NPL shutdown extended

So the pause that was set on grassroots soccer in Australia until mid-April has now been extended until the end of May. Given the way the COVID-19 situation continues to unfold, that extension won't be a surprise to anyone.

Maybe because of the tedious way the season had been going, I've not been missing South games as much as I thought I would be, and I suspect that's probably the same for a lot of our remaining supporter base. Still, I do miss some of the people. And it'd be nice to keep busy and get some fresh air and be able to watch people exert themselves for my entertainment. The restricted triangulation of going to the supermarket, the local bakery, and the front garden can get wearisome even for the best of us.

Soccer-forum.net and smfcfans,com have both more or less lost all momentum. There's just nothing to talk about except the thing that everyone's talking about, unless you want to dig into the past. Looking forward, we're probably not quite at the point where the whole 2020 NPL Victoria season will become a write-off, but it must be getting close. Who knows how you'd even resume the competition should the situation be stable enough at the end of May.

The economic consequences of the shutdown on local soccer are still yet to be fleshed out, and it's probably too early to know how far-reaching the effects will be. But for South, there's some interesting questions to consider, and I'm interested in how the board will handle them. There's player contracts of course - with South reputedly being one of the few clubs in the competition to have their players on professional contracts instead of amateur, you'd hope that the bulk of those contracts were based on players actually playing.

There's also coaches and support staff, for some of whom South will be their main source of employment, as opposed to it being a weekend thing for a bit of extra coin / lucrative hobby. Oh, and then there's the situation every NPL club will be having to deal with - what happens to their youth programs which will have cost parents a great deal of money, and whose seasons would have barely started. And some of our coaches and at least one of our players must be on working visas. There's also income streams from sponsors, loss of match day revenue, and let's not forget Vic and the folk who lease out the social club space. We're fortunate enough to have the monthly government stipend, but we also have debts that we're trying to clear... it's just so much uncertainty.

On the social side of things, the club itself continues to sporadically provide social media updates. There's the high level personal trolling of me by the club with 'Melvin Mondays'. There's also been a revival of South Radio, which seems to only be available via Facebook at this stage. According to senior team manager Kris Peladarinos, the players are training and keeping fit mostly by themselves at the moment. We'll have to wait until president Nick Maikousis makes an appearance on the show to get more solid information about how the club is dealing with the issues brought about by the corona virus shutdown.