BEFORE the suspension of Premier League fixtures over the coronavirus, it had been 23 years since illness forced a game in England’s top flight to be postponed.
Bryan Robson’s struggling Middlesbrough were due to play Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park on December 21, 1996.
But, sensationally, they pulled out with less than 24 hours’ notice after flu decimated the squad.
Robson’s team were battling for top-flight survival, despite boasting a squad featuring international stars Fabrizio Ravanelli and Juninho.
The Premier League responded with a three-point penalty, and it proved costly. Boro were relegated by two points on the final day of the season after failing to beat Leeds.
And former Denmark international Mikkel Beck — one of the only players fit to play against Rovers — still feels betrayed by the league’s treatment of the club.
He said: “We were getting fewer and fewer to training as the week was going on.
“Players were just falling, you know? Day by day it was more ill, more ill, more ill. I think we had nine or ten ill.
“I understood that if a team had more than ten players ill you could withdraw.
“That’s the rule we believed at the time. We thought it was allowed.
“If we’d decided to come with three first-team players and the rest were kids, we would have lost 6-0. And there would have been other teams angry at us turning up in that kind of state.
“I’ve never known it before, to have so many players ill in one club.
“Maybe you could compare it to something like the coronavirus, it just spread so quickly.”
Boro began the 1996-97 campaign in high spirits. The previous season they finished 12th in the Premier League, their first year back in the top flight after a two-year absence.
Former England captain Robson had pulled off a double transfer coup to bring superstars Juninho and Ravanelli to the Riverside.
Beck added: “We won so many fans that year with our football.
“We were a team that the Premier League really needed.”
But after his weakened side had been beaten 5-1 by Liverpool at Anfield days earlier, the manager made the bizarre call not to send a team to Ewood Park.
Rovers boss Phil Parkes claimed the first he heard that Boro were not coming was when one of his players saw it reported on Sky Sports the afternoon before the game.
The league handed down their punishment three weeks later.
A penalty which included a £50,000 fine plus the cost of the Premier League commission that found them guilty.
To compound matters, the madcap Ravanelli told an Italian newspaper the same day: “I reckon we will be relegated, I’m almost certain.”
Boro’s season appeared to be falling apart. And Beck said: “Looking back, we should have just played a weakened side and lost 6-0. I don’t know whose final call it was but Bryan must have raised it during the week with the people upstairs.
“As a player you respect your manager and your chief executive.
“Even if you disagree, you don’t voice it. But remember, we were told that this was the rule, that with so many ill it was allowed to call off the game. That’s what we were told.”
Despite the deduction, a four-game winning run in the spring looked to have saved Boro.
Chelsea — who Boro would face again in the FA Cup final — were beaten 1-0 at the Riverside. Beck scored as Derby were thrashed 6-1 and he netted a dramatic winner against Aston Villa in a 3-2 win in May. The great escape looked on.
But in the end, a 1-1 draw at Elland Road on the final day spelt the drop. Beck said: “The deduction cost us relegation. A draw against Leeds should have kept us up.
“But after losing the three points we were one point short. It was incredible. Then a few days later we had to play a cup final. We felt betrayed by the league. I still believe that the club did what they were allowed to do. The club had dialogue with the FA, it’s not a decision you make for fun.
“That’s what we thought at the time, that the FA had allowed it.
“I can’t explain even today how it felt when we were relegated. We felt we had one of the most exciting teams in the league.
“Two cup finals [Boro also lost the League Cup final to Leicester]. We lost the finals because the squad wasn’t big enough for the number of games we had to play.”
