UNCHARTED TERRITORY

have their worlds turned upside-down by the outbreak of this coronavirus.

Suddenly, in the space of a few days, the significance of games of football has diminished greatly. In the grand scheme of things footy has always meant very little anyway, but it is so ingrained in our national psyche that the next 10 weeks — at least — is going to be entirely foreign territory.

For many, football is life, and to have it taken away from them will be a difficult pill to swallow.

This is not just players, coaches and staff, it is the supporters and members of every club. But, as AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan said yesterday in a call to arms to the football public, it will take the efforts of all of us to ensure our game regains its strength when the time comes.

“The AFL industry is facing its biggest financial crisis in our history,” McLachlan said.

“But our key priority is to do everything possible to keep players, staff and supporters healthy and well through this pandemic. Our industry provides livelihoods for thousands and thousands of people but our key focus at the moment, like every organisation in the country, is to do everything that needs to be done to slow the spread of this virus and to keep people as healthy as possible.

“To say that this is the most serious threat to our game in 100 years is an understatement. It is unprecedented in its impact, it is unprecedented in the impact it is having on our game and the wider community, and as a community and as a code we all need to take the unprecedented and required actions to get through this together.

“I know that everyone involved in our game and our millions of supporters will be impacted by this decision and that many people will suffer significant hardship, as are people right across our community. But I also know that we all have a responsibility to the community and to each other, and that we will have to work collectively to overcome this crisis.”

Scott might have been talking about his team last month when he said there was not a lot of room for error, and that if a few things go wrong it could get really difficult really quickly, but the same could easily be said of COVID-19 now.

So, while it is going to be difficult to come to terms with the fact we won’t have football in our lives in the foreseeable future, the AFL has made the right decision.

Football may well be more than a game to thousands of people across our country, but it has never been more important than life itself.