Jon Ralph said, at this stage, Gold Coast’s Thursday night clash against Richmond at Metricon Stadium will go ahead.
“Suns chief executive Mark Evans tells me at the moment, the Gold Coast and Victoria are green zones, so he and the AFL expect the game to go ahead,” he said.
“Tony Cochrane tells me it might be with limited crowds, maybe half crowds, and of course masks.”
Despite so many non-Victorian clubs set to be in Melbourne by later in the week, Ralph said the AFL was “doing everything in its power to stop hubs from going ahead”.
“Paul Marsh, the AFLPA boss, says we have not have a single discussion with the AFL about a compressed fixture or those hubs. But as the AFL tells me tonight, Round 6 was a nightmare to fixture, Round 16 was an absolute nightmare, it’s even harder this week,” Ralph said.
“It’s costing them an extra $5 million per round to get all those teams across the country. Every time they fly a private jet to Melbourne from WA and back, that’s $100,000 that is gone. So the hubs can’t be any more expensive than that, if they had 18 in Victoria, and they would safeguard the competition.”
He added: “I think Round 17 is still OK, anything after that potentially – we’ll already have by the end of this weekend 15 clubs in Victoria, it’s not a big step to get 18 here.”
https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/afl-news-2021-wa-covid-case-number-updates-lockdown-round-16-fixture-fremantle-vs-carlton/news-story/5a06ca7d7b79b1b248a0e9a5214f1657Perth just gone into lockdown.
Back up plan is for Freo to get an exemption to leave WA and play Carlton at Kardinia Park.
