JUST before the NBA season was shut down, LeBron James said if there were no fans in the stands, he would not play.
The fans are the game, he said — without them we don’t have a game.
While the NBA is a multi-billion-dollar business, the same premise applies to community footy and netball here in Australia.
Unless the gates can be thrown open to fans, there can be no community football and netball. One can’t survive without the other.
The Sunraysia Football Netball League made a tough call this week to virtually put a line through the 2020 season.
The only way a season will get under way will be a lifting of social distancing restrictions due to the coronavirus. And that lifting of restrictions would have to be allowing mass gatherings of 600-odd people.
In the current world, that is not going to happen. Certainly not for many months, perhaps the entire year.
Since LeBron made his statement, a lot in the world has changed.
Professional sports will be played in front of empty stadiums, as those various sporting organisations try and generate some revenue through television rights.
In Australia, our two major football leagues, the AFL and NRL, are plotting returns within months, which could involve dragging players interstate and placing them in Olympic-village type hubs for up to two months.
Desperate times call for such desperate measures.
But local football and netball clubs don’t have television rights as a revenue stream they can call on.
Even if most players decided to play for nothing, local clubs still have many outgoing costs to cover.
Players need taping, umpires need to be paid, new footballs purchased, the list goes on.
Yet all the incoming revenue streams such as canteens, bars, gate takings, even Thursday night meals in the rooms, have been cut off.
The bottom line is, if clubs were to play games this year without crowds, it would have damaging financial implications.
By taking a strong stance this week, the SFNL has taken the pressure away from clubs.
The economic impact of the coronavirus has been felt everywhere, but in terms of community football into the future, it may force clubs to reset their financial priorities.
Just like the AFL, there needs to be a salary cap adjustment and players will need to accept less money than they have been getting.
This isn’t a bad thing.
I was talking to a footy manager at my old Gippsland club who was saying players these days have an overinflated sense of entitlement and their abilities.
They’ll be 20 years old with 10 games’ senior experience, but it’s still like negotiating with Jerry Maguire to sign them up.
Forget about whether this was the junior club that had nurtured them, the taking happens before the giving back has even started.
For all the damage of coronavirus, my hope is we emerge through it with a better sense of community and what that means.
It may teach us to again better appreciate the simple things in life; like having a game of footy or netball with your mates and then enjoying each other’s company in the rooms afterwards.
I bet players across Sunraysia would be happy to pay for that privilege this year.
We can’t wait for their return.
