FOOTBALL Federation Sunraysia (FFS) general manager Susan Watts is hopeful the current S-League season won’t be too heavily impacted by the recent snap lockdown.
With the announcement last week that regional Victoria can return to senior outdoor sport, the local soccer season should be able to resume for all grades from this weekend.
The S-League and junior J-League had a scheduled bye over the long weekend, as junior teams usually attend the Country Leagues Football Association Country Championships in Geelong. This has now been postponed until October due to the lockdown.
“We played with juniors in the round just gone with no spectators and it seemed to work pretty well,” Watts said. “We had no issues in regards to that.
“We have to wait until we hear from Football Victoria for the return-to-play policy to know how it will all look going forward but at least the fact we didn’t have games scheduled last weekend gave us a bit more time to prepare.
“We had discussions with clubs about potentially having a catch-up round for seniors this weekend but we decided against it. At least if we need to play catch-up games we have the ability to play under lights, that might be a way to get a few games in.
“We had discussed potentially having a three-week finals series but if we have to catch up we could also take it back to the regular two to give us an extra week.”
Watts said there was some disappointment from juniors players at not being able to head to Geelong for the annual Country Championships.
“We had about nine teams ready to go down to play but with the lockdown it got postponed and they will take place in October,” she said.
“It’s going to be a pretty busy end of the season. We’ll be hosting the South Australian Country Championships in August, have our end to the season in September and then have these juniors head off in October.”
