Dons carried out nearly nearly 1,600 coronavirus tests last season

MK Dons registered just two positive coronavirus tests out of nearly 1,600 last season.

Strict protocols were put in place at Stadium MK to prevent any outbreak of Covid-19 at the club, and they managed to navigate the season without causing a game to be postponed. Outbreaks at Rochdale and Lincoln City though did impact their fixture list though, while former defender George Williams, assistant manager Luke Williams, goalkeeper coach Dean Thornton and Sporting Director Liam Sweeting had to self-isolate following track and trace notifications.

Though pressure to test dropped in the middle of the season, Dons' first team players and staff were tested twice a week in the latter stages of the campaign.

Performance Director Simon Crampton, who was Head of Sports Science and Medicine last season, was a key figure in Dons' operational methods to stop the spread of the virus at the club. He confirmed there were two positive tests in almost 1,600 carried out by the club, and neither were involved with the first team at the time meaning it had little impact on the squad.

He explained: "The testing came in, and we had to do PCR testing, lateral flow was only just coming about. We did just under 1,600 tests across the first team alone. I think we had two positive tests, and the occurred outside the football environment, and when the players hadn't been training so we didn't have to isolate anyone else.

"We'd have GPS reports from the trackers, which would log any time a player went within two metres of another, so should we get an outbreak we knew who we'd need to isolate.

"Looking across football, the number of positive cases against the number of tests the EFL was documenting, it was really low. The work the Premier League, EFL and FA put in to allowed our athletes to compete and stay safe, and if you stuck to the protocols it worked.

"In a way, all the hard work has been done now, but should we have to do it again, we know what to do.

"We were very reactive, as everyone was, to news from the government, EFL and the FA. The amount of protocols we had to write and re-write because everything changed...! There was a lot of hard work."