It’s fair to say the AFL has had a battle on their hands getting through the last two seasons, as COVID-19 again sweeps across the country.
While 2020’s shutdown period and hubs were difficult on their own, 2021’s issues have been more challenging thanks to border and lockdown uncertainty across the year.
Come next Saturday, they will have successfully navigated both seasons and earned a few weeks with their feet up.
The question now turns to what 2022 looks like.
AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan said the league’s priority will be injecting life back into community football, particularly in Victoria, as well as AFLW.
“We still think next year will be a tough year, but we’ll bounce out of it. We’re going to need to make sure that when we have money to invest, we do it in the right spots,” McLachlan told Sportsday WA.
“We’re going to prioritise community football. Where that is needed in each state … in Victoria, COVID has had a huge impact in seven to 10-year-olds so that will be our focus, boys and girls coming out of that (age bracket).
“There will be clubs in regional Victoria that need financial help. In West Australia, the area we need to invest more and partner with the government is in the Kimberley.
“Community football coming out of COVID, we’re going to double down on it because we think we’ve got a huge opportunity to be even more dominant and really cement our place.
“The next thing we’ve committed to is rolling out the next four teams of AFLW. AFLW will be a priority.
“The other place of investment is obviously our people. There’s obviously a lot of people who are low on batteries in our game and broader in the community and we need to make sure we do our bit to keep them in the game and make sure they get through this.”
The decision to have a bye week before the AFL Grand Final has been questioned across the board, with people wondering why the league would risk another week of COVID interruptions.
We saw earlier in 2021 that the West Australian government has no problem pulling the pin on AFL crowds at the last possible moment, doing so before the West Coast versus Fremantle Derby only hours before the game.
McLachlan said there was too much uncertainty at the time of needing to make the decision with regards to the quarantine teams and staff would be required to undergo, hence needing the additional week.
“It was clearly a consideration (rolling on without the bye). We’ve kept on rolling, but when we looked ahead and we had to make these calls weeks ago, the biggest challenge is, and you can see it now, where people are coming from, you don’t want to be playing with quarantine,” he said.
“The Bulldogs won’t come out of quarantine until Sunday and so that and with the overlay of getting people in, I’ve got 22 people on the ground here now, and only half came out of quarantine in the last couple of days.
“Just the scale of putting it on, doing it in a couple of days and you’re not really knowing how things would play out, it’s so uncertain.
“That’s the reasoning. That we can actually set up properly and give the teams the best run at it, do it well and clearly we didn’t know what the environment was going to be, but Western Australia generally has done an amazing job keeping this state rolling.”