supporting this club can honestly be depressing at times. geez we’ve known anything but normal since 2013
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Not too certain about long term sequelae from COVID infection.
This article on the conversation, with a couple of respiratory medicine experts as authors, hypothesizes if the infection is not severe (doesn’t cause Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) that recovery is full and there is unlikely to be long term impacts:
One thing which has concerned me about all this is the media narrative that the AFL needs to “negotiate” with DHHS. There is no negotiation to be had there. The AFL and Essendon gets the advice from DHHS, and follows it to the letter. No if’s, buts or maybes.
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Tbh this attitude is why most people not involved in AFL in some way think the culture is rooted.
There’s always a line to be drawn somewhere.
(Don’t think that’s the scenario here; more pointing out the flaw in that general attitude).
Tell me about it
It’s totally flawed. But that’s footy.
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Honestly if they find him guilty of breaking protocol for going to a house viewing his lease was ended then I couldn’t really give a ■■■■. That is pathetic. The media would jump on it but I imagine most fans would take Mckenna’s side on it. The visiting family seems to definitely have been allowed.
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I reckon we still could beat Calton and the Dees with a new back six
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do not underestimate Gil’s ability to over ride the health advice. it would not surprise me in the least if he found a way for Saturday to go ahead
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I agree.
Gil and Andrews both want Essendon to play football as soon as possible.
Even if 8 of our best players have to isolate themselves for two weeks, there’ll still be risks re their fitness & availability to play senior footy immediately after that quarantine period is over.
If it turns into a cluster the AFL will have no hesitation in hanging us out to dry to save their own skins. They have form in this regard as we know all too well
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They need to nip it on the bud right now. We should be in 14-day quarantine. They can fixture the Melbourne, Carlton and Collingwood games in later in the piece. Interesting comments from Scott Pendlebury saying that the shortened games are making a big difference how players pull up after game. He says he feels like he could play another game today. So really if we have some short turnarounds we should be able to cope. I can see some Friday/Wednesday/Monday stretches. With no crowds to consider its easier for them to re-schedule.
In reality, this was always going to happen. There are 18 clubs each with lists of 40 or thereabouts. That’s 720 players. Eventually someone was going to get it in some form. Thinking otherwise is very naive. The AFL and State Government must take strong and decisive action to minimise the potential for further outbreak within the AFL community. We are lucky Conor didn’t play last week. If he did, then that would also put the Swans at risk, our opponents last week, the Roos, who we shared a flight with to and from Sydney last weekend, GWS, North’s opponent last week, and the Dogs, who the Giants played on Friday. There’s 5 clubs who would have been directly or indirectly impacted.
We can only hope that the rest of our playing group are OK and there’s no further outbreak within the club. We can worry about the why and how later on…
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The health advice will not be whether a game can or can’t go ahead, it’ll be “Every Essendon player at the Hangar on Friday should be seen at high risk of transmission, and needs to self-isolate” or “We think that only X number of players were at high risk, and should self-isolate”.
It’s 100% up to the AFL how those situations are managed in terms of the fixture. I think if it’s the latter, and we have sufficient numbers to field a team, we’ll have to cop the bad luck and play. It sucks, but I don’t think it’s fair to other teams if handled any other way.
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so, its 2016 again 
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Would love to see the afl get told categorically no, essendon’s isolated players cannot play for 2 weeks. and seeing a stunned pikachu face of gil being like… but broadcast deals
Agree, but they won’t want to risk shutting down a second team.
That’ll be a disaster.
They’d have no problems deferring games to a later date when they can potentially get attendances to the games.
They have a lot of flexibility at this stage.
Now if this were to happen in a final or towards the end of the season…
Then that will be conflicted.
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My first irrational thought was why… why did it have to be us. There was always going to be one player who tested positive… but I was just hoping, for once, that it wasn’t EFC.
I feel sorry for Conor but at the same time… it was always a risk when he went home and came back. It is strange that he wasn’t positive within the 14 days… but the risk of exposure when travelling is known to be much, much higher.
I don’t think the AFL will make any attempt to re-schedule games… instead probably just award 2 points to each club. We may be forced to sit out for 14 days… which is another 2 games…
Season is stuffed. In the scheme of things… no matter how closely ‘protocols’ were being followed… this virus spreads quickly… so huge risk to any and all that were around the Club on friday etc etc.
At least we don’t have to suffer a Caro led assault.
It’s been terrible and it undoubtedly is a factor in fans being very wound up over everything that happens.