Coach wary of risks of reviving season
PREMIERSHIP coach Steve Clark has urged the local football community to tread carefully upon the return to training, believing one case of coronavirus will end the season before it starts.
As his Bellarine Football League club Queenscliff hit the track last night, Clark was confident strict protocols would prevent the spread of COVID-19.
But the Leopold premiership coach is wary that the 2020 season could be abandoned if a player — football or netball — comes down with the virus.
“You don’t have to be Einstein to work out that if someone contracts it, the season is over,” Clark said.
“If you look at the hoops the AFL are having to jump through to be able to play, so if there’s an outbreak, we don’t have the scope to say, ‘Those two teams can’t play this week’.
“If we can get through the next six weeks and there’s less and less cases, there we can move on with confidence that we can make it work.
“But I can understand why AFL Victoria can’t make a decision right now, because if the landscape slides then a lot of people will say ‘Why did you call it so early for’?
“They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.”
While other coaches have expressed frustration at restrictions limiting training to groups of 10, Clark welcomed the move on mental health grounds.
“I’m not worried about if we’re playing in three weeks, five weeks or eight weeks, that’s irrelevant because we don’t know,” he said.
“We’re going to give them the option to train. We want to give them some form of normality with their footy and their exercise because that’s our duty of care as a football club.
“We’ll jump through the hoops as a football and netball club to support our group. If there’s players that are worried about contracting it or it’s issues with motivation or work, we won’t come down hard on them. That’s their choice and that’s what they can do.”