COVID-19 Update: 28 July 2021

The NSW Government today announced a further four-week extension to the current stay at home orders until 12:01am Saturday, 28 August across Greater Sydney including the Central Coast, Blue Mountains, Wollongong and Shellharbour.

Unfortunately, today’s announcement is a further set-back in our collective ambition to return to community football competition in a safe and meaningful manner for the 2021 season in COVID-affected regions.

We appreciate that for many across our network of clubs in affected leagues, the length of the current extension means a return to competition play (home and away, and finals) looks incredibly challenging given the circumstances.

Despite this, we are committed to working through a thorough process with each affected league to determine the best and most appropriate way forward considering the circumstances.

Our stakeholder engagement to date has revealed that each league, and the subsequent age-group competitions, have slightly different considerations and club appetite to continue to focus on opportunities to play footy in September or via extended seasons where possible.

As such, AFL NSW/ACT will work through a league-by-league process to provide clarity to our stakeholders on each competition’s status, financial impacts, the ability and willingness to explore an extended season, appetite to participate in gala days or similar events in September to round out the season if current restrictions permit community sport.

Today was tough news to take as we know what an important role playing footy has for our communities across Greater Sydney. As always, we appreciate the patience, support and understanding shown by the entire community football network to-date through this extremely challenging period.