James Collins is glad Luton will get to determine their Championship fate on the pitch after fearing they’d be relegated without a ball being kicked.
Town will end a three-month Coronavirus hiatus tomorrow when they host Preston North End, aiming to haul themselves out of the drop zone in the final nine games.
But when football was suspended in March, due to the pandemic, it was unclear whether this season would be resolved naturally. Indeed, League Two and League One voted to curtail their campaigns, following a number of other leagues around Europe that had decided football could not safely return.
With Luton six points from safety, such a decision would have been devastating for the club.
Collins said: “I think in the early stages of the lockdown there was talk of that. There was talk of points per game and if that was the case then we would go down, which I thought would have been unfair, to be honest.
“I think you earn the right to play in the Championship, you should earn the right to play to stay in there.
“There was concerns about the games not returning but Luton kept us updated quite regularly and I think as soon as it became clear we would play again, we got our heads around it and are ready to go.”
With former manager Nathan Jones returning for a second spell in charge, hopes are high that Town can engineer a great escape to maintain their Championship status, but Collins is under no illusions of the task ahead.
“You are in the position you are by right because we’re in the bottom three now because obviously we hadn’t done as well as we’d hoped,” said the Republic of Ireland striker.
“We’ve only got ourselves now to try and get out of it and if we do stay up then we have earned that by playing the games, not by anybody keeping us in the league because of the pandemic. Again, if we go down then we go down by right.”
Club captain Sonny Bradley revealed earlier this month that he has a personal motivation to avoid the drop, having spent the best part of a decade trying to get back to the second flight, where he started with hometown club Hull City.
Collins said: “I can’t speak for the rest of the lads but I can definitely echo that personally because me and Sonny have probably had quite a similar route.
“We’ve played at League Two and League One level most of our careers and we’ve worked so hard to get to the Championship and I think now is our chance to stay in it. We have got to fight every day, every game to make sure that is the case by the end of the season.”
Asked if he has any reservations about returning to work after lockdown, Collins said: “Not really. I think the EFL and Luton Town have made it as safe as possible for us to come back and ever since we have come back I’ve felt really safe. All the lads have.
“We know that our best chance to stay in the Championship was to come back and stay in the games. As soon as that was made clear to us, I think everyone was happy to come back.”
