Too late for our leagues to start

THE announcement that community football can start next month would not have changed AFL Barwon’s decision to abandon the season, says chairman Craig Keating.

Premier Daniel Andrews revealed yesterday that local competitions could start from Monday, July 20.

Contact training has been allowed from July 13.

But that announcement would not have allowed enough time to complete a GFL or GDFL season where each side plays each other once and a finals series across four weekends.

The latest a season could have started is July 11 to fit in with the Sunday, October 18, agreement reached between Cricket Victoria and AFL Victoria.

A nine-round BFL season and finals series could have been squeezed in.

Keating said he remained comfortable with the AFL Barwon verdict.

“It wasn’t unexpected but we’d already factored in all those things in our decision,” he said.

“This announcement does not impact on the decision we made last week.”

AFL Barwon said last week it made its call to ensure each club survived the coronavirus.

“We need to have our clubs sustainable (for) 2020, 2021 and beyond,” Keating said.

It hopes to run a modified competition from August 15.

AFL Barwon has a meeting tonight, when it is expected to discuss details.

Keating said clubs were last week sent preliminary plans.

“I know there’s some who have indicated they’ll probably just reset for 2021 and there are others who are waiting for more info,” he said.

“We’ve done a lot of work on it so the clubs will have that detail and we’ll mould that into what will be the best outcome to get people participating and to get clubs open again.”