Opinion
While the professionals have managed to provide us with a footy season both in 2020 and 2021, each year looked and felt markedly different to normal.
However, you need only understand that the second tier – in COVID-impacted states – was a very, very different experience even to the AFL.
There were almost absent local footy seasons in Melbourne. 2020 was lost and 2021 was half but without resolution.
And so we find ourselves on the verge of season 2022. Two years ago, as the local cricket season was winding down and the first local footy practice matches were getting underway, it was the pragmatic among us who suspected that those practice matches might be the extent of the season.
A seasonal respiratory disease looked set to run wild or be stopped only by extreme mitigation. In Melbourne in 2020 we had both.
(Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
And at short notice, the local footy season was halted and local top-grade cricket grand finals were stopped and the honours were shared.
Across 24 months, our community has become almost word perfect on “virulence” and “efficacy”. We’ve learned to distinguish a “variant of interest” from a “variant of concern”. We know what “Centre for National Resilience” is actually code for. Hopefully we’ve all improved our hand hygiene.
We also have a strong desire to return to normal. That’s only natural.
Do we dare dream it? That over the next five months, our concerns and interests will be limited to Christian Petracca, to Jason Horne-Francis, to a pair of Daicoses and to the lure of an MCG grand final.
Do we dare dream it? Sunday early morning juniors with parents watching on, coffee mug in one hand, the other hand clasping the hand warmer in their pocket and misty fog clouds with each exhalation.
Do we dare dream it? The muddy grounds and packed car parking, walking two local blocks to get to the ground, and second-half resumptions with hands still too cold to function.
But of course, we do and we’ll love every minute of it. Winter is footy – not sequestered away in our homes.
Alas though, were this pandemic limited to Australia, we would have knocked it on its head a couple of times over.
It isn’t. It’s global and anything can still happen. Am I setting myself up for disappointment to dare to dream of a full mostly uninterrupted season?
To dream of Tarryn Thomas as the smokey for the Brownlow?
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