COVID may down Bombers

ESSENDON chief executive Xavier Campbell says the club may ask the AFL to postpone Saturday’s game against Carlton if the entire backline has to be quarantined.

It was revealed on Sunday the entire defensive unit was involved in sessions on Friday with COVID-positive teammate Conor McKenna.

Although the AFL has said if Essendon has 26 available players the match can be played, Campbell suggests the Dons will lobby for an alternative solution if many players are quarantined.

“We would expect common sense when the league works through this,” he said yesterday. “They have done a tremendous job and created flexibility in the season where we could stretch it out and where we could have breaks.

“We may have to have breaks based on existing state border closures anyway so I would like to think we would sit down with the AFL and others and we could work through it so there would be a reasonable outcome.”

The AFL earlier ticked off Essendon’s handling of McKenna’s positive COVID-19 test, despite him attending a meeting with the team’s defenders while waiting for a “pending” result.

Essendon has handed its video footage of training to the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as a log of all meetings and sessions in the 72 hours before McKenna’s positive test was revealed on Saturday afternoon.

The club is awaiting judgment on how many players will be quarantined, with the club’s eight best defenders all having been in contact with McKenna at least four times in the 24 hours before the positive result was known.

“I think what happened was when he turned up for training, they were doing stuff on Saturday morning and as they were checking players off it was noted they hadn’t had the response back,” AFL legal counsel Andrew Dillon told Triple M yesterday.

“So while they were waiting for tests to come back – and sometimes it might just be an oversight that the test hasn’t come through with the other ones – when they followed that up they got feedback it was an irregularity and from that time he was then tested and it was from there the positive test came back.

“Essendon ... have kept meticulous records of what players have done ... so that has been forwarded through to the department late last night.”

Dillon said the DHHS would review the club footage to decide who had been in “close contact”.