Looking at the Aussie and US bubbles, we’re worlds apart

NEWS has reached us from the world of Australia regarding just how they are handling the return to play in Aussie Rules Football, and you better hope the young county footballers, hurlers and camogs don’t hear too much about it ahead of their own comeback.

For a start, the AFL booked out the luxury Mercure Gold Coast Resort in Carrara, where the WAGS and children of players were in quarantine for a fortnight.

Apparently, this ran to a cost of $3m Aussie dollars (£1.64m) a week for 288 wives and partners, 170 children, and 12 — you’d have to say beleaguered — AFL officials.

In such hot-housing conditions, you’d imagine there could be all sorts of tensions. Luckily, an ‘insider’ did so for The Herald Sun who reported, by way of taster, that one player asked if his partner could take a puppy with them.

Another wife sent her children out of the bubble with their grandparents for a day out in a theme park, which sort of flies in the face of the spirit in which this whole operation is intended.

We should have some sympathy here too. It’s not simple. For example, nobody was permitted to sunbathe on the beach, but they could exercise on it. You could go for a coffee, but it had to be a takeaway and you had to keep moving rather than sitting over it.

Still, that couldn’t stop some from filling up their Instagrams with bikini pics and fishing for #Livingmybestlife likes and shares.

Now that business has been taken care of, the families have united in various ‘club hubs’. At these venues, Tinder dates have been turned away at the door.

In America, the National Basketball Association have had their own difficulties as everyone has stepped inside a Florida bubble to complete their competition.

They elected to virtually cocoon all players and separate them from families altogether, but that may become relaxed in the coming weeks as outlined by a recent memo at the end of last week.

However, that memo excludes prohibited guests. You won’t be allowed to bring in a chef, for example. Or a tattoo artist. Or an individual you have not met before — whatever that means.

Meanwhile, we batter on in the GAA, the only restriction being not to change into team gear in the same room.

And the GAA have explicitly stated that they will take no part in testing players for coronavirus.

Funny old game, Greavsie.