Victoria’s country football leagues’ seasons interrupted by statewide lockdown

Victoria’s country football leagues are rapidly putting plans in place for their seasons following the announcement of a statewide lockdown.

Country footy leagues are putting in plans for their seasons after lockdown was announced for Victoria.

Country football across Victoria is to shut down under the rules laid out this morning by the State Government in response to a growing outbreak of coronavirus.

The growing list of public exposure sites includes Cohuna Recreation Reserve on Saturday afternoon where the Central Murray match between Cohuna Kangas and Tooleybuc Manangatang was taking place, as well as businesses in Axedale and Bendigo.

While many leagues are hoping to reschedule the affected matches to later in the season, the Central Murray and Golden Rivers leagues have announced their rounds are to be abandoned. And even though the restrictions do not come into effect until midnight tonight, AFL Central Victoria has recommended that training be cancelled tonight “given we have had exposure sites within the region”.

The Bendigo league was one of the last to pull the pin on last year’s season, and league manager Cameron Tomlins said throughout that time there had been plenty of discussions about various contingency plans.

“Even though we’re disappointed, we’re in a pretty good spot in that we understand and had a lot of discussions last year about what we might be able to do, and we put a guiding principles document in the off-season together,” he said.

“If we lose just one round of matches – which hopefully that’s the best case – we are probably still on track to reschedule this weekend and continuing on pretty well unimpacted, hopefully.”

Tomlins said the league had scheduled byes “strategically” throughout the season. One was turned into a split round for Round 6, which was completed last weekend.

There is also a general bye in July for the school holidays.

Country football clubs have a list of coronavirus protocols to follow for training and matches. Tomlins said the news of a case attending a country sporting match was a reminder for the whole community against complacency.

“On the whole all community clubs have handled themselves very responsibly this year and taken on board those additional responsibilities really well,” Tomlins said.

“Our volunteers across the board are stretched and they were before Covid was even a thing, but they’ve really taken it in their stride.

“It is a bit of a reminder about becoming complacent because there might have been some complacency in certain areas, not specific to community sport, regional in general, so just a reminder to make sure we’re doing the basic things really well.”

The Ballarat Football League was already preparing for the possibility of a lockdown from early in the week, league manager Shane Anwyl said. Even a lockdown of just metropolitan Melbourne would severely impact its senior competition, which has three clubs – Melton, Melton South and Sunbury – falling within Greater Melbourne.

The senior competitions of football and netball have the option of playing this weekend’s games on the Queen’s Birthday long weekend.

“That decision will be made after discussions with clubs because a lot of people will have already planned time off for that weekend, so it will depend on the availability of players, volunteers and the like,” Anwyl said.

He described the interruption at this stage to be a “little hiccup” but had concerns about the impact if there were any longer or ongoing restrictions.

“Should this be ongoing for a number of weeks, that’s when it becomes a real concern not just for the league – the league can probably ride it out a bit better – but clubs, particularly around their volunteers and members,” he said.

“It’s been really important getting back to football and netball and I think across the state every league would report increased crowds and that’s a result of people wanting to get back involved in their communities, which football and netball plays a big part of.

“To have that suddenly stop again I think is going to have an impact on individuals also, and clubs will continue to do really good work with keeping them engaged and so on.”

Heathcote league president Peter Cole said he had concerns about what crowd sizes may be allowed once restrictions lift.

“Our clubs said at the start of the year if we’re not going to play with crowds, we won’t play,” he said.

“I can’t see us coming back next week with full crowds like we’re allowed to, up to 5000 – I’m thinking it might be 500, and then a week later another 500 or something like that. I’d be very surprised if they said you can play community football again and go back to your crowd limits.”

In the Western border league on the Victoria-South Australia border, the match between the league’s only Victorian club, Casterton-Sandford, and East Gambier has been postponed, but the other two matches – Millicent against West Gambier and North Gambier versus South Gambier – will go ahead as scheduled.

League president Michael Summers said the game would be replayed when the clubs and league could agree on a date, with one possibility is to play on a league bye on July 10 when the South Australian Country Championships are scheduled.

“Hopefully it is only the one week we have to talk about this, so fingers crossed,” he said.

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