A-League: Melbourne clubs finally touch down for hub life as City focuses on their ultimate goal
At times it’s seemed a bridge too far, but finally all Melbourne A-League teams have touched down at their new home. Now for a regulation 14-day quarantine stretch, but finally things seem to be moving in right direction.
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The A-League travel saga mercifully came to an end on Saturday morning as 120 players and staff from the three Melbourne-based sides arrived in Sydney to save the season.
After a week jam-packed with drama, two failed attempts to sneak across the border and countless sleepless nights and behind-the-scenes blow-ups, members of Melbourne Victory, Melbourne City and Western United stepped off their charter flight to be welcomed by a cool, wet Sydney day.
They’ll now need to clear a 14-day quarantine period — during which they’ll be able to train — before being able to complete the remainder of the regular season.
“Whilst the events of this past week have been frustrating, it’s time to put the past behind us and get back to what we’re all here to do — to play football and to create club history,” said City chief executive Brad Rowse.
City sit in second place on the ladder and remain a red-hot chance at securing a maiden title under coach Erick Mombaerts.
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The next headache for officials will be how to rejig the draw, with the opening fixture — between Melbourne Victory and Western United currently scheduled for Thursday — certain to be changed.
A-League boss Greg O’Rourke has flagged the potential to move the grand final, currently penciled in for August 23, back a week — with the existing Collective Bargaining Agreement running through until August 30.
That allows flexibility and could mean league leaders Sydney FC reopens the season against Wellington Phoenix on Friday night.
Western United and Victory are both scheduled to play a second fixture during their quarantine period, with Western’s clash against City on July 20 and Victory’s against Western Sydney on July 22 also needing to be shuffled back.
However O’Rourke was confident there was flexibility within the schedule to allow for some cosmetic changes.
“That’s nothing we can’t build in, and we still remain completely focused on finishing the season of 27 remaining games but also bringing a final series,” O’Rourke said on Thursday night.
‘IT’S EVERYONE’S FAULT’: UNITED PATH TO FIX FIASCO
Western United chief executive Chris Pehlivanis hopes A-League boss Greg O’Rourke is spared the axe, but says lessons must be learnt from the travel fiasco that threatened plans to finish the season.
The United, Melbourne Victory and Melbourne City squads are set to leave Victoria on Saturday for NSW, where they will go into quarantine for two weeks before being permitted to complete their seasons
FFA hope to release a reshaped draw on Saturday for the remainder of the season, which had been scheduled to restart with a Melbourne Victory-Western United clash on Thursday.
United have to try to fit six matches into the reduced time frame for matches, with nine fewer days than they would have had if they had kicked off on Thursday.
City have only three games to play and Victory, who are second last on the A-League table and would struggle to make the finals, have five.
It’s understood the three squads will stay in the same hotel in Sydney’s west during the quarantine period, and use Fairfield’s Marconi Stadium and Blacktown’s Valentine Park as training venues.
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O’Rourke accepted the blame for the problems, with the three teams having been at Melbourne airport on Monday and Tuesday ready to fly across the border only to be return home because of fog and half-baked travel exemptions.
On Thursday night, O’Rourke admitted the mishaps could cost him his job. However, Pehlivanis doesn’t want O’Rourke to be made a scapegoat, saying there was a collective blame.
“People shouldn’t lose jobs over a mistake,” Pehlivanis said.
“It’s not life or death. It’s not just his fault, it’s everyone’s fault.
“The guy had a written agreement for us to leave the next day, and then everything changes on him, so it’s not totally his fault.”
Though Pehlivanis said clubs needed to be listened to, claiming the whole situation could have been avoided had United’s wish to leave for NSW last weekend been granted.
“If we had left early then none of this would happened,” he said.
“We thought it was strange that all the AFL clubs were doing a mad dash
“It would have been good to be listened to but that’s happened now.”
Pehlivanis also fears the integrity of the competition has been compromised.
“It is a little bit shot but not significantly. COVID has caused this for everything,” he said.
Victory CEO Trent Jacobs said the events of Monday and Tuesday nights had been “incredibly frustrating and compromised our players and staff”.
“While our club was disappointed with what transpired, we have remained focused on working together with FFA and the Victorian clubs to find a solution,” Jacobs said.
“We have been and remain committed to working with our fellow Victorian clubs, FFA and the NSW government to ensure the A-League season restarts, and we will follow all the necessary protocols to help protect the health, wellbeing and safety of our people and the broader community during our time in NSW.”
A-LEAGUE BOSS TAKES HEAT FOR FLIGHT DRAMAS
A defiant Greg O’Rourke has delivered on his A-League promise that the season will go ahead — but accepts people may still call for his head.
Bringing an end to the troubling saga that has engulfed the game, the embattled A-League boss took the weight of criticism from the past week’s events on his own shoulders and declared his only goal had been to ensure the A-League returns next Thursday because “the buck stops with me”.
It’s understood the three stranded Melbourne teams were late on Thursday night granted exemptions to enter NSW and join the A-League hub following a week of intense negotiations between FFA and the NSW Government — giving new life to a season that was in extreme doubt.
Earlier in the day, O’Rourke revealed the A-League grand final could be pushed back a week from its scheduled August 23 date and cleared the air with angry and frustrated players — while accepting his own position is under pressure.
But for O’Rourke, only one thing was important.
“It doesn’t matter about people calling for my head,” he said.
“If it means in the end for people to want to lose my role … that’s a possibility that is for others, but until that happens — if that happens — I’m going to be solely focused on getting that exemption, on getting the game back on the pitch, finishing the 27 games and the final series and delivering the A-League.”
O’Rourke says the schedule is flexible enough to shift up to four games including Melbourne sides, with player contracts valid until August 30 — allowing the grand final to potentially shift back an entire week, if required.
“We remain optimistic we’ll finish the season … two or three games will be moved within the schedule,” O’Rourke said.
“That’s nothing we can’t build in, and we still remain completely focused on finishing the season of 27 remaining games but also bringing a final series.
“And depending on how COVID rolls out in certain states and territories, we also look forward maybe to having the opportunity of having crowds, members and others join us to watch those games.”
Defending the shambolic scenes that left all three teams twice stranded on the tarmac, O’Rourke said the league had been let down by the weather — when fog descended upon Canberra on Monday night and destroyed plans to leave Melbourne before the border lockdown came into effect at midnight – but also by government misinformation.
“Our information not only verbally but also in writing was that there was no talk of border closures between Victoria and NSW,” O’Rourke said.
“The border hadn’t closed in a hundred years and we should continue to monitor the situation.
“I decided to book a charter jet for Tuesday, irrespective of what was happening.”
A-LEAGUE SEASON IN DOUBT: PLAYERS HIT BACK AT FFA
By Joe Barton
A-League boss Greg O’Rourke has offered an olive branch to the three stranded Melbourne sides, insisting he’s willing to accommodate all demands to ensure the season gets underway next week.
Speaking on SEN on Thursday morning, O’Rourke took responsibility for the 48-hour debacle which twice left all three Melbourne clubs stuck on the tarmac — and caused a mini revolt among the playing groups.
He said he’d spoken to senior players in the wake of Tuesday night’s dramas in which players made their way to Tullamarine Airport for the second consecutive night only to be told that because of previously unexpected quarantine restrictions in the ACT that plan had to be abandoned at the last minute.
Whether those discussions truly smoothed the waters is up for debate, as on Wednesday afternoon the players – via the players’ union – delivered a set of demands to O’Rourke that they needed to be carried out before they were willing to attempt a third border crossing, along with a pointed statement that accused FFA of “a lack of clarity and ad-hoc planning”.
The demands included written proof that exemptions had been granted to leave Victoria, full briefings on the travel, accommodation and training details, as well as personal restrictions while in the hub, and that efforts were being made to allow families to join.
O’Rourke on Thursday confirmed that FFA would grant those demands and insisted he remained optimistic that Plan C — securing border exemptions from the NSW Government – was in full swing, so that the A-League season could continue.
“We will have all those plans and those requests that they wish to have in place, explained to them before we take off again,” O’Rourke explained.
“We’ll make sure we have written exemptions.”
Should the border exemptions be granted, O’Rourke says teams will be able to mobilise within 24 hours.
O’Rourke reiterated that there was flexibility within the draw released last week, and that there remained a possibility the three Melbourne clubs could play their opening fixtures at home before joining the A-League hub in Sydney after securing a border exemption.
Melbourne Victory and Western United are due to reopen the season next Thursday, a match which currently has no venue assigned but could yet be played at AAMI Park, while Western United then play Melbourne City on July 20.
“This is just like the normal sporting world – it doesn’t matter how good your plan is, you get beat six-nil then the general public wants to know why it happened and why you didn’t do better,” O’Rourke said.
“We understand that and that’s my responsibility, and I’m not going to shirk that at all. What I need to do, like any other coach and any other leader, is come out and make sure we win the next game.
ANALYSIS
MIXED MESSAGES LEAVE A-LEAGUE STRANDED
—Joe Barton
Just seven days out from the proposed restart of the A-League season, giant question marks hang over whether it’ll get off the ground at all after a series of bungles have left a quarter of the competition locked out of the Sydney hub.
But how did it get to this stage?
One week after the revised schedule – a mighty 32 games in 39 days – was trumpeted as a feast of football for starved fans, there’s an expectation that another rejig is almost certainly required – and a growing fear, with three clubs stranded in Melbourne, that the season itself is in serious doubt.
DID A-LEAGUE MISS THE JUMP?
There’s no denying rival codes have gotten the jump on football throughout the COVID-19 crisis.
The NRL’s Peter V’landys had the ear of the NSW Government and has been lauded for bullying his game back onto screens across Australia by late May, with the AFL following suit shortly after.
The A-League took a more cautious approach – which they could afford to do, given the bulk of their season had already been completed.
However, the AFL’s rapid response this week in executing Operation Melbourne Escape to perfection showed a slickness that football has lacked.
While AFL teams had training in Sydney by Tuesday morning, members of Melbourne’s three A-League clubs were waking up bleary-eyed from Monday night’s midnight debacle.
And even Supercars, who don’t have close to the grip on Australian sport that football does, were able to swiftly pivot in the face of the lockdown – following an 11th hour dash to the state border by the five Victorian-based teams.
MOVING PARTS AND BAD LUCK
Doubtless, FFA worked around the clock on Monday and Tuesday on a rapidly changing scenario and can be afforded some leeway in the extraordinary mitigating circumstances.
On Monday night, the situation was a truly moving feast – and quick-thinking officials, as well as the clubs themselves, did remarkably well to assemble the three squads in under 90 minutes while simultaneously organising a last-minute charter flight to Canberra.
But one thing that FFA couldn’t control is the weather, and that was the final straw on Monday night.
Had the fog that hung low over Canberra cleared in time, FFA would’ve been hailed for thinking on the run and nailing the border crossing. But it wasn’t to be.
CLUBS NOT BLAMELESS
While FFA has been made the easy target, the Melbourne clubs themselves showed disinterest in joining a Sydney bubble last week as it became clear the COVID-19 crisis was worsening around them.
Players initially bristled at the idea of spending more time away from home, while coaches were reluctant to give up ‘home’ advantage – and the routine of training in familiar surrounds.
Had there been more willingness to join the bubble, perhaps it could’ve been a tactical operation carried out last week.
MIXED COMMUNICATION
Whether it was a miscommunication at government level to FFA, or the message passed down by FFA to the clubs, the misunderstanding of the quarantine situation in ACT was inexcusable.
Having been operating under the impression they’d been granted partial exemption on the border crossing, teams set off for Melbourne Airport seemingly Canberra-bound.
The plan to have a short quarantine in Canberra while the final items were crossed off to ensure safe passage to NSW ahead of next week’s season-opening fixture was dashed as they reached the tarmac on Tuesday night.
But it was information that was freely available to the public on Monday afternoon – that all Victorians flying to the ACT would be denied entry from Tuesday, and ACT residents returning from Melbourne hot spots would be forced into a 14-day quarantine.