AFL legal council Andrew Dillon has confirmed Essendon’s future matches will go ahead as long as the club has 22 fit and healthy players eligible for selection.
Essendon’s Conor McKenna tested positive to COVID-19 on Saturday, with the club’s clash against Melbourne postponed and the club put into lockdown for deep cleaning.
Players are scheduled to be tested again on Tuesday and have been ordered to stay away from the club until further notice.
The Bombers are scheduled to play Carlton next Saturday night at the MCG but rather than postpone more matches, Dillon says matches involving Essendon would continue to be played even if more players landed up testing positive in the coming days.
“Leaving the coronavirus out of it, the AFL rules are pretty clear on this,” Dillon told 3AW.
“As long as you’ve got 22 players and got a couple of emergencies, then you’re able to field a team and that’s probably getting ahead of where we are now but that’s how it would play out.”
Dillon confirmed the AFL still weren’t aware how McKenna managed to contract the virus and would work with the Department of Health to find out where he could’ve picked it up.
“(How McKenna picked up the virus) hasn’t been identified and that will be something that DHHS will try and identify that about whether it can go back to a known cluster or if it’s community transmission,” he said.
“They’d take it back from Friday’s testings and go from there (on tracing where he went).”