It was most appropriate that on the day football was put to sleep that one of the 500 people at the MCG for the Hawthorn-Brisbane match decided Metallica’s Enter Sandman was an appropriate piece of music to play on the public address system and boom around the cavernous stadium.
Football is off until May 31, given no choice but to shut down together with the rest of the country. We love it dearly, but it doesn’t come close to being considered the type of essential service required to remain open as the nation attempts to blunt COVID-19.
The postponement of the season will have dire implications for the AFL, the clubs and the many others who work in the industries that support the game and prosper because of it. The saddest casualty of all will be AFLW, which was enjoying its best season yet before being abruptly terminated. Two of the weekend’s finals were from the absolute top shelf.
There will be no AFLW premier in 2020.
There remain so many unanswered questions. The game goes into shutdown, but what does that mean? Will clubs be shedding staff on a permanent basis, or will the many talented people in areas such as membership, events, recruiting and fitness and training be put on restricted duties or unpaid leave until the game resumes?
Do the players cease training entirely or can they work out in small groups? Will they be allowed to return to their home states for a period?
What of the season itself? Is a May 31 return date stab in the dark by the AFL or based on the advice given by Australia’s leading health and science experts, who have been made available to the League for widespread consultation these last few weeks?
Gillon McLachlan reiterated on Sunday that there option is there to play the Grand Final as late as November and December. But where? Cricket and in particular the prestigious T20 World Cup would appear to have priority at most avenues around the country through October and November and in particular, the MCG.
When would we trade? When would we draft? Brisbane coach Chris Fagan is on the AFL’s competition committee - he is the representative of all 18 senior coaches - and said in the next few days he will reach out to his colleagues and start to formulate some views as to how the competition might work once the games start again.
The big picture issues facing the game are stark. Is every club financially stable enough to ride out this storm? It is estimated that half the clubs in the competition rely on the League for assistance in some shape or form. These ‘lines of credit’ McLachlan has been talking about, will they come through?
Banks have been known to turn away from football clubs in their times of need before.
None of this is a criticism of McLachlan of course. The AFL chief has led the game superbly through the biggest crisis in its history and has handled himself with aplomb as the situation has changed almost hourly. He looks like he needs a stiff drink and a good lie down. He deserves one.
The game is singing from the same song sheet - coaches, players and officials have fallen in line, which gives us every reason to think that while it may take a considerable period of time, it will recover from this as it as every other threat it has encountered the last 160 years.
It seems almost trite to discuss what happened in the nine games of footy played between Thursday night and Sunday.
What shape and form the game takes place in when it returns remains to be seen, but footy lacks drama, color and excitement when played behind closed doors as a made-for-TV event.
At the MCG on Sunday, there was mild interest in being able to eavesdrop on how players talk on the field. Take away the empty 100,000 seats and it could have been Albert Park on a Saturday afternoon.
There have been suggestions the games lacked physicality, but while the atmosphere was flat, the contests seemed willing enough. There was just plenty of untidy football, but that’s the norm for the first round of the season.
The footy will get better and a few of the teams that were poor - we’re looking at you Adelaide, the Western Bulldogs, Gold Coast and Brisbane - should get better. But they face an agonisingly long wait to do so. That’s why these next few months will stink. Redemption will be a long time coming.
There is a whole lot more out of round one that could be discussed and perhaps even celebrated. But we’re with the rest of the population. This is not the time.