AFL Canberra Update – July 10

Dear AFL Canberra Community,

On Thursday 9 July 2020,the ACT Government Chief Health Officer announced a postponement to Stage 3 of the Easing of Restrictions Roadmap until following a checkpoint conducted to be held on Thursday 16 July, 2020. Until such time residents within the ACT will remain at Stage 2.2 and our current Return to Contact Training Protocols remain in place. We have the utmost confidence in our communities capacity to adapt and work together to ensure that we will be appropriately prepared to deliver the 2020 season.

Throughout this period the AFL, in collaboration with our local clubs have drafted a number of season date models that may be required depending on any Government restrictions. Today we would like to provide all clubs, officials, participants, families and the wider AFL Canberra community with an update on the 2020 season.

Junior Football

With the potential short turnaround between the Chief Health Officers update on Thursday 16 July, and our intended commencement date on Saturday July 18 we have decided to reschedule the 2020 ActewAGL Junior and CareSuper Rising Stars Competitions to Saturday July 25. Competitions will commence from Saturday July 25 providing junior participants with 10 weeks of football including the Finals Series with season dates below:

ActewAGL Junior Boys, Mixed & Girls – July 25/26 – September 26/27

CareSuper Rising Stars Women – July 26 – September 27

CareSuper Rising Stars Men – July 25 – October 10 (12 weeks)

Senior Football

The 2020 AFL Canberra Men’s and UNSW Women’s Competitions will kick off on Saturday 18 July, with all Round 1 matches to be held across our NSW club venues. Currently there will not be any need for alterations to be made to the season models based on a July 18 commencement as outlined below:

Community Division (3^rd/4^th Men & Community Women) July 18 – October 3

Senior Division (1^st/2^nd Men & 1^st Women) July 18 – October 10

All fixtures for Round 1 will be uploaded to www.aflcanberra.com.au and our TeamApp.

We are confident in the position our game is in to deliver a 2020 season. Our fixtures, regulations, umpires, costs and grounds have all been worked through in collaboration with our clubs, whilst our players have been hitting the track participating in contact training. This has provided us with the foundation to be agile as we work our way through any alterations in the Public Health Order within our July/August starting models.

We understand this announcement will raise many questions for Club officials, players, parents and volunteers. As such we have updated our set of FAQs that hopefully address most of these for you at this time. We will continue to update these as the situation progresses. There are a number of great resources and templates available at www.aflnswact.com.au/returntoplay to assist Community Clubs.

AFL NSW/ACT will continue to work closely with the NSW & ACT Government and provide further details regarding the resumption of competition play in due course.

This has been a challenging year for our community and our sport. I would like to thank all clubs, officials, players, parents and the wider AFL Canberra community for their patience and resilience throughout this period. We look forward to seeing you all at the footy for what will be an exciting season in 2020.

Kind regards,

Luke Martin

Game Development Manager – ACT