It's a critical week for the NRL season

As I write this, New South Wales are just ploughing an insipid Queensland attack into the Suncorp Stadium turf to wrap up the State of Origin series with one game in hand.

There’s no way Queensland will win Game 3. They probably won’t even score. They’re a complete and utter rabble. I could hold forth about how the Maroons are completely cooked for the foreseeable future, but Tim Gore already said that after Game 1.

With the on-field attraction of the game’s signature event in a pit, the NRL would be desperate for the premiership season to bring itself to life after a horrendous first three months.

But over the last few days life has become even harder for rugby league, even more so than it was in 2020.

With Greater Sydney, the Central Coast, the Blue Mountains, Wollongong and Shellharbour now in lockdown until this Friday July 9, the NRL faces a massive logistical challenge this week to keep season 2021 on track.

And it’s much more difficult than last year because right now across the key rugby league states we’ve got a mixture of lockdowns, border closures and quarantine requirements.

There’s no uniform shape to what’s happening at the moment, with states being incredibly flighty about when and how they react when even a single-figure outbreak of COVID-19 occurs.

Last year when COVID-19 came to Australia sports were unilaterally shut down, whether or not you believe the announcements from the major codes that they made the decision to go into recess.

That was when the new ARLC Chair Peter V’landys made his name, by getting the pieces in place for the season to start on May 28.

It was a colossal amount of work that brought the game back before any other and stands as the clear apex of anything V’landys has managed in his time at the helm.

(Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)

But it has also been unbelievably overegged by the Chair’s followers in the press, as if the game would have vanished off the face of the earth.

It was great to have the NRL back first. but it’s also worth noting that all other sports came back too and were able to play out full seasons. That had nothing to do with the NRL’s use to be first.

If anything, it’s possibly one of the most impressive moments in Australian sporting history that such a disparate range of codes like Australian rules, rugby league, union, football, netball and even baseball could get a season in under such trying circumstances.

From the looks of it, the rest of 2021 will be a nightmare. And like the AFL with their majority of Victorian clubs last year, the NRL faces the big problem with its nine Sydney clubs plus the New Zealand Warriors, who are based on the Central Coast.

The New South Wales lockdown is ‘only’ two weeks for now. But the flow on from it will be significant. Although the NRL have enacted their ‘bubble’ protocols from last year for players, the amount of sites classified as hotspots will ebb and flow.

(Photo by Albert Perez/Getty Images)

So what’s the solution? Announced alongside the return to the bubble protocols, there are no crowds for Sydney games this weekend, possible moving of games and fly-in-fly-out arrangements for interstate games.

League CEO Andrew Abdo was quoted on the NRL website saying “We are looking to see if it is feasible to play in regional locations. The logistics of that, we want to keep the community and players safe. Our default position is we play the draw [as it is].”

More reporting from the Daily Telegraph has the NRL considering several options including moving NSW teams to Queensland, bringing Queensland clubs to NSW or setting up a hub in northern New South Wales.

Stopping the competition seems unlikely, but if the game wants to play the draw as it is, locations will have to change. Moving the ten NSW-based clubs to Queensland would be pricey but may work.

The biggest variable is Queensland’s propensity to close borders to interstate arrivals at the drop of a hat.

Hopefully, this fortnight will blow over with no crowds at games in Sydney and V’landys and/or Abdo can work out travel exemptions with Queensland, Victoria and whoever else they need to talk to.

Last year V’landys was hailed as a saviour after blasting his way through who and whatever stood in his path.

This time around, he and Abdo won’t be able to be so forthright. It will take tact, diplomacy and negotiation to find a solution that best suits the game without further compromising the premiership season.

The week ahead will be critical in how the season turns out. I hope V’landys and his team are equal to the task again.