Jaded No More

But if we have to go interstate and quarantine we miss the prelim final. And what if you go and we don’t make it? If the GF is going to be interstate again between two Victorian teams they should push it back 14 days to allow Victorians to attend ?

You mean the 6-8 weeks lockdown last July that lasted 5 months? I am not suggesting this will be a 2 months lockdown. I’m simply saying this will be a lot longer than the 7 days initially outlined and that restrictions (masks, reduced capacity at venues, gatherings etc) will be in place for most of winter.

He is a genuine A grader already. For a 19 year old with 20 games to solidly hold his position in the best defensive unit in the competition is just bloody impressive. I think he will end up playing wing when his tank is up to it. Has the speed, skills and physicality to do it beautifully.

Time for Clarry to get the peroxide out. He is a Salem home hairdressing Covid job away from a Charlie.

Do you even have Covid in Victoria if you haven’t been to 6 Indian grocers, 5 Thai restaurants, 2 AFL games, 3 pub crawls and travel exclusively on public transport to your high risk job? ?

Because if games go back to being played predominately interstate then of course it puts a massive strain on the club and our chances. Brisbane Sydney and Port will be loving this.

Goodbye normal winter in Melbourne. Goodbye our football season and flag chances. It was all too good to be true.

QLD premier will never let anyone come to Victoria and then come back while we are in lockdown. She is as bad as WA. I also think the AFL prefers to play with crowds where possible for financial reasons.

Makes sense. Is the government engaging community leaders or elders to try and help with vaccination information?

Agreed. Best to keep our large indigenous community in the NT safe. Out of interest how’s the vaccination program going up there?

If NT was waiting on Victoria case numbers, today would be the final nail in the coffin of this game. 5 overnight and 6 more positives already this morning.

You forgot “go to Chadstone and then to Barkley Square with a quick stop at Maccas and Dan Murphy’s”

There is no greater revenue generator for a footy club than a premiership. Whatever tiny advantage we can take right now, we should grab with both hands. Giving Brisbane an extra game at the Gabba, their home ground where they dominate, is just silly. Already this is a 50/50 game. Why give Brisbane an advantage, when they are coming in hot for our top 2 spot? We have some very hard matches coming up. This is one of them. There is absolutely no way I want to make it harder by playing it at the opposition's home ground, with a home crowd advantage. The last game we played interstate with a hostile crowd, was our one and only loss for the year. Lets not repeat this.

What we needed to do is go into a 3 day lockdown as soon as we had the 1st 'unlinked' case, or the case that came days after the SA traveller came back and tested positive. We keep being told that mystery cases are the biggest concern. Why then did we not lock down for 2-3 days when the first one appeared? Hotel quarantine is a flawed system. It failed in every single state except in NT, where quarantine does not take place inside large poorly ventilated buildings, but in small individual units with natural airflow. The federal government has refused to stop return travellers, but at the same time, has not done anything to fix the quarantine issues. They are as much to blame for this current mess as any state. And don't get me started on the pathetic vaccine rollout. Our capacity should be far greater. We have GPs willing and able to give the jabs, we have millions of Aussies under 50 who are keen to get vaccinated, and yet here we are slapping ourselves on the bum because we vaccinated 16k in a day.

We also have a very large population of immigrants, which at the beginning of the pandemic was not taken into account. There was a big failure in proper language appropriate communication, engagement of community leaders and so forth. You just need to look at the outbreak at the Islamic college and the towers. Additionally, a lot of immigrant families live in large households, so we saw one family member catching the virus and it spreading to 5+ household members. Melbourne also has only 3 major trauma centres in the state, compared to 10 in NSW for example. That means the foot traffic to Melbourne EDs is much greater, and we saw the spread of Covid that we battled during the second wave amongst health care workers particularly in hospital setting.

Spreading into aged care where only 1/3rd of staff have been vaccinated. How the fudge? What a disgusting debacle.

I don’t disagree but you also need to think about us members who have once again paid for certain memberships that allow us access to a certain number of home games in Victoria. We also need to take into account the membership revenue. Another disrupted season where we can’t attend games and some people may not renew in 2022 for fear of it happening again. If we can play GWS at the G with crowds and that game is moved, I’m not sure how I would feel about it. Although I understand we need the money so would support the club either way. But not everyone would be so understanding.

Please do not confuse my dismissal of the Victorian government’s ability to handle our pandemic, with my rage regarding our Federal government’s failure to roll out the vaccine properly. Half my family overseas has been fully vaccinated for 6 months. Our vaccination program is beyond a joke.

NT is the one place in Australia where a hard border at all times makes sense. They have such a large number of vulnerable communities. The risk is too great if an outbreak was to happen and they don’t have the resources that big states have in terms of hospitals. Can’t see us going there this week.

Waiting for the teams on 8 wins to start having some hard games. They all seem to be getting soft matches every week. At least we have Port v Geelong after the bye.

They will put players into lockdown before they do more hubs. I am sure most players would rather be confined to their houses and training rather than be away from family again.

We already have a mystery case and it’s an aged care nurse. And somehow only half the residents have had their first vaccine. The mind boggles. I have absolutely zero confidence in anything to do with this state and their ability to manage this pandemic. We have shown utter inaptitude for 18 months now. I hope you are right and this is over on Thursday night. But I bet my bottom dollar it won’t be.

Hard decision. Finances must come into it, even tho I wish it wouldn’t. Can we afford to lose the money? Because without a doubt fly in fly out means we likely lose the game.

Totally different scenario. It was a very small outbreak with minimal exposure sites. It was hot. It was a different variant. And the key is we went very early. We needed to go to lockdown on Tuesday last week. Then it would be 7 days. We will be lucky to get out in 14 days. A month would not surprise me either. This is clearly running away from contact tracers.