Queensland has implemented a 14-day quarantine period for all sports teams who play against a Melbourne team in Queensland, play in Melbourne or play another team that has recently been in Melbourne.
The move comes after 75 new cases of COVID-19 in Victoria and the postponement of Thursday night’s Richmond versus West Coast game.
Melbourne, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Carlton will be the teams impacted by this across the next fortnight following the latest fixture release.
Channel 7’s Ryan Daniels broke down everything that has happened this morning.
“I was told late last week from the Queensland government that they were monitoring the situation, but at that stage nothing had changed. Now obviously over the course of the weekend things have escalated a little,” Daniels told SEN’s Whateley.
“That’s led to basically no Victorian teams will be coming into this state for the time being.
“It’s shifted everything with the AFL fixture. A lot of the hub teams have played each other already. We’re running out of games played.
“Richmond were supposed to come up here and play West Coast on Thursday night, that game can’t happen at this stage up here so that game is being shifted.
“West Coast will now play Sydney on Saturday here on the Gold Coast and Richmond will play Melbourne on Sunday in Victoria.
“The other game that’s had to be shifted at this point is Carlton and St Kilda will move to the prime-time Thursday night slot.
“There’s a lot of issues here. The Suns are flying into Melbourne to play Geelong in Geelong so that needs to be taken into account.
“You would think that needs to be shifted too in some way. If you’ve got a team that isn’t allowed to fly in, how can the Suns come back without having to quarantine in some way.
“It’s my understanding at this stage that the Sydney teams will be heavily relied upon to join the hub at this stage or fly in and fly out from Queensland, they’re okay to do that.
“Obviously GWS versus Fremantle is the most likely for next week, but that’s not confirmed just yet.”
Daniels adds that the current plan for Geelong and Collingwood to quarantine in Western Australia has not yet changed.
“It is (going to go ahead). The stance from WA is that the quarantine the Cats and the Magpies are going to do when they come into WA is a hard quarantine. It’s very different to what’s happening up here in the hub where players can come and go,” he said.
“It’s a much harder quarantine that can catch any cases in there.”
QLD Health Minister releases new guidelines for QLD teams or QLD-based teams who play in Victoria.
— 7AFL (@7AFL) June 29, 2020
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Might be an applicable time to post this again... #AFL #COVID19Vic pic.twitter.com/ee5YTlxzfH
— Jacob Landsmeer (@jlandsme_93) June 29, 2020