Leeds Rhinos chief executive Gary Hetherington has spoken out about the dangers of this season and how 2021 is proof that “the game is managing a very difficult situation as best it can.”
Hetherington believes that the continuing uncertainty over the pandemic has been at fault for dwindling crowds despite the opening up of crowds without any restrictions.
“I think there’s still a lot of people who are being extremely cautious and are not returning to live events at this moment in time,” Hetherington told the Yorkshire Evening Post.
“We have a lot of evidence of that, I have had a lot of people telling me they are probably going to leave it until next season before they come back.”
The Leeds CEO isn’t surprised that people are staying away and that it will be next season when things will actually start to go back to being “normal”.
He added: “This has been yet another very disrupted season for Super League.
“We had a shocking disruption in 2020 and hoped we’d be clear of that this year, but that’s not been the case.
“We’ve not been able to complete every fixture, the league table is based on win percentage and some clubs have been severely affected by Covid, much more than others.
“I think the game is managing a very difficult situation as best it can.”
“It’s going to be 2022 before we get back to what was normal.”
