingent, though, are Canadians, with flights home being limited to just a number of airports in a bid by the government there to improve the screening of travellers going into the country.

The likelihood of increased travel restrictions being imposed by many countries over the coming days and weeks made for an extremely busy day for the Steelers as they were forced to try and book their players out on flights as soon as possible, with the pre-booked ones for the middle of April after the scheduled play-off finals weekend having to be cancelled.

Fox said the right decision had been taken by league bosses to cancel the season and the main concern was ensuring the club’s players were quickly back home with their families.

“Obviously, as people in our position, you want to be able finish out the year and play for those other trophies,” said Fox. “But from a health and family perspective it is definitely the right thing to do.

“Everyone else has made this decision well before us, so we are following a line in doing what is best for everybody.

“We’re trying to get them out as soon as possible. There are so many travel restrictions right now from other countries that we need to get them home and into their own environment with their own families and get safe.

“The Czech Republic are closing their borders on Sunday to Europeans so I know those guys are trying to get out of here as soon as possible, the Canadians have a self-imposed self-isolation for 14 days and they don’t want that to change.

“Trump has closed the borders to all the EU countries other than the UK, so they want to get out of here quickly in case that changes.

“Nobody wants to get stuck here right now, with having family back home, so we’re scrambling to get guys on flights. The organisation has done an unbelievable job on that side already, jumping on and helping out to make sure guys can get home.”

Steelers’ owner Tony Smith, who is also EIHL chairman, said the final straw for the league came after two teams reported having players in self-isolation on Friday morning.

“We can’t take risks with spectators’ health and certainly that of the players as well – we all felt as owners of the league that it was the right thing to do,” said Smith, who informed the Steelers’ player of the decision in the middle of their practise session ahead of tonight’s scheduled home match against Manchester Storm.

“We cut the training short, we had a half-hour meeting in the dressing room. The players all respected the fact that we’d done the right thing – they were brilliant.

“We’ll try to get the guys out as soon as we possibly can, certainly over the next 24-48 hours.”