Local Victorian football clubs say ‘stay home’ to prevent virus spread

Local football clubs from across Victoria have joined forces to help spread an important health message in the battle against coronavirus — stay at home. Watch the video.

LOCAL football clubs from across Victoria have joined forces to help spread an important health message in the battle against coronavirus — stay at home.

Spearheaded by Sandown Cobras, from the Southern Football Netball League, the six-minute clip features players and officials from more than 40 suburban and country clubs, as well as an appearance from The Suburban Footballer, Tom Siegert.

More than a dozen country clubs are involved, covering all corners of the state, including Irymple, Horsham, Wodonga Bulldogs and Orbost Snowy Rovers.

The video opens with a short message that includes the hashtag #nothingsbetterthanplayingathome.

Sandown club president Ricky Logan said the video was the idea of club vice-president, Ricky Ettridge.

“He just reached out to a couple of local clubs to start with,” Logan said.

“He thought, I’ll get on Twitter and see if I can get any other clubs, and it just sort of snowballed.

“It’s turned out great.”

Logan said the pair had not taken the message seriously themselves at first, but the gravity of it sunk in when schools started to close.

“Then we’re shutting down our footy seasons, everything’s getting shut down, and you’re still seeing on the internet there’s troves of people going to the beach and people still walking around the shops just shopping and thinking it’s all fun and games,” he said.

“That’s where we got the inspiration to use what little platform we do have online and see if we could get something going.”

Within hours of being posted on the Cobras’ Facebook page last night, the video had been shared almost 200 times, and viewed more than 14,000 times.

“We saw this as an opportunity to do something good for the community and get the message out there, and hopefully a few more people actually listen to it,” Logan said.