How one country footy club is embracing the COVID-19 restrictions and pushing ahead in the hope of a season start
The Advertiser was at Jervois Football Club this week for their first contact training session since the coronavirus shutdown. As Reece Homfray and Sarah Reed discovered, it might look and smell very different but footy is on the way back.
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After his players had signed in, sanitised their hands, put their individual drink bottles down and laced up their boots under the veranda because the changerooms are off limits, Jervois Football Club’s senior coach Taite Silverlock called them together.
Training was scheduled for a 6.30pm start and at 6.31pm he blew his whistle.
“Right, first of all, thanks to everyone for coming out tonight,” he said, beanie on and rubbing his hands together to stay warm.
There were 14 of them in all, standing in a loose sort of a circle when Casey Robins made it 15 by walking across a few minutes late.
Still playing A Grade at 40, Robins is a bit of a loveable legend at the club.
“The Foss! Here he is,” Silverlock exclaimed as Robins was greeted warmly by his teammates.
When the noise died down, Silverlock announced it was another teammate’s birthday.
“And I might or might not have a couple of Corona’s in the belly too lads,” said the voice of the birthday boy at the back.
Without knowing whether he was joking or not, the irony of his comment was impossible to miss.
It was Tuesday, June 2, and Jervois would normally be midway through their River Murray Football League season but instead they are yet to play a game because of another corona – the one everyone hates – the virus which has brought the world and parts of Australia to a standstill.
And that’s why, according to Silverlock, community footy clubs where players can see their mates, run around and have a laugh, are so important.
“I look at it from the mental health side, and for me and a lot of the players I’ve spoken to it’s just a good opportunity to forget about everything that is happening in the world,” he said.
“There’s a lot of outside pressures with everyone when it comes to work and family and when you take the training component and football family away, it makes it really hard to switch off from that because it’s all you’re seeing and hearing.
“But this next hour that we train for is a great opportunity for guys to switch off from work and everything and just enjoy ourselves because we love footy.”
Silverlock is a West Adelaide premiership player who was on Essendon’s rookie list before joining Jervois three years ago and this is his first season as coach – taking charge of a team that doesn’t even know if it’s going to play this year.
“It’s been different,” he said.
“I guess the hardest thing is knowing how to prepare for something like this, we have two groups going but you don’t know what numbers you’re going to be working with so it’s hard to know what drills to do.”
The Advertiser was at Jervois on Tuesday night which was the first time community football clubs were allowed to have full contact training following the latest easing of COVID-19 restrictions in SA.
Club president Russell Jarvis is the first one there to start setting up at 5.15pm but there’s a ‘thud, thud, thud’ coming from the nearby netball court where a brother and sister are running their own fitness session with boxing pads.
The footy club has only been back training for two weeks. On March 14 they hosted Strathalbyn in a trial game when the only health advice was to bring your own drink bottles, but within a week, everything changed.
That was until a fortnight ago when junior and senior training resumed on separate days.
“We’ve had pretty small numbers, we had nine and seven and last week was the best one we had with 14 players,” Jarvis said.
“Tonight we’re allowed to have 20 and match simulation drills – so contact.”
The strict return to play COVID-19 protocols mean it’s a lot of effort for volunteers like Jarvis to go so the players can come to training, but he’s not alone, as vice president Ben Milne comes bounding into the club right on 5.30pm.
“Livin the dream,” he says when asked how he’s going.
Together they disinfect the footballs and place them in two groups then lay a row of cones up the middle of the oval to separate it in half and turn the light towers on.
They wipe down all the benches and seats with disinfectant and set up a table with hand sanitiser donated from Bickfords and a sign in sheet to document which players are there.
Inside they have to split the clubrooms into two with a divider so they can have 20 in each section, move chairs apart and put up posters telling everyone to social distance, wash their hands and cough into their elbows.
The players are told to arrive no earlier than 6.15pm and get out of their cars wearing beanies and ugg-boots but in their footy gear so all they’ve got to do is put their footy boots on.
“Arrive ready to train is part of the rules,” Jarvis said.
“Then they sign in and go to their zone.”
Tonight they’re allowed to be in groups of 20 with full contact if they wish.
“How many are we going to get,” Silverlock asks aloud after making the hour-drive from Adelaide where he runs two gyms.
“21 just to piss you off,” Milne fires back.
The tiny town with a population of about 300 still has a school but the general store has closed, meaning like most country towns the footy club is the heartbeat of the place.
Before the coronavirus, the oval would be buzzing on Tuesday and Thursday nights with junior and senior training, hot chips or schnitzels served in the bar and games all day on Saturdays.
But for the best part of the last two months the only ones there were members of the footy-based ground committee headed up by Bob Lang who lives nearby.
“He’s done really well at maintaining the oval for us,” Jarvis said.
“He was out here Wednesday night last week because it was pretty long and bushy on the Tuesday and we come out Thursday and it was nice.”
The State Government has announced that community football can return to play from June 25 but some country clubs and leagues in SA have already pulled the pin on the 2020 season.
For some the COVID-19 restrictions are simply too hard or the cold, hard reality that they might be playing without crowds means no money at the gate, over the bar or the canteen and barbecue so they would have no way of paying the salary cap.
The River Murray Football League will be part of a phone meeting with the SANFL on June 9 and will then speak with its seven clubs the next day to determine whether they’re going to play or not.
“The River Murray delegates, umpires and the netball association will meet on June 10, and regardless (of what is decided), we will have a junior comp in some way,” league president Terry Connolly said.
“It might be two rounds, one round, a lightning carnival, we don’t know how it will look, but we have an obligation, our mission statement is to provide an opportunity for the youth of our community to play sport, and in particular football.
“We want our kids out there and the longer they sit at home the ones that are on the fringe of football now, they may not return (to the game).
“We want to get back on the track and back to playing football.”
When Silverlock’s whistle went and the players did their customary two-lap slow-jog warm up, they were finally into it.
A game of tag to get the legs moving, push ups on the boundary, kick to kick from the cones and then finally a handball drill in tight with some body contact.
Within half-an-hour one player wearing tights and a grey hoodie walked over to the boundary holding the back of his leg and looking proppy.
“Have you done something,” Jarvis asks him.
“Not yet but it feels like I’m about to,” he replies, holding the back of his leg.
A Tuesday night, 9C, and a player has pulled the pin on training before he does his hammy.
It might look and even smell very different – and they might not kick a ball in anger this year – but in that moment footy was back alright and it was beautiful.