WASH your hands and we’ll get down to business. If the coronavirus forces drastic action, the National League will be most at risk.

Firstly, some context. The coronavirus outbreak is a public health emergency. Football simply doesn’t matter in the face of such a grave matter. Whatever sensible measures need to be done to contain the outbreak and manage public panic are a necessity; football’s just a game, and will have to fall in line.

In the self-obsessed world of football, the main coronavirus story in Britain has been whether Liverpool can finally clinch the title before a possible introduction of matches behind closed doors. In reality, while the Premier League sides monopolise our attention, they are the best placed to cope with such measures.

Silvio Berlusconi, early on in his days at AC Milan, pushed a vision of football clubs existing purely on broadcast rights, with fans invited into the grounds for free to provide a backdrop for the small screen experience.

He’s largely been proven right, but with the exception of an end to admission fees. No club owner is going to turn down the opportunity of gouging more money out of his customers. However, the bloated TV deals the top clubs enjoy mean that empty stadiums would be peculiar but certainly not a threat to their existence. At our level, it’s different.

Clearly there are clubs which rely on their week-to-week gate revenues to survive. Staff wages and a multitude of different overheads have to be covered, and losing out on the main earner could really hit a small club hard.

Fortunately, we ought to be in a better position to cope with such a situation than our peers.

The stewardship of the WST has meant we’re as insulated against such a dramatic turn of events as a club of our scale could possibly be.

We don’t spend beyond our means, and although games behind closed doors would genuinely affect our finances, as we budget for a breakeven attendance figure per match, we’d surely be in a position to cope.

Other clubs in our division aren’t so lucky.

We could be affected in other ways though. On Saturday we’ll travel to Barrow and experience the full fury of their support.

They are anticipating a huge crowd as they look to pull off an unlikely return to the Football League.

What if, by mid-April, games are taking place behind closed doors?

That’s when our relegation rivals, Chesterfield, travel to Holker Street.

Surely, playing that match in virtual silence would give them an advantage over us, as we had to journey into the most vociferous of atmospheres?

We could spin that round the other way: if we go into our last home game needing a win, it’d be a great help to have a packed Racecourse to help us out.

In 2007, would we have recovered from going a goal down against Boston if we hadn’t been kicking towards a bulging Kop?

Perhaps the answer is to call a suspension of the league, although that would still mean a short term loss of gate revenue.

Also, we don’t know exactly how long such a measure would have to last, and the date of the play-off final at Wembley might not be up for negotiation.

There are so many factors to consider. It might be that the season we most want to see end will drag on longer than ever!

We beat Barrow on the opening day of the season ending our longest run without a win against them. Previously we’d not beaten them in seven matches, going back to October 2015, when we beat them 4-1 with Connor Jennings and Wes York grabbing two goals each.

The last time we won at Holker Street was in February 2013, when Kevin Thornton marked his league debut with the only goal of the game in the 86th minute.

The win also secured our most recent league double over The Bluebirds, an achievement we’ll be hoping to repeat tomorrow.

Barrow are ancient rivals, and this will be the 46th time we’ve travelled north to play them. Our first trip there was in our first season in the Football League, back in 1921, and ended in a 5-2 defeat.

That remains our worst defeat there, but we gained revenge five seasons later when we enjoyed our best result at Barrow. Gordon Gunson helped himself to a hat trick, while Roland Woodhouse and Archie Longmuir also scored in a 5-0 victory.

Jay Harris makes his 225th Wrexham appearance tomorrow, having overtaken Dixie McNeil, and moved into the top 50 players’ appearances for the club since returning to The Racecourse.

Also, Rob Lainton plays in his 125th league match at Holker Street.

Surprisingly, over half those appearances were for us: even though he missed the first two and a half months of this season, he has still made more appearances in this campaign than in any of the six seasons he played before he joined us.