Siren sounds on CHFL season

SATURDAY’S matches in the shortened Central Highland Football League junior season will be the last for 2020.

CHFL president Doug Hobson said organisers decided to cancel the remaining five rounds following the announcement that regional Victoria would be heading back to stage three lockdown from today.

However, despite the call to end play, Hobson said he was “really happy” with what had been achieved.

“One of our trigger points was if schools closed down, let alone going back to stage three restrictions,” he said. “We knew it was possibly going to come at some time but we’re really happy that we got four weeks of football in.

“We were able to give a lot of players that chance to get out and play football which they love doing.

“We’re disappointed we weren’t able to get right through the shortened season, but we always knew this was a possibility.”

Over 330 players came in as part of the CHFL junior season under special COVID permits that allowed them to take the field for teams in the league. Those players will now revert to their original clubs.

With 2020 a lost season, Hobson said the records would show the junior sides played four matches and the stats would stand, although there would be no medal or trophies handed out.

“This year will be marked down as one where we played four rounds of juniors,” he said.

“I still have fixtures for this year, pristine and new, I’m going to get one framed to remined me of the year we’ve had. It was challenging, but hey, if we get through this year and make things happen, we can get through any year.”

Focus for the CHFL now turns to 2021 in the hopes there’ll be some kind of comp in 10 months’ time.

Hobson said that the four weeks of junior play had helped the league get its processes around COVID-safe play set up and that would be important next year.

“Now we put ourselves into recess and do some homework to see what we need to get happening for next season,” he said.

“The teams that did get up and playing this year are really happy they did that… it gives them a bit of a taste of where they’re going to be next year on protocols for cleaning and everything else.”