Four AFL teams likely headed to Queensland to restart season
The four clubs from South Australia and Western Australia appear likely to be in temporary hubs in Queensland as the AFL moves to finalise arrangements for returning to play.
Like West Coast and Fremantle, Port Adelaide had expressed a preference to the AFL for being based in south-east Queensland rather than Victoria.
Port Adelaide are one of four teams set for a temporary move to Queensland.Credit:Getty Images
The AFL, as of Thursday, favoured having Port and the Adelaide Crows in Queensland hubs for a period, enabling those four teams west of the Victorian border to prepare for the season and then play games from Queensland.
The immediate need to temporarily relocate South Australian players and the relevant football staff is largely about training restrictions, since the SA government has put contact training out of bounds until June 8, and those clubs would not be able to train like the other 16 clubs up until that time, unless the SA government changed its position.
Port Adelaide is braced for the prospect of not only training in Queensland, but playing some games there, with uncertainty around when the SA government will relax quarantine restrictions or provide a fly-in, fly-out exemption for the AFL.
The Crows are in the same position as the Power.
The WA government has said it will allow the Eagles and Dockers to contact train from May 25, which means those clubs could make the move to Queensland and a hub later than the Crows and Port Adelaide, whose need to prepare with full contact training would require them to be in another state earlier.
But the Perth teams would still have the closed border problem, which – unless the WA premier changes his tough stance on maintaining a closed border, without an exemption for football – would see them play games in Queensland. It is unclear whether the teams in the prospective Queensland hubs would travel for away games to Melbourne and Sydney.
The expectation is that there would be multiple hubs, rather than just one, in Queensland, in the likely event the AFL needs to accomodate the four clubs from SA and WA.
The Gold Coast was West Coast's preferred option and where at least one hub is likely to be based. The RACV has a hotel with a golf course right next to the Gold Coast's Metricon Stadium and shapes as a potential accomodation venue for the players and staff.
Making arrangements for the SA and WA teams and dealing with their different rules is the major step the AFL needs before announcing a return date, with either Thursday June 11 or June 18 remaining the favoured days for rebooting the season.
Clubs are said to need three weeks of full-bore training before resuming games.
The fixture for the early rounds will not be released until the WA and SA clubs' situations have been resolved and there is a return to play date.