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Predictably, it has been yet another week dominated by Covid-19 coverage and how this continues to ravage world sport.

Marvelous Nakamba, Zimbabwe’s highest-paid sportsperson today, has been forced to take a pay cut at his English Premiership side Aston Villa.

Nakamba, and his teammates at the Birmingham club, will see their salaries take a 25 percent hit in the next four months to try and help their club balance its books during these trying times.

This means the Warriors midfielder will defer about £55 000 during that period although the club said, in the event the situation improves, they could reimburse the players.

But, Villa players are not the only ones who have been forced to sacrifice to try and help professional sports teams which suddenly find themselves dealing with a huge crisis.

For decades, English Premiership clubs have been money-generating machines, thanks to huge earnings that come with huge global television interest in their product.

This has enabled the clubs to pay their players outrageous wages and spend millions of pounds in trying to acquire the best footballers.

For a club like Villa, survival in the Premiership, because of the rich financial pickings in the league, is all that matters because it enables it to balance its books.

They splashed quite a fortune during the off-season to bring in players, including Nakamba, to try and keep themselves in the top league.

They reached the final of the League Cup, where they lost to Manchester City, although given a choice, they would rather stay in the Premiership for another season.

Despite having the capacity to flex their muscles, where they were one of the five most active football clubs in the world, in terms of expenditure during the off-season, Villa have been forced to take measures to balance their books in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak.

It brings home the reality that this pandemic is having on sport that some of its richest franchises are being hit quite hard and forced to come up with emergency measures to keep afloat.

That’s why we have, at different intervals in the past few weeks, voiced concern over the lack of conversations on the domestic sporting front about how our clubs and associations should deal with this crisis.

We have raised the alarm that, here at home, we seem to be sending the message that everything is well, and shall be well, and there isn’t any need for planning to see how our sport will deal with this pandemic.

The silence has been deafening at a time when you expect to see real leadership and hear real solutions, as to how our sport will navigate the stormy waters which this crisis has triggered.

The business aspect of sport is what keeps things ticking in any professional set-up and while the whole world is sneezing, we have been sending an obscure message that all shall be well.

Now, if the moneybags are getting a hit, what does this say about us and why, we ask for the umpteenth time, are we not getting serious conversations around this subject on the sporting front here?

One would have expected the engagement of some strategy experts, who can come up with measures of how our football, in particular, and sport in general, will navigate these rough waters.

Even though our sports leaders are locked at their homes, it doesn’t take away their mandate to lead from the front and explore possible solutions related to how their disciplines will deal with the crisis.

That’s why we have all the technology now for people to have ways of discussing issues, pertinent to their survival in this tricky environment, without having to come together in person at some meetings.

Recently, we published the story of NetOne, who have been one of the biggest sponsors of domestic football, announcing they will be pulling out of the marriage.

This is the company that sponsored four clubs in the Premiership last year, which is about a quarter of the league’s membership, including giants Highlanders and CAPS United.

This is the company that continues to pay the salaries of the CAPS United and Bosso players and coaching staff this year, although they have made it clear they won’t be doing so beyond the year.

NetOne’s argument is that they are now investing a lot into their programmes, to help the country deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, they simply won’t have the financial resources to keep pouring into football.

One can understand their position because ensuring that people live is more important than ensuring that football is played and, to their credit, they have even given the clubs enough notice of the termination of their partnership.

Of course, there could be some complications, here and there, should those clubs decide the cancellation of the partnership puts them at a disadvantage, given some of them would have even planned for next season, with that relationship in mind.

But, if the domestic sports fraternity needed a reality check that things have changed, and their leaders need to craft measures to ensure the clubs survive, then the NetOne move, and Nakamba’s wage deferral, bring the crisis home.

How our leaders in sport will react will be crucial, but so far, the narrative has been very disappointing.