DAVID Kennedy met with AFL Victoria on Wednesday to discuss plans about local football in light of the recent COVID-19 snap lockdown.
The AFL participation co-ordinator confirmed no Sunraysia Football Netball League, Sunraysia Women’s Football League or Millewa Football League games would go ahead this weekend.
And, no netball games would be played in Sunraysia and Millewa.
Kennedy said he didn’t know when the SFNL matches would be rescheduled – that, he said, was something for the league to sort out.
“Because of the structure of the SFNL they’ll probably play the rounds later on in the year, so there was no use playing the juniors and not the seniors, because they play on the same day,” Kennedy said.
“But I think they’ll be rescheduled for the end of the year, so we’d miss out on round 7 and round 8, and play them after round 18 as round 9 is looking fairly likely, at the moment, to go ahead.”
He said he had a similar understanding when it came to the Millewa League but, again, that was a “league operational issue”.
Kennedy said he was encouraging all Auskick centres to “do something” across the weekend.
“Some centres have said they are going to go ahead with Auskick this weekend. For example, Red Cliffs have said on social media they are going to do it,” Kennedy said.
“By 2pm om Friday, AFL Victoria will have a proper set of guidelines for Auskick centres but at this stage, they can go ahead under COVID-19 rules, and they’ll need QR codes and no more than 50 parents at the venue.”
“From an AFL Victoria perspective, we really want to get all the juniors to have a kick of footy this weekend, whether it be some sort of scratch match or training session.”
When asked if the restrictions around junior and senior footy made sense, Kennedy said: “Well, I can understand them.”
“From a seniors point of view, while there’s a cap of 50 people at a venue, it wouldn’t make sense to run senior football,” he said.
“Senior football costs quite a bit of money to put on when you look at umpiring and officials, so it makes total sense to not play senior games with a crowd of 50 people … clubs would lose too much money.”
It might come as a shock to some, but Kennedy said he hopes the snap lockdown makes people more enthusiastic about footy.
“When you lose something, it makes you more keen to get out and get back amongst it,” he said.
A few months into his participation role with the AFL, Kennedy said he’s learnt a lot.
But the most important thing he’s learnt is the more footballs you get into kids hands at schools, the better the numbers relate back to community football.
“It’s really important to get out into the schools and give them structured training sessions to instill in their mind that footy is a pretty good game,” he said.
