How Gillon McLachlan rolls with punches of AFL Covid chaos

From 162 days of crisis meetings to countless round changes, moving teams and shifting grand final plans, AFL chief Gillon McLachlan reveals how chaos became normal.

Gil McLachlan took the phone call at 9.30am. A Saturday, he was returning from his son’s basketball game at Waverley Park.

The AFL boss knew it would be bad news; work calls before 6am on weekdays, and 10am on weekends, are always bad news.

McLachlan was told a rumour, and it proved to be accurate. Within half an hour, the Queensland government announced a snap lockdown of the state’s southeast.

The Demons were mid-flight to Brisbane. The Lions were about to leave Brisbane for Tasmania.

Four teams – Essendon, Gold Coast, Sydney and Greater Western Sydney – were based in southeast Queensland.

What to do? Could the Demons fly in to a lockdown? Could the Lions fly out? What if other states barred player arrivals from locked down Queensland?

The Demons’ flight assumed a refugee status. As the plane flew over NSW, questions multiplied. Should the flight be redirected to Sydney, or Canberra, or Perth where the Demons were set to play the following week?

AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan in Brisbane. Picture: Michael Klein

He and staffers met online, then tuned in to the Queensland government announcement, to hunt crumbs of information. They were winging it; one staffer sat in, masked and socially distancing, as he queued to inspect a house in Fairfield.

Tasmania accepted the Lions’ arrival. The four Queensland-based teams beat wheels-up deadlines and relocated to Victoria.

The Melbourne players would land in Brisbane, sit on the tarmac, then fly back to Melbourne, after eight hours of going nowhere.

Yet a season-changing crisis had been averted. Just.

It’s a snapshot in 162 days of daily AFL crisis meetings, of wargaming solutions to dire scenarios both real and unrealised, of lifting teams here and dropping them there.

Of all AFL and AFLW rounds, only four have been untouched by COVID. There have been more than 100 fixture changes. The grand final, for a second time, appears headed elsewhere, even if McLachlan nurses a sliver of hope for the MCG.

He says it’s been harder than 2020, but easier, too.

McLachlan says the loss of kids’ sport has been the keenest blow of Covid restrictions. Picture: Michael Klein

Last year, McLachlan’s job was compared to steering the Titanic. This time, the perils have been better understood. What once would be high dramas - such as a lightning threat at an AFL game - seemed minor.

McLachlan wasn’t worried about the league “going broke” this year. He felt more desensitised to the u-turns of COVID restrictions. Chaos became normal.

There have been many drastic AFL moments this season. Such as the isolating of players and staff after they attended a rugby match in July.

Or a few nights earlier, when the Geelong versus Carlton game of July 10 doubled as a super spreader event that helped propel another Melbourne lockdown.

Throughout the season, the AFL has shifted, adapted, negotiated and hustled. How could staff, players, planes, hotels, and all the accompanying needs of match days, such as umpires and broadcasting, be accommodated? What if a team was forced to quarantine for two weeks?

McLachlan nods to off-camera stars, such as AFL procurement manager Michael Thorn, who was dubbed Thorn Air for his seemingly magical ability to source planes in an instant.

“This year the snap border closures and trying to keep clubs in their states and trying to move every week in this sort of game of Jenga has been much harder,” McLachlan says.

“The logistics of moving teams weekly, putting fixtures out sometimes 36 hours before the weekend, and working out how to get it (the round) away has been much more difficult than last year.”

McLachlan is hoping for Victorian crowds next year but won’t buy into debates about vaccinated-only crowds. Picture: Michael Klein

Footy TV ratings have set records this year. The game has been the conversation that still connects people in the absence of the usual talking points of life. If the Tokyo Olympics felt like a holiday from humdrum, football has been, as McLachlan puts it, “the daily soap opera to keep us looking somewhere else”.

He appreciates local sadness about the likely loss of the grand final to Perth (he would quarantine for two weeks to attend). But he remains on a war footing. Long-term implications – such as no Melbourne crowds after the July 10 match – have dimmed in the rush of more immediate crises.

“I’m not as dramatic as others might be,” McLachlan says. “I think this pandemic takes bites indiscriminately, and Victoria with its high densities and scales has copped it more than most … I don’t really look beyond that.”

He’s hoping for Victorian crowds next year. He won’t buy into debates about vaccinated-only crowds.

But McLachlan endorses the vaccination rhetoric of national and state leaders. Lockdowns cannot continue.

“I hope that our path laid out by the federal government and most of the premiers is our path forward and we hit our vaccination targets, and that we get kids vaccinated as well,” he says.

“What’s clear is that the economic and social cost is getting to a point where it’s unsustainable.”

Dustin Martin and Noah Balta of the Tigers celebrate during their win against the Cats in the 2020 AFL grand final match at The Gabba. Picture: Getty Images

McLachlan acknowledges the clubs, players, staff and partners. He marvels at the collective oomph required in a Covid-controlled process. Pre-Covid, the notion that fixtures and venues would be set days before games, while clubs waited for last-minute instructions, was unthinkable.

For almost two months, because of the shifting rules, players from Sydney and GWS were marooned from home and families.

McLachlan nods to their sacrifices. “Both groups have just been incredibly resilient, that’s the huge cost and challenge of putting the season away, and they’re being asked to do it again now,” he says. “They’ve both made the finals, but the partners can’t travel with them, so they have been asked to be resilient and tough again. We are very grateful.”

McLachlan has mostly led the AFL as a rumpled face on Microsoft Team calls. He is almost always at home, in Prahran.

He welcomes smaller pleasures, such as kicking the footy with the kids. And he laments the “huge” loss of kids’ sport (he has four children) which he considers the keenest blow of all.

McLachlan says the resilience of so many who made the season happen is ‘the story of the year’.

He vows to address the disruptions to community football, given unfinished seasons and a traditional reliance on gate attendances.

“It is one of our highest priorities to make sure we bounce back,” he says. “The AFL will do everything it can to support community football next year, both here in Victoria and elsewhere.”

McLachlan feels for David Teague, the sacked Carlton coach. Footy is cutthroat, but McLachlan empathises for anyone under “brutal front-page scrutiny”.

He has a soft spot for Melbourne’s flag aspirations, a “special story”. But for him, the season 2021 bows to those who made it happen.

“That’s the story of the year,” he says, “the individual resilience and excellence of so many people.”