NRL stays put as AFL heads north

The AFL is on the run from coronavirus, packing families in Victoria and two football clubs in Sydney on to planes for Queensland on Thursday.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has shut the door on Sydney residents

The AFL is on the run from coronavirus, packing families in Victoria and two football clubs in Sydney on to planes for Queensland on Thursday as it attempts to keep a step ahead of border closures and quarantine restrictions.

Around 500 players, support staff and families will board chartered planes for Brisbane from Melbourne and Sydney to join teams already in that state.

The AFL is understood to be spending well in excess of $3m a week on flights, hotels and medical costs just to keep the competition going.

Tuesday’s announcement of the closure of the Queensland border to greater metropolitan Sydney this Saturday further complicated matters for the league.

The Swans and Giants received 24 hours’ notice on Wednesday to get out of Sydney and will base themselves in Queensland for the next week before flying to Western Australia for an indefinite period.

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Both sides understand they may be on the road for the rest of the year, not returning until restrictions are lifted or the season finishes.

The league embarked on an all-you-can-eat 33 games in 20 days when the Bulldogs played the Tigers on the Gold Coast on Wednesday night and is planning a similar second wave of games as it attempts to play as much football as it can in as short a time as possible.

Meanwhile, the Sydney-based NRL is happy to tough it out, claiming Tuesday’s announcement that Queensland was shutting its border to Sydney residents changed nothing. One code is as relaxed as the other is cautious.

The NRL already has an exemption to cross the border on the condition its teams adhere to strict biosecurity provisions. Chairman Peter V’landys said as far as he was concerned, nothing had changed.

“Today’s events, from my eye, nothing has changed because we introduced pretty rigorous protocols which the Queensland government approved when the whole border was shut,” V’landys said.

“So logically, nothing has changed. The players are now under self-quarantine and self-isolation and following all the protocols conscientiously. So the exemption should stand like we first got it.

“Unless the government in Queensland notifies us that the exemption is no longer valid, that changes. At the moment they haven’t notified us of that. I am not reacting to something I shouldn’t be reacting to because I believe when we were given the original exemptions, we were in a worse-case scenario than we are now.

“Logically, the exemptions should still apply.”

A spokesman for the Melbourne-based AFL told The Australian it was on a “conservative setting” and was always planning for the worst case.

It was a mix of that caution and a touch of inside knowledge that saw the Indigenous code contact both the Swans and Giants on Tuesday night, alerting both clubs that they could be forced to move out of the state sooner rather than later.

When Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced she was shutting the border to residents of greater Sydney on Wednesday morning she wrong-footed even her NSW counterpart, Gladys Berejiklian, but the footballers were already a step ahead.

Either the AFL has better links than some governments or its crystal ball is of rare quality, but somehow the league has been ahead of the game in the Victorian and NSW pandemic panics.

The AFL admitted it had grown concerned watching reports of COVID-19 clusters in Potts Point and Kings Cross — suburbs close to the SCG.

The Giants and Swans were due to fly to and from Queensland but now will catch separate planes on one-way tickets.

Both sides have games this week and next week in the northern state.

Both teams are understood to be taking full squads and support staff which ruled out sharing a plane and both will train in Sydney before heading to the airport.

The Giants play Gold Coast at Metricon on Sunday and then Essendon on Friday before flying to WA.

Sydney faces St Kilda at the Gabba on Saturday and then Collingwood on Thursday before joining its rivals in Perth.

The league is due to fly about 400 staff and family members, including 170 children, out of Melbourne on Thursday where they will enter a two-week quarantine period before being able to join players.