As pubs and clubs prepare for the AFL Grand Final weekend, venues along the border in regional Victoria are frustrated that they will only be allowed to have 10 people inside on the day while just over the river venues will welcome hundreds through their doors.
Echuca Workers Club general manager Erin Langman said there was normally a good atmosphere in the club on Grand Final day, but not this year.
"There will be virtually no-one in here — there'll be 10 people in here, that's it," she said.
Ms Langman said if they were operating under the same rules as New South Wales the club could admit close to 300 people.
The club has received permission to have a 20 patrons on the footpath outside.
Just over the bridge in Moama, pubs and clubs will be open to hundreds, with density limits of one person per four square metres inside and one person per two square metres outside.
Ms Langman said it was a blow to have to operate in such a limited capacity.
"It doesn't help our business at all," she said.
Both sides struggling
While venues across the border in NSW will be open to many more patrons, they say it is devastating to see what is happening in Victoria.
Moama RSL chief executive Ashley Menzies said pubs and clubs in Echuca Moama were like brothers and sisters.
"It's devastating, we don't want to see that happen in our twin towns," he said.
He said the last two years had been terrible.
"We do rely on a lot of Melbourne and northern Victorian people," Mr Menzies said.
"People that are outside the bubble are still not allowed to attend, so that will certainly limit our numbers."
Calls to be treated as one
Venues on both sides of the border are calling for one set of rules to be established for border communities to make it easier for communities and businesses.
Rich River Golf Club marketing and sales manager Paul Lavars said cross-border clubs had been calling for uniformity for quite some time.
"The last two years it's felt like I've lived in a different country," he said.
Nationals Leader and Member for Murray Plains Peter Walsh said under the current rules hospitality businesses could not turn a profit.
"They are reopening effectively to reconnect with their staff, because they are worried when we do free up they just won't have the staff in the future," he said.
He said the government needs to have a better understand of how border community's work.
"Echuca Moama and all the other cross-border communities are one community and we've got a real inequity at the moment," Mr Walsh said.
