HIGH HOPES
AFL confident it can still play 144 more games
THE AFL has explored “at least 10” different scenarios for how the rest of this season could look and still has “a lot of confidence” it can complete 144 more games at some stage this year.
While the prospect of football returning on May 31 looks unlikely, the league says “that’s the mark” as it stands until it meets to reconsider that timeline later this month.
However, later start dates have also been part of the many scenarios being canvassed.
“There’s certainly a range of things we’re working through and one of the difficult things is we can’t get too far ahead because we need to keep step and keep working with government and medical advice around that,” AFL football operations boss Steve Hocking said yesterday.
“There’s a lot on the table.”
Hocking also revealed that playing in Round 1 provided great insight for how to manage the rest of the season.
“We’ve got a lot of confidence. If you go back to Round 1 and the uncertainty leading into Round 1, we got by because the whole industry was united,” Hocking said. “And getting out of the blocks allowed us to gain a lot of insight, such as rules and some of the changes we made for the season, knowing the season may need to be compressed at some stage. We’ve got oversight of that now. That has helped the industry.”
MARK ROBINSON
Hocking said supporting suburban and country football clubs will be a big focus for the AFL.
“We have to look after the longterm future of the AFL and so many ecosystems live off that,” he said. “It’s so critical to the long-term future of football that all of those areas are healthy. We don’t have a game without those layers underneath.”
A December finish to this season would not necessarily mean a late start to the 2021 season, he added.
Hocking said he was more confident than hopeful that the season would be completed this year, adding that clubs were open to “innovative” ideas including having multiple teams isolated in one city to play a series of matches between each other.
Hocking also emphasised the importance of club members, who have been asked to stay loyal in the crisis.
“Everyone is important in this game. The contribution the fans make, you can certainly put a measure on that after Round 1,” he said.