Victorian clubs on the move

All ten Victorian clubs will be forced to play interstate from round six, as COVID-19 cases to continue to spike in the state.

The AFL today announced the revised round 6/7 fixtures, with all teams to be playing outside of their home states as part of next weekend's matches.

Games will now be played in Queensland, New South Wales and Perth, while Adelaide will return home to play at the Adelaide Oval on Monday July 20th as part of the round seven fixtures.

Four Victorian clubs in North Melbourne, Richmond, Essendon and the Western Bulldogs will be based in Queensland, Melbourne and Hawthorn will relocate to New South Wales and Geelong and Collingwood will still head West to be part of a WA footy hub.

Carlton and St Kilda, who played in the first match of round five on Thursday night will both be based in Noosa, South East of Queensland and will play matches in both Queensland and New South Wales as part of their hub arrangements.

AFL Chief Executive Gillon McLachlan said the announcement today was the next step as the AFL continued to make the necessary changes to navigate the impact of Covid-19 on the 2020 AFL Premiership season.

“The health and safety of our people and the wider community is paramount.  We will continue to make decisions that are anchored in the advice of Governments and designed to protect our people and the wider community.” 

“I have said on a number of occasions that this would be a season of challenges.  And that the one certainty is that before we completed the 2020 Toyota AFL premiership season there would be more unique challenges along the way.”

“I want to thank the Governments in NSW, Queensland and WA for their support in helping us set up a series of high-performance centres that will see interstate teams based in their state in accordance with all the strict local protocols and playing games,”

“I would also like to thank all of our clubs, players, coaches, umpires and officials for their continued support and ability to adapt quickly as we navigate through the changing environment.”

The remaining eight games of round five will be played as scheduled.

IMAGE: The Mercury.