Western Bulldogs president Peter Gordon says there’s a distinct possibility the AFL season will have to be stopped again once it restarts in the coming weeks.
The AFL are expected to next week name a date for the resumption of the current season, as well as providing more information about how the rest of the 2020 football year will look.
There’s a commitment from AFL House to finish the season by October 31, but that could be thrown into doubt if the league is forced to shut down for the second time this year.
Despite infection rates trending in a positive direction, Gordon said there was still a chance the pause button would need to be pushed on the season again.
“There’s a lot of optimism that a Grand Final can be gotten away in October or November," Gordon said on SEN Breakfast.
“Even with that, there’s some experts who suggest there might be continued infectivity in the Australian community in July, August and September.
“People may not be thinking which model do we prepare and which is the easiest to get started because what you needed in that model is sustainability.
“It’s going to be no good to have three or four weeks and then close again … we may have to do that anyway.
“The question of when we play a Grand Final really depends on if we can get 17 rounds in and how long that will take. You’d be optimistic to think that there won’t be some more interruption as this thing goes on.
“It’s unprecedented and you just can’t predict.”
A radical 20-week quarantine hub model dominated discussion last week but it now looks unlikely following the Australian Institute of Sport’s return to play framework which was publicly released on Friday.
Gordon said the worst-case scenario presented to the players on Wednesday was never discussed in the several high-level meetings he’s apart of weekly.
“I don’t know (how the lack of communication occurred),” he said.
“I sit on two committees – one is all of the presidents and the other is what used to be a ‘war cabinet’ and it had never come back in those meetings so I’m not sure who got their wires crossed.
“We looked at a model which allows all of the players to aggregate in a hub for a couple of weeks of pre-season training and then get a couple of games away.
“I woke to the front page headline in the Herald Sun as bewildered as everyone out. I kind of understand frankly how the players had a horrified reaction to it – it’s one of those things that are unfortunate.
“I will say in defence of everything, these are unprecedented times and there’s a lot of massive decisions that have to be made and there’s a lot of stakeholders in the industry so it’s surprising we haven’t had more glitches in terms of communications.
“We wouldn’t ask the players to seclude themselves in a hub for 20 weeks.”