AFL makes call on Round 1 amid threat of coronavirus
AFL boss Gillon McLachlan says players and the footy industry as a whole wants “to get moving”, the league unveiling its plans for Round 1 in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
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Footy will forge ahead and launch the 2020 season staging shorter matches at a vacant MCG.
Richmond and Carlton will, on Thursday night, run out in front of empty stands at 7.40pm in what AFL chief Gillon McLachlan said had been deemed “a proportionate risk” in discussions with federal chief medical officer Brendan Murphy.
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“Our players are well placed to bear the risks,” McLachlan said.
“Putting a game on sits within the newly established protocols and guidelines outlined by the Prime Minister.
“We don’t know how many games we’ll get into this 153-game journey before we have to pause.
“(But) what I do know … our industry is unified making a decision to start.
“We embark on this journey with clear instruction from the government that all industry and all parts of society need to keep moving forward.”
McLachlan conceded the entire AFL season could be played without crowds.
“It depends how this plays out but it feels like that’s a possibility,” he said.
“I think it’s going to be a long year and our players and our industry want to get moving.”
Quarters for the entirety of the season will be reduced from 20 minutes to 16 minutes, plus time on, in a bid to reduce the demands on players in the event clubs are forced to play multiple matches in a short period.
The AFL is willing to stage the Grand Final at Marvel Stadium as late as December if required.
The final two rounds of the AFLW season have been abandoned with women’s finals to begin this weekend.
“The reality is this season will not look like any other,” McLachlan said.
“We know at any time a player may test positive and halt our journey temporarily.
“We’re building resilience measures at our clubs and our squads so that over the next couple of weeks we’re better prepared to deal with the positive tests of one or multiple players.”
McLachlan spent most of Wednesday canvassing views from club bosses and industry stakeholders before a lengthy phone hook up with league chairman Richard Goyder and the AFL commission.
PM Scott Morrison put the ball back in the AFL’s court early Wednesday, saying it was up to individual sporting codes to decide if they wanted to play on through the coronavirus crisis.
All 18 clubs and the majority of the game’s 850 players expressed their desire to kick the season off before the worst of the pandemic hits Victoria in the coming weeks and months.
But with an almost certain shutdown of the season looming, the AFL faces its greatest fight in protecting the competition’s $1 billion-a-season economy.
Collingwood president Eddie McGuire on Wednesday night revealed the AFL had already begun talks with the Victorian Government about using its AAA credit rating for the facilitation of monster loans to help bail the competition out of trouble.
The league pockets about $418 million a year in TV rights cash as part of its six-year arrangement with Channel 7, Telstra and News Corp and about $200 million in gate takings across the finals and home-and-away season.
Player wages of about $252 million are also committed under the terms of the last collective bargaining agreement.
Pay cuts of at least 20 per cent are being urged but in an email to player agents Wednesday, the AFL Players’ Association said “despite Gillon’s comments in his press conference on Monday, we have not agreed to anything in relation to salary adjustments at this point in time.
“We don’t expect these issues to be resolved quickly, given the complexity of the issues we are working through.”
The Blues-Tigers game on Thursday night was one of three to have its start time put back from 7.25pm to 7.40pm after the announcement, with Saturday’s matches between GWS and Geelong (Giants Stadium) and Gold Coast v Port (Metricon) also shifted.
The MCG will remain available for the Grand Final as late as October 10 and the MCC still wants to host the biggest game of the year.
But in the wake of the extraordinary circumstances engulfing the sporting world the MCC won’t hold the league to its contract which locked in an MCG decider every year until 2057.
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Major venues around the country will all be unavailable to the AFL from early October because of the T20 cricket World Cup and MCC chief executive Stuart Fox said contracts made it “highly unlikely” the event could be disrupted.
“We have a contract in place with the ICC and cricket is bringing a World Cup to Australia and we need to think about how significant that is to Australia, to the economy and to viewership around the world,” Fox said.
“It’s highly unlikely that event will be disrupted and we need to respect that.”
The International Cricket Council will take control of the MCG after the 10th and Fox said staff needed at least 10 days before the first game, on the 25th of October, to get pitches in and up to standard.
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Fox said the MCC didn’t want the premiership decider to be staged anywhere other than the MCG, but the unprecedented circumstances demanded a “common sense” approach.
“We want the Grand Final here and so does the government and we know it’s the best venue to host the Grand Final and it is tradition,” he said.
“But there’s got to be some common sense.
“The finals series is really important to us and it is to the AFL so I do think it is going to be important that we are measured, we are sensible and we work together because there are so many bigger issues in sport alone and our industry.”