Coronavirus and Sport

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

The Australian Rules season ( AFL ) will commence tomorrow with Richmond v Carlton behind closed doors at the MCG. It's being shown on BT Sport in the UK

I'll probably watch that out of curiosity, and it could well get record ratings for AFL on BT, given the dearth of live televised sport at the moment.

[ursus arctos]

It seems a bit perverse to play it at the MCG, though

I wonder how much of the usual hoopla (songs, running through banners, changing room cameras, etc) they are going to replicate

[Satchmo Distel]

I hope they take care of the square, for when cricket resumes.

[Janik]

French Open deferred until end of September.

So the FFT have gone about this in a way that, how shall I put it, seems very French. There wasn't anything like a gap in the calendar at the end of September/start of October, and it would appear they haven't consulted with any of the events due to happen then, or the USTA whose flagship event (on a very different surface) is now very close in time to the French Open.

[ursus arctos]

Quite

The primary considerations seem to have been to find dates that are 1) after their clientele has returned from their summer holidays and 2) not during another slam, while minimising likely weather issues.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

There is a huge land grab going on with a high volume of events (sporting and performance wise) getting re-scheduled for September and October, and if things do get back to approaching normality by then, there is going to be a lot of things fighting for consumers' money and attention.

I'm warming to the approach that some are taking of moving things on one year - obviously the Euros have done this and also I've seen several concert tours shunting dates by almost exactly a year.

Annual events are obviously in a different boat, and there are a lot of small scale running events that I'm aware of as a runner or volunteer that are desperately trying to stage re-scheduled events later this year so that they don't have to refund entry fees (which could finish them financially). Many of them are now occupying the same space in September and October.

[Janik]

Only quadrennial or at least biennial events can push themselves back by 12 months. If the French Open/tour de France/Premier League tried that it would be impossible to differentiate from a cancellation.

Most sporting organisations have realised this, bitten the bullet and accepted that their tournament this year is going to be incomplete or not happen at all. It really is the only choice. Sport has to be flexible adapting itself to reality, not the other way around.

[Satchmo Distel]

I think the issue will be moot anyway because getting back to normality by September looks very unlikely at this point. It's shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic. I presume that's a major reason the UK rejected the idea of holding GCSEs in September.

[longeared]

Cycling has had everything to the end of April now formally called off and pretty much everything of significance in May has gone too. The UCI have talked about extending the season in the autumn to fit in more races and potentially racing as late as November 1st (which is effectively the date of the start of next season) with scheduling priority given to the Monuments and Grand Tours. This doesn't sound unrealistic from an operational perspective, I can remember Lombardia taking place on October 20th in the past and the weather in Belgium at the end of October is not reasonably going to be any worse than late February. In a more absurdly optimistic move, the Giro d'Italia are apparently looking at the possibility of a race start on May 29th.

Re Janik's post above - if the TdF wasn't run this year then they could just roll the route over and run it next (for rather convoluted reasons they may be bounced into doing this anyway out of necessity if the Olympics are postponed a year) - but they wouldn't have two editions in 2021, so it would be a de facto cancellation.

[Satchmo Distel]

re. French Open: there would be very little clay court tennis between early June and late September so they'd be bouncing players into a Slam on a surface for which they'd have had no prep.

[Janik]

Not quite. There is always a run of post Wimbledon European events that are on clay. Basically through July, with the American hardcourt season taking over in August. In fact the only events on the WTA between the (scheduled) end of Wimbledon and the Olympics are clay court ones - Bucharest and Lausanne one week, Jurmala (Latvia) and Palermo the next. The ATP has five clay court tournaments in the same period, two per week including a 500 in Hamburg and then one in Kitzbuehel scheduled against the Olympics.

Those will be the only clay court prep anyone has though as following the slam moving all the remaining warm-ups have been canned. Tennis is meant to restart with the opening of the grass season in Den Bosch/Nottingham/Stuttgart on 8th June. Which is about when the peak is expected in Britain and the Netherlands, isn't it?

[jwdd27]

Bucking (ha) the trend somewhat, horse racing returns behind closed doors in Ireland on Friday. 2 days without gambling is long enough, it seems.
I emptied my various betting accounts just today. Just when I thought I was done, they dragged me back in...

[Hot Pepsi]

A possibly interesting note.

I listened to a podcast interview with the representative from UNH who was on the committee that decided to shut down the college hockey playoffs soon after the NBA shut down. He said that the meeting to do that took three minutes. Everyone saw very quickly that there was no choice. I imagine it was like that with most of the sports.

[fatbear]

Richmond comfortably beat Carlton 105-81 in the AFL seasonal opener. It's Western Bulldogs v Collingwood tomorrow. BT Sport are also showing Central Coast Mariners vs Melbourne City A-League match. Sky will be showing Broncos vs Rabbitohs NRL.Spoilt for choice !!

[Gangster Octopus]

An idiot speaks.

[Janik]

The local Hockey has taken the only decision they could - the season is over. All games left are void. Because some teams had one game ledt to play and others two or in some cases three, they have decided to rejig the league tables on the basis of percentage of points picked up against the maximum possible. This has little effect on my club, but quite a big one on some of the other promotion/relegation races.

What the National League does about it's promotion/relegation play-offs is anyone's guess. I'm thinking they will chose to compare sides in parallel leagues and award the promotion to the teams with the better records/send down the teams with the worse ones.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Turkey has now suspended all sport.

[tee rex]

The main sporting competition in Australasia now is to see which football code has its head deepest in the sand. NRL may be winning, but it's a close contest.

If we could ban the phrase "role models", it wouldn't be too soon. Replaced by: Insular, self-absorbed, ignorant, irrelevant idiots.

[Kevin S]

F1 update: postponements of Dutch and Spanish GPs, cancellation of Monaco.

[Incandenza]

New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton positive

[Satchmo Distel]

No professional cricket before May 28 (source: Andrew Miller, Twitter).

[Sporting]

No professional cricket before May 28 (source: Andrew Miller, Twitter).

Social distancing would be much easier in cricket than in most other sports, for players and for the scant number of spectators in CC games.

[Janik]

One of the local Sports Centre is shutting down at the end of today. No great shock as it's on the site of a School. The Squash Club I am on the committee of is on the same site. We don't yet have clarity on whether we can remain open even if we wanted to. Which I'm not sure we do, but I can't speak for the whole committee before emails have been exchanged. The School keeps forgetting that we are independent of the Sports Centre (we predate it by about 15 years and decline the opportunity to merge when it opened which in retrospect was a very good decision for us), which explains the lack of info.

[Janik]

OK, so I've now accessed the official government advice rather than having it filtered and 'simplified' by a news media organisation. It says that "All indoor leisure and sports facilities, including gyms" should not open tomorrow. Clearly that includes a Squash Club. We are shut, then.

[Satchmo Distel]

Social distancing would be much easier in cricket than in most other sports, for players and for the scant number of spectators in CC games.

There would still be some contact among players, sharing a dressing room and throwing the ball to each other, even if you could guarantee six feet between each spectator. Umpires would be close to the bowlers and non-facing batsmen. Much easier just to delay the season than try to administer those restrictions.