Football (soccer) is the latest sport to advise its professional A-League teams to depart Victoria as the state deals with a second wave of coronavirus.
SBS reports that Victoria’s three teams; Melbourne City, Melbourne Victory and Western United, will all relocate to NSW ahead of the re-start of the 2019/20 A-League season, set to kick off in just over a week’s time.
United were originally scheduled to play Victory in an A-League match on July 16, with the clubs hoping to play the games at AAMI Park in Melbourne, but that looks almost impossible at this stage.
The football clubs have been forced to mobilise after Monday’s announcement that the border between NSW and Victoria will close from midnight, July 7th.
“All of us agree that the best thing to do is to close the border,” said Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, after he met with NSW counterpart Gladys Berejiklian and Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Victoria reported 127 new cases of coronavirus today, the highest daily increase since the pandemic began.
Over the weekend the state’s AFL clubs were told to plan to leave the state as soon as they could.
Plans for all nine Victorian clubs to set up bases outside of Victoria will need to be sped up, especially for any clubs that played at home last weekend.
The Age reports that St Kilda, North Melbourne, Essendon, Western Bulldogs, Richmond and Carlton will remain in Queensland for the next block of fixtures.
Meanwhile, Hawthorn and Melbourne will base themselves in NSW. Geelong and Collingwood will play each other in Sydney, then head to Perth where they will remain for three weeks.
As for the NRL, there has been less hassle to deal with, as the Melbourne Storm are the only Victoria-based team in the competition. They have been away from Melbourne for two weeks already and will play their games in Brisbane for the foreseeable future.
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