The Government announcement that could impact the start of the 2020-21 National League season and Hartlepool United fans returning to Victoria Park

Hartlepool United are set to start the 2020-21 season at home to Aldershot Town at Victoria Park on October 3 in front of a reduced capacity crowd.

Due to social distancing restrictions, Pools made just 1,500 season tickets available for the upcoming campaign, all of which have been snapped up by supporters.

Supporters were permitted to return to sports stadia providing social distancing measures could be observed from October 1.

However, following the government’s announcement on Wednesday, sport pilot events in England scheduled for the rest of September will now be limited to 1,000 spectators.

This includes the FA Trophy final due to be played at Wembley Stadium – initially in front of 10,000 spectators.

The change will come into effect from Friday and the government will also make a decision on whether fans can return to sports stadia socially distanced on October 1.

But it will not impact Pools’ pre-season friendly at Morpeth on Friday evening (7pm kick-off).

It comes as the government moved to ban gatherings of more than six people in England from Monday in response to a rise in Covid-19 cases to levels last seen during the national lockdown.

Oliver Dowden, the secretary of state for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said: “In light of increasing transmission rates, the government is reviewing the proposed sports and business events pilots ahead of the 1 October and we will, unfortunately, need to scale some back.

“We know fans and audiences are eager to return, and jobs depend on this too, so work continues around the clock on the moonshot project with the ambition of having audiences back much closer to normal by Christmas, if safe to do so.”

While National League matches will still be allowed to proceed, the return of fans is essential to non-league clubs who have gone six months without any matchday revenue.

Speaking of the proposed changes, Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated at a Downing Street news conference: “That doesn’t mean we are going to scrap the programme entirely, we are just going to have to review it and abridge it.”

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