Message from the CEO – Wednesday 19th August, 2020

Message from the CEO

On Monday afternoon, the NSW Government’s Chief Medical Officer and the Department of Health issued further recommendations relating to community sport. Immediately following this announcement, we worked with our Associations and Clubs to address any of their concerns or queries as best we could, given the limited knowledge we had at the time.

Since then I have been continually engaging with the sport sector’s representative organisation, Sport NSW, with my colleagues at other state sporting organisations (SSOs), and the relevant Government agencies so as to understand the full impact of the Government’s recommendations. Since receiving the recommendations, the intent was to understand how best to apply them in a practical sense to the football landscape and across the many competitions that are run and the activities that we collectively conduct.

Clearly, and as it has been since the start of this pandemic, it has always been our desire to work with the NSW Government to try to contain COVID-19 and minimise the risk of transmission. With your assistance and to everyone’s credit, we have collaborated during our suspension of football activities period and all worked hard to ‘return to play’ and recommence our 2020 season. At times we have made some hard decisions and have had to cancel activities which we would normally have proceeded with, as our collective contribution to the national and state-wide efforts. I also acknowledge the work that our many club officials, volunteers, parents and players have all done in contributing to our messaging around the need for social distancing and other hygiene practices, and for following our guidelines and implementing the COVID Safety Plans we developed.

Together with my colleagues from those other sports, we have prepared a statement on how we will maintain our joint efforts to ensure the continuation of community sport. I cannot emphasise enough the need for ongoing vigilance and discipline in this regard.

With the above in mind this weekend’s fixtures can proceed as scheduled.

Attached is the joint statement

Regards

Stuart Hodge

CEO