| 2020 VFL season | |
|---|---|
| Premiers | Premiership not contested |
The 2020 VFL season was meant to have been the 139th season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), a second-tier Australian rules football competition played in the state of Victoria. [1] However, the season was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [2]
| New coach | Club | Date of appointment | Previous coach | Ref |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ben McGlynn | Sandringham | 13 September 2019 | Aaron Hamill | [3] |
| Xavier Clarke | Richmond | 7 November 2019 | Craig McRae | [4] |
| Adrian Connolly | Sandringham | 24 June 2020 | Ben McGlynn | [5] |
| Club | Coach | Leadership group | Ref | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Captain(s) | Vice-captain(s) | Other leader(s) | |||
| Box Hill | Max Bailey [6] | Damian Mascitti [7] | [8] | ||
| Casey | Sam Radford | Mitch White | [9] | ||
| Coburg | Andrew Sturgess | Peter McEvoy; Ryan Exon | Jesse Corigliano | Sam Lowson, Luke Bunker, Mitch Podhajski, Tom Silvestro, Jacob Ballard | [10] |
| Collingwood | Garry Hocking [11] | Jack Hellier [12] | Matt Smith, Callan Wellings, Lachlan Tardrew, Campbell Hustwaite | [13] | |
| Essendon | Mark Corrigan | [14] | |||
| Footscray | Daniel Giansiracusa [15] | Josh Prudden [16] | Anthony Scott [17] | [18] | |
| Frankston | Danny Ryan [19] | Josh Newman | [20] | ||
| Geelong | Shane O'Bree [21] | Aaron Black [22] | Callum Mitchell, Dan Capiron, Teia Miles | [23] | |
| Northern Blues | Josh Fraser [24] | Tom Wilson | [25] | ||
| North Melbourne | David Loader | [26] | |||
| Port Melbourne | Gary Ayres [27] | Jordan Lisle; Tom O'Sullivan | Eli Templeton, Mack Rivett, Anthony Anastasio, Harvey Hooper | [28] | |
| Richmond | Xavier Clarke [29] | Steve Morris | Daniel Coffield, Hugh Beasley, Brenton Credlin | [30] | |
| Sandringham | Ben McGlynn | Brede Seccull [31] | [32] | ||
| Adrian Connolly | |||||
| Williamstown | Andy Collins | [33] | |||
| Werribee | Mark Williams | [34] | |||
Preparations for the 2020 season featured all fifteen clubs from 2019. [35] [36] The fixture was released on 18 December 2019, with Collingwood scheduled to play Box Hill on 3 April in the season opener as part of an 18-match home-and-away season over 21 rounds, followed by a four-week finals series ending on 20 September. [37] [38] Pre-season practice matches took place in February and early March. [39] [40] [41]
The season was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which was formally declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020, three weeks prior to round 1. [42] Governmental restrictions on non-essential public gatherings during the pandemic meant that, as a minimum, matches would need to be played before empty stadiums, as was planned for the Australian Football League (AFL). [43]
However, AFL clubs with VFL reserves teams or affiliates had separate concerns that their players could be exposed to the virus when playing in the VFL, as the state league would not be able to offer the same level of medical and quarantine protections that the fully professional league could. [44] [45]
AFL clubs began to withdraw their AFL-listed players from their VFL preseason programs, [46] before the start of the VFL season was suspended indefinitely on 16 March. [47] [48] The AFL season was suspended shortly afterwards, and state government lockdowns precluded any state football being played. [49] [50]
On 26 March 2020, Carlton ended its reserves affiliation with the Northern Blues. [51] Carlton had been investing significant money in the VFL club and in developing it as a pathway to senior football, but the financial impact of the pandemic forced Carlton to make significant cuts to its expenses, and ending its affiliation was one of these cuts. [52] [53]
By this stage, the Northern Blues were reliant on Carlton for its financial viability, and as a result the club temporarily dropped out of the league after 101 years of membership. [54] Carlton adopted a lower-cost strategy by fielding its own standalone reserves team when AFL players were next released to play in the VFL in 2021. [55] [56]
The Northern Blues initially announced that it would fold, but the club regrouped throughout the year and returned to VFL (under its previous name of the Northern Bullants) for the 2021 season. [57] [58]
After months of uncertainty, and as lockdowns were being lifted, it was agreed on 16 June to play a shortened VFL season without any AFL-listed players, with training to start from 13 July and the season to begin on 1 August. [59] [60]
Significantly, however, all AFL clubs were required to continue to keep AFL-listed players away from the state league systems for the entire season, in order to better control their quarantine environments and avoid risk to the AFL season. [61] [62] This meant that AFL reserves teams were unable to contest the restarted season, and the three remaining clubs with reserves affiliations – Box Hill, Casey and Sandringham – would need to temporarily play as standalone senior clubs for the first time in two decades. [63] [64] These clubs were allowed to top up their playing lists, including getting first selection of any VFL-listed players from the AFL clubs' reserves teams who were seeking new teams for the season. [65] [66] Sandringham coach Ben McGlynn was retained by St Kilda as part of its AFL staff, leaving Sandringham to replace him with Adrian Connolly for the remainder of the 2020 season. [5] [67]
This, coupled with the Northern Blues expected to fold and in no position to field a team, initially left only eight clubs to contest the shortened season. [68] [69] However, on 3 July, Casey announced its withdrawal from the season as well. [70] Although the club had been preparing for the season and signing players to bolster its list, it opted to withdraw citing concern about health risks amid an ongoing rise in Victorian cases at the time. [71] The club was also dealing with the fact that it was not able to use Casey Fields, as it was normally shared with the AFL's Melbourne Football Club as a training venue, and quarantine segregations were required between VFL and AFL systems. [72]
Preparations continued, but on 7 July – the same date that the new fixture was released to clubs – the second wave of COVID-19 cases across Melbourne resulted in a new lockdown being imposed by the state government, which all but precluded organised sport in the state until at least 19 August (ultimately lasting several months beyond that). [73] [74] The following day, the decision was made to cancel the VFL season outright. [75] [76] It was the first senior VFA/VFL season to be cancelled since 1944, when the VFA was suffering from a financial crisis that was exacerbated by Australia's participation in World War II. [77] [78]