2020 NPL Victoria season cancelled

So, that's it for senior men's or women's soccer in the mainline metropolitan competitions for 2020.

While Football Victoria and a select few clubs who believed in their (given by who knows) mandate of football heaven that they must try and play through a pandemic, the pandemic has ultimately won.

But only for now. Because even as there appears to be no end in sight to the pandemic easing in Victoria to such a point where we might conceivably see local soccer return this year, still the dreamers of dreams are going to try and find a way to get any sort of soccer played in what remains of this awful year.

At the moment that seems to be mostly around getting junior competitions completed under some modified format, because won't someone think of the children and all that. Or won't someone think of a governing body that would hate to have to refund a ton of money back to clubs who would, in theory at least, return those fees back to those who put the money in the food chain in the first place.

And while sporting body budgets are always erratic things prone to mild swings of boom and bust, and belt tightening and free spending, having no competitions and therefore no fees coming into your coffers for a whole year would be hard to deal with for any governing body. And even if there was some kind of government bailout to cover your arse for this situation, it might not yet be enough.

Anyway, all of this is disappointing, but understandable. I blame no one who wanted to bail on the whole year when it seemed like most teams were gearing up for some kind of return. I blame no one who bailed when it became obvious that the virus' first wave had returned. I don't even blame those who wanted to play, whatever their motivation for doing so.

As it is, Football Victoria is looking to try and organise cobbled together tournaments of some sort for the spring and summer, for what purpose other than trying to claim some of their soon-to-be missing fees (assuming they don't keep the fees of those that choose not to play in of these proposed tournaments).

As it is, I would like to be able to say that I can write up a season review now, but since there might be some sort of South related action yet in 2020, I'll guess I'll just pad out the weeks with other crap until such time as everyone gives up on trying to get anything going this year.