It is the AFL way to take positives from the negatives, a defence mechanism of sorts that allows players and coaching staff to work past defeat and reset for the next challenge. In footy parlance, it is how clubs take it one game at a time. Now the game itself must find a way to extract positives from a positive after Essendon’s Conor McKenna contracted Covid-19, delivering the season yet another existential threat.
The collateral damage to this point is minimal. As it stands, Essendon’s game against Melbourne yesterday, postponed indefinitely, can be slotted in some time down the track. In reducing the season to 17 rounds, and remaining open to playing deep into the calendar year, the AFL factored in disruptions such as this. Off the record, the AFL is surprised it has taken this long to record a positive from more than 13,000 tests taken. Whether it is pleasantly surprised is another matter entirely.
There is no suggestion Essendon are guilty of wrongdoing. Hygiene and testing protocols – which the AFL trumpets proudly as “tougher than the community standard” – were followed to the letter. But thorough testing does no more than identify the problem. In Essendon’s case the horse was out and the gate shut when McKenna returned a positive on Saturday, having already trained with his teammates the day before following a negative test taken two days prior.
In total, McKenna was tested seven times after returning to Melbourne from Ireland on 16 May and serving his mandatory 14-day isolation period. He admitted attending a house inspection on Wednesday and is reported to have visited his foster family prior to his positive test. The AFL, which has already meted out four penalties for coronavirus-related breaches, is now investigating McKenna’s movements.
If this is as bad as it gets – one confirmed case of Covid-19 and a slightly compromised fixture – season 2020 will survive. If this is the thin edge of the wedge, however, the AFL’s chest-beating over protocols and hygiene will be as meaningful as an umbrella in a tsunami. One thing it cannot do is babysit the players, as much as it might like to. Essendon now await the results of contact tracing, with the AFL and health officials to pore over video of Friday’s full-contact session in which McKenna participated, and could be spotted performing that most macho display of fluid removal: the bushman’s blow.
It is thought the Irishman mainly came into contact with up to eight teammates in the Bombers’ defensive line during an indoor weights session. These players, plus anyone else deemed to have come into close contact with McKenna during the main session, will likely be forced into two weeks of quarantine. Essendon may yet be expected to field a team against Carlton on Saturday night if their numbers are not gutted.
“The AFL rules are pretty clear,” its legal counsel, Andrew Dillon, said on Sunday. “As long as we have 22 players and a couple of emergencies, you are able to have a team.” With the extent of Essendon’s suffering yet to be known, and Melbourne also impacted, one option open to the AFL is to yield to the West Australian clubs’ demands to leave Queensland and later in the season establish a hub in Perth featuring affected teams. But at the moment planning for tomorrow is planning for the unknown. The coronavirus has taught us to expect only the unexpected.
The AFL’s diligence in making the best out of a bad situation is hard to fault. In resurrecting the season, it set up a house of cards on the firmest ground it could muster. But it is a house of cards nonetheless. If the AFL has committed one misstep it was to last week ease the social restrictions placed upon the players. Golf, fishing, surfing, entertaining immediate family members and teammates in their homes: these were concessions handed to them as if to signify an awakening from the slumber of Covid-19.
The timing could not have been worse. Victoria is presently on the crest of a second wave, extending its state of emergency after announcing 19 new cases on Sunday – 10 of which are thought be to the result of community transmission. Expect those concessions to be taken back by the AFL quick smart.
So far, none of McKenna’s teammates has tested positive. But this could all change in the coming days. It is a scenario the AFL has planned for but is dreading all the same. Worse still, lurking in the shadows is a repeat of the McKenna incident at another club. The AFL has some wiggle room to pull off its 17-round season by year’s end, but it faces a logistical nightmare if Essendon and McKenna prove not to be an isolated incident. The house of cards will take only so much punishment before descending to ground zero.
Fighting Covid-19 was never going to be easy for any sport not willing to close its shutters and wait patiently for the pandemic to disappear. The AFL can implement the best procedures, lay the best plans, but Gillon McLachlan and his code remain at the mercy of one irrefutable face. While Covid-19 is still among us, it is the virus calling the shots.
