Never mind HTB and "no prior", I think the bigger AFL crisis right now is what's going to happen to the 2020 season. I'm not sure why there hasn't been more media and BF discussion of this ... but perhaps I'm out of the loop.
Uncertainty continues as AFL faces further fixture upheaval with new SA Covid-19 rules
The South Australian government’s decision to follow Queensland and introduce quarantine rules for its teams has thrown the AFL’s fixture planning into further turmoilwww.theguardian.com
The AFL has been trickle feeding us the fixture, a few rounds at a time. However they are soon going to hit the crunch - when and how are Vic teams going to play the interstate teams? GWS and Sydney seem more manageable at this stage due to NSW keeping the borders open (so far) but the other 6 teams are a challenge.
- As it stands no Victorian side can go to Qld, SA or WA without spending two weeks in quarantine. At least that's my understanding - correct me if wrong. In fact I think nobody is allowed to visit Perth at all right now.
- Also no side from outside Victoria can enter Qld within two weeks of having played a Victorian side unless they go through 2 weeks quarantine. That might also apply to SA.
- Having at least one ground in Melbourne - Whitten Oval - in a lockdown zone for the next month certainly doesn't make life any easier but at least it should count as a workplace so hopefully it won't be too disrupted.
Below is the 2020 fixture in tabular form where every side plays every other side just once. There is one game shown in red - that's the postponed Ess v Melb game. I'm treating that as having been played, for current purposes. The white cells are the easy games to schedule. They are the ones where a club plays a local rival (eg Adelaide v Port, WB v Richmond, Geelong v Carlton, etc).
The coloured cells (yellow/orange/green) are the tricky ones. They are where a WA, SA or Qld team plays a Vic team. Green means it has already been played (phew!). Orange means it's scheduled in the next three rounds (5-7) and yellow just means there is no date or round announced for that game yet.
To keep it simple I've made all Sydney and GWS cells white because those two teams are allowed to go anywhere and play anyone, and every side is allowed to play in Sydney. However it won't be quite that simple from here on because of the 14-day quarantine requirement in Qld (&SA?) if they've just played a Vic team ... or another side that itself has just played a Vic team.
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The AFL's problem is that they've been plucking the low-hanging fruit. That is, they've steadily been playing the games in the white cells and very few of those in the coloured cells. This strategy of "taking it three weeks at a time" works if the Covid19 restrictions are steadily eased as the season progresses and/or if rotating hubs can be set up in various cities for blocks of a few weeks at a time without any of the sides having to do a stint in quarantine.
The spike of cases in Victoria and the response from the governments of SA, Qld and potentially NSW has now turned that strategy on its head.
There are 153 H&A games to be played this year. Of those 153 games, 97 (63.4%) are white-cell or easy games and 56 (36.6%) are coloured-cell or tricky games to schedule.
A table probably expresses it best.
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You can see that only 8.3% of the games played so far are "tricky" ones. By the end of Rd 7 this will have improved to 15.9% but it's still way less than the overall 36.6%.
This means that for the remainder of the season (Rds 8-17) 51.1% of all games still to be played are counted as "tricky" to schedule. And this is with interstate restrictions getting tougher over at least the next month and with Victorian health officials saying the Covid19 spike will get worse before it gets better.
Also if you have a look at the 7 "tricky" games they have scheduled over the next three rounds (orange cells) you have to wonder whether some or all of those will be able to go ahead. All but two of them involve an interstate team playing in Victoria. Will GCS still come to Geelong this week?
And then GWS have to play Port in Rd 6 after playing Hawthorn in Rd 5, and Sydney have to play Brisbane in Rd 7 the week after playing Carlton in Rd 6. As it stands I think they'd both be required to go through a 2-week quarantine period following their game against a Vic side.
I don't know if all my information and assumptions are correct but one thing seems certain - it's a real mess and it's only going to get messier. It looks like the AFL is rapidly painting itself into a corner. Some rounds might have to be delayed or played in a staggered fashion unless they can get creative.
As I see it, one workable option might be to quickly play as many of the easy intra-Victorian games as possible, leaving mostly tricky ones. There are about 20 games left involving Vic teams playing each other so this could be done over about 4 rounds.
Then send all Vic teams interstate for a 2 week quarantine hiatus and after that have them play out the rest of the season (Rds 12-17 plus some or all finals) in interstate hubs.
Another option might be to do it in 2-3 stages. Geelong and Collingwood are already due to head out next month. So maybe another 3 clubs could join them in extended hubs playing only interstate sides, not each other. When those hubs are completed they could come back home and start playing each other while the remaining five Vic sides head interstate to replicate the exercise.
Love it, spreadsheets, data, in-depth analysis. Are you really Antony Green?!
