FOOTBALL Federation Sunraysia general manager Susan Watts remains hopeful the S-League season can be completed.
With the current lockdown restrictions having put all sporting competitions on hold, fears are held over the status of the 2021 campaign for most leagues.
Soccer in Mildura however has a couple of advantages over other outdoor sports in this situation – being grounds and how seasons work.
No other sport utilises the pitches at Aero Ovals’ Soccer Park, meaning the season could be extended.
Many soccer leagues around the world don’t play finals series, so league winners could be decided just by playing enough home-and-away games if finals are scrapped.
Watts said discussion had not yet been held with clubs with restriction rules being an ever-changing beast.
“From my perspective, it’s just looking from day-to-day at the moment. Even last month when we were basically one week on, one week off it still seemed to work,” she said.
“We’ll just focus on trying to get as much done as possible for the season, and if it comes down to it, we may have to drop the finals series. We do have a summer sevens planned but we could shorten that if we need to complete the season in a fourth term.
“One of the big plusses for us is that there is no one else who comes in to use our fields after the season, so we could extend further into the year if we need to.
“That is an option, but there hasn’t been any discussion surrounding that because everything seems to change so quickly.”
Watts said the main issue with extending the season into later months would be that a number of junior players could already have turned to their summer sports.
“If that was the case, we could be playing games short of numbers, but we’ll wait and see what comes of that,” she said.
“All the clubs have been really good and when I’ve made decisions they’ve all been getting behind them and getting things done. Everyone has been pretty patient, which helps.”
Mildura City were likely to confirm their 2021 S-League Senior Men’s title on Sunday before lockdown hit, while Irymple Knights could have put themselves further in front of City in the Senior Women’s title race.
