Let the kids get back to sport
AFL players have been cleared to train and play matches, but their youngest fans are still not able to play the game they love.
After months of lockdown, the resumption of organised junior sport should be a priority, but it’s bogged down in a quagmire of rules, red tape and shifting goalposts.
Adults are being given exemptions to allow them to train and play. But kids – who are at much lower risk of transmitting and catching the coronavirus – still don’t know when they’re going to be playing sport again.
It’s because the regulations clubs are required to follow are onerous and ridiculous.
Kids want and need to play sport with their friends, and politicians have a duty to make this happen.
They need to stop treating parents like idiots who will do the wrong thing, put in some simple guidelines to keep everyone safe, and get on with it.
Junior and community sporting clubs have been cleared to start training sessions again from Monday night, but most clubs are weeks away from this happening.
And they have no idea when or how matches might take place unless the rules are changed significantly. You can’t play non-contact footy – it simunveiled ply won’t happen. It’s absurd. Kids can now play in playgrounds, go to the skate park and sit next to each other in school classrooms, but they can’t play sport that keeps them fit and active.
It would be different if our rate of COVID-19 infections was soaring, but it’s not. The few new cases are linked to existing outbreaks or travellers returning from overseas. Just nine people are in hospital and 420,000 people have been tested in this state since January. Our kids are not at great risk – in fact they’re barely at risk at all, especially not from each other.
Clubs face issues with the availability of grounds now used by schools or other sports, higher demands on already-stretched volunteer parents and pointless social distancing of low-risk kids. Complicating matters is the blueprint for sports training and matches by the Federal Government and Sports Australia over the weekend.
The Sport Australia Return to Sport document is not so much a road map, but a dead end. It’s so complicated and demanding that clubs are struggling to make sense of it, let alone meet its gruelling measures.
How can you ensure one person per four square metres in under-eights footy?
There’s an obsession with details, such as ensuring players put their bags 1.5m apart. How ridiculous is that?
Some of the suggestions don’t even make sense. Only one parent can come, but they have to stay in the car.
But if they’re in the car, why does it matter how many are there?
Club officials must bring in a COVID-19 safety plan that addresses transmission risk, transmission controls, hygiene and behavioural controls.
They have to liaise from no fewer than six different bodies, including the World Health Organisation, the Australian Institute of Sport and the Federal Government. And they’re held to account if anything goes wrong.
Let’s remember that the average footy, soccer or netball committee member is a volunteer parent squeezing in meetings after dinner.
And yet they’re being treated like frontline health workers who are responsible for the infection controls of their entire club.
They do not have the time to develop a “sponsorship servicing strategy”, worry about the compliance of contractors, consider a resourcing plan, or record, share and store personal data of spectators in relation to infection controls
At a league level it’s even worse, with officials undertaking risk reviews of “the risk of a localised outbreak in your area”.
This includes “review the adequacy of your existing risk controls”.
All the focus is on protecting the health of a group of kids who are low risk anyway.
Let’s not forget that most of these kids will be at school where they will not be adhering to social distancing in the classroom and playground.
Our low COVID-19 rates show we can be trusted to do the right thing.
It’s sad that the biggest risk to junior sport right now is not COVID-19, but sporting bodies putting in place unnecessary and unachievable goals.
Parents are not idiots, and we shouldn’t be treated like this.