There are millions of intricacies that complicate this sweeping statement, but at the core, this is why serious doubt surrounds the prospect of a season kicking off this year.
Everything COVID-19-related is subject to change, but timeline-wise, things just don't seem to look good right now; the Federal Government's road map targets social gatherings limited to 100 people "in July", suggesting crowds of 500 (what we'll call the minimum requirement to justify playing matches) mightn't be on the cards until August.
If we can't start a season until August, does anyone really want a season?
We've encountered our first real problem — even if football has use of grounds until the end of October, that's at most 14 Saturdays in which to cram a season.
No district league could run a season in which every side played each other along with an unchanged finals system, so we're immediately heading to the realm of a ‘novelty’ season.
Yes, there are options to get some form of season together — and we will explore a couple today — but unless this timeline gets brought forward in a big way (and that seems unlikely given the approach to date of the Victorian Government) we'd still view the prospects of playing matches with great scepticism.
If we're pushing forward with a season in the post-August time frame, there's a few options to structure it — obviously none of them tick all the boxes, but if it is the will of the clubs then let's get it going.
It's hard to get a sense for the financial implications of a shortened season (or lack thereof) from a club perspective, so perhaps no season at all would be the wisest in their eyes — and at the end of the day, this should be their call.
Make a 2020-21 season
At the end of the day, a great deal of sport is about legacy.
Without making the stereotypical ‘there will be an asterisk on the season’ argument, would footballers and netballers really want to call themselves premiers after a campaign in which they didn't even play every other side?
The simplest solution? Don't play a finals series this year, and roll the 2020 season into the 2021 campaign — a Super Season, if you will.
Whether it's anywhere from six to 10 games, if the matches simply count towards next season's ladder, they remain of the utmost importance while avoiding a finals series lacking prestige.
This gets the ball rolling; the normal processes can be resumed with training and club functions, plus if clubs will still be paying rent and other overheads, getting a degree of gate income would seem pretty important.
This appears a better model in terms of respecting the history of competitions — for example, can you really equate Kyabram's historic third senior football premiership in four years won last year with a flag won in a season with as few as seven regular season games?
You'd imagine players would get more of a kick out of playing competitive games for points rather than scratch matches too, although there would no doubt be many that might not see the point of playing any games without the lure of finals that year.
But the biggest plus of this system is clear; if teams can't play every other at least once, handing out a premiership seems flawed.
Conferences
Off the top, this is not a system Outside The Box finds palatable.
This model would have a competition split down the middle into two conferences, with teams then playing each other until perhaps a top two for each would square off in a finals series.
From a time point of view, this works well as it gets a season wrapped up in a vaguely equitable manner, with no more than 10 weeks needed to get it done.
Obviously, handing out a premiership in a season where teams play half-a-dozen games certainly calls into question how prestigious it would really be, but given the situation coronavirus has put us in, it might just have to do this season.
AFLGM Cup
I'm not entirely sure how this really relates to anything, but if there's ever been a time for an FA Cup-style knockout competition, surely this is it.
If the leagues decide there isn't enough time to run a real season, there's no reason why we couldn't give this little number a run, just to get some form of competition going.
The theory is simple; throw every club from the region's four senior leagues in a hat and draw them out at random, with each match an elimination final until just one remains.
By our count there's 54 teams in the region, so to get a proper bracket working you'd need 10 first-round byes, but you'd be able to run this competition across every grade, using the same bracket across each division to ensure clubs stayed together for at least the first match.
What does it achieve? If only practice matches were to be scheduled, at least you'd get a bit of competition with which to generate a bit of intrigue across the region.
While the strength of the various leagues and how they compare is widely suspect, there's never been a chance to see this proven in a competitive environment, so perhaps this is the time to do so.
