Opinion
Despite the lows of this year due to coronavirus, there’s still been some highlights to it.
Most big leagues like the NBA, EPL and Bundesliga are still on. There is the introduction of the virtual side of sport such as virtual fans and virtual drafts. But the best bit of it all is that the AFL season is currently going on.
Here’s why it’s been so vivid.
Unpredictability
Everyone knows how most games each round during the home-and-away part of the AFL are usually a win to the more dominant team (except for in top-eight and top-four clashes). Well, nearly every game this year has gone in basically the opposition direction.
For example, Collingwood were expected to defeat Fremantle. Wrong. And then we move on to St Kilda beating Port Adelaide in Adelaide when most were expecting the Power to win. And who could forget Gold Coast when they defeated West Coast by 44 points back in Round 2.
The best one though: Geelong versus Carlton. The Cats were coming off a 61-point victory against Hawthorn. Carlton had lost by a point against Melbourne. The Blues burst out of the blocks, Geelong came back, but Carlton still hung on by a point. And that was down in Geelong. No one was expecting that.
(Photo by Graham Denholm/AFL Photos via Getty Images )
The unpredictability also reminds you of how this year has gone. No one was expecting that a virus would hit us this hard, no one was expecting it to last this long, and no one was expecting it to be so deadly. Much like this season.
Scheduling
Nearly everyone knew that when COVID-19 hit that the AFL would eventually have to change around its schedule. People also knew that when cases got worse in Victoria they’d have to create the hub system to help out Victorian teams as they did with WA teams.
Well, even though it’s been tough on the players, they’ve still scheduled it brilliantly, pushing Victorian teams up to hubs in Queensland and WA and getting more games at the Gabba, Metricon Stadium, Optus Stadium and the Adelaide Oval.
And then they’ve given us the festival of footy: a dream if you’re a footy nut like me, with 33 games in 20 days. Like most footy fans, I’ll be sitting in my room or downstairs, watching the footy each day or evening on either Kayo or Fox Footy or Channel Seven. That’s a dream to me. I, along with others, wouldn’t have thought this would happen, not in my wildest dreams.
Fans
And finally, after this pandemic struck and no one was safe, everyone thought that, even after the restart, there’d be no more crowds. I had hope that there would be crowds back, even in Victoria. I was wrong about the Victoria part, but not about fans being back.
Fans always give the players energy and they always give them hope. It hasn’t worked in some cases (like Port Adelaide versus St Kilda), but it is still nonetheless vital and great to see them back.
Adelaide weren’t expected to come close against Essendon or St Kilda. They lost to them by three points and 23 points respectively. And West Coast and Collingwood was also expected to be close. It was a 66-point demolition job. Yet again another unpredictable result from this season as well.
In the end, despite the horrific spread of coronavirus and what seems like the lockdown that’ll never end, the AFL has given us a light to see in these extremely dark times courtesy of the unpredictability and the scheduling of the season as well as the fans.
Let’s hope this continues for these next few months to help us Australians, especially Victorians, during these dark times.
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