“This unprecedented situation requires an unprecedented response (but) football will find a way through.”
It was mid-March, days out from the AFL’s traditional season opener between Richmond and Carlton, and chief executive Gillon McLachlan warned us this wasn’t going to be a routine year.
Not many understood then just how different it would be. Perhaps, not even McLachlan.
The AFL, like the rest of the world, spent this year under threat from COVID-19, the wildly infectious disease that snuck up on everyone.
At the same time, McLachlan was right that football would find a way to largely plough on.
The AFL’s strangest season yet will climax on Saturday night with its later-than-usual Grand Final – not at the ‘home of Australian Football’, the MCG, but instead in rugby league territory at the Gabba.
In response, the AFL organised for a slab of MCG turf to be dug up, transported to Brisbane and implanted in the Gabba surface.
It’s been that sort of year.
McLachlan and co. slashed five games from all 18 clubs’ fixture, foreshadowing an extended mid-season break that would make difficult the task to complete a normal season.
There were still arduous meetings with key government figures held until the night before round one, to determine if the season would begin on time.
That the AFL pushed on was somewhat controversial, given the Formula One event in Melbourne the previous weekend was cancelled and most major sports across the world pressed pause.
Games were subsequently shortened in duration and played in front of eerily empty stadiums.
Yet the round wasn’t even over before McLachlan fronted the media again to announce the season would be indefinitely suspended.
His message was even more forthright: “To say this is the most serious threat to our game in 100 years is an understatement.”
Plenty happened between that fateful announcement and Richmond and Geelong booking their Grand Final spots at the weekend.
Hundreds of club and AFL staff were stood down, and a good chunk went on to lose their jobs permanently in the ensuing months.
The footballers accepted a 50 per cent pay cut for April and May that briefly increased to 70 per cent when the season didn’t resume until June 11.
Meanwhile, the AFL borrowed a whopping $600m in a bail-out measure to keep the game afloat.
Players couldn’t train in more than twos for months while matches were on hold, then full-contact training was banned even once teams resumed together.
Essendon’s Conor McKenna was the sole AFL footballer to test positive to the coronavirus, sparking a media storm – one that drew the Irishman’s ire – as the Bombers’ match with Melbourne was postponed.
There were two ‘festivals of footy’ that saw games played almost every night and teams often backing up only four days after their previous hit-out.
Then there were the drama-filled breaches.
The AFL slapped Magpie Steele Sidebottom with a four-match ban for his alcohol-fuelled night that rolled into the next morning and ended with a police car ride home.
Another involved Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley and former professional player Alicia Molik trading groundstrokes in Perth, an action that cost the Pies a big fine.
Rookie Swan Elijah Taylor was caught sneaking his girlfriend into the club’s quarantine hub and was suspended for the rest of the year. There were others, too – and that brings us to the Tigers.
No club’s been more successful in recent seasons than Damien Hardwick’s Richmond, which won the 2017 and 2019 flags and wedged a preliminary final appearance in between.
However, Hardwick’s men were a constant talking point this year for the wrong reasons.
They voiced their concerns louder than most when the AFL first presented the option of spending months away interstate in quarantine hubs.
Premiership players Bachar Houli and Shane Edwards (rightly) stayed home with their pregnant partners when Victorian clubs fled elsewhere to avoid border lockdowns and keep the season going.
Tigers captain Trent Cotchin’s wife, Brooke, naively but blatantly broke the AFL’s COVID-19 rules when she attended a day spa and the fallout was public and ugly.
By the time intoxicated pair Sydney Stack and Callum Coleman-Jones engaged in a fight outside a Surfers Paradise strip club, Richmond was the clubhouse leader for off-field indiscretions.
Throw in the Tigers’ at-times questionable locker room antics and key forward Tom Lynch’s over-zealous physicality with opponents, and it wouldn’t have been a surprise to see them unravel.
Instead, the other constant was they kept winning. In a season where so much changed, Richmond produced more of the same.
A third flag in four seasons would qualify these Tigers for dynasty status, but the Cats – a side that excels at rebuilding on the run – won’t be a pushover.
The Grand Final also doubles as the great Gary Ablett junior’s 357th and last game before retirement.
It took until the last game of the year, but football storylines finally prevailed.
Marc McGowan is an experienced sports journalist who’s covered Australian Football and tennis at the highest level. Now a freelancer, he worked most recently for AFL.com.au and has been published in The Herald Sun, The NT News, The Daily Telegraph, The Courier-Mail, The Australian and Australian Tennis Magazine. Marc completed an Honours degree in Communications from Monash University and has won awards for his feature writing.
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