The changing face of Leeds United supporters as coronavirus pandemic worsens - Daniel Chapman

Our faces look different from a couple of weeks ago. They’re further away, first of all, either at a distance of two metres, or through a window or a webcam; some are half-covered by masks.

And our expressions have changed. Two weeks ago the spread of coronavirus was answered with half-amused glances, side-eyes and eye-rolls, eyebrows cocking at rumours of postponements. Calling off the season weeks short of deciding our long-awaited promotion was ‘Typical Leeds’, and our faces were rueful and bitter.

Had the game against Cardiff City gone ahead, I imagine many of our faces flushed with beer in the away end, mouths opening wide to expel air from strong lungs across healthy vocal chords, making unprintable suggestions of what the Football League could go away and do.

That’s gone. Any defiance the mirror now shows is masking wide-eyed fear, as I think less often of the Peacocks’ promotion and more of the fates of my family and friends and Leeds fans and citizens.

The death tolls from Italy are of a scale that can be mapped onto blocks of seating at Elland Road. The lower tier of the Cheese Wedge, say, gone in a day. I can’t roll my eyes at that and wonder why Leeds aren’t going up or the pubs aren’t opening.

The faces becoming more visible are those of tired, frustrated, frightened and ill NHS workers, pleading across social media for people to stay at home, to help. They look like you and me but their faces are dreadfully different to the ones in our mirrors, for which we lucky ones stuck indoors should be grateful. That gratitude is best expressed by listening to what they are saying.

The notion of this virus being ‘typically Leeds’ seems absurd now that we can appreciate its global impacts in our increasingly local lives. But meanwhile these are the sports pages, where we write seriously about daft games, somewhere absurdity can continue.