Australia’s National Rugby League (NRL) yesterday bowed to the inevitable and suspended its season over growing fears for player safety coupled with tightened government restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19.
The 16-club NRL kicked off two weeks ago and made it through two rounds as one of the last professional sports worldwide still playing during the pandemic.
The cash-strapped league is considered part of Australia’s social fabric and determined efforts were made to keep it going, but the noose began to tighten over the past few days.
The Australian government recommended against all “non-essential” domestic travel and yesterday a shutdown of a range of businesses began nationwide.
A final blow came when Queensland, a major center for the NRL along with New South Wales, joined other states in closing its borders.
“Our pandemic and biosecurity experts said due to the outbreak it is no longer safe for our players to play,” Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V’landys said. “This decision hasn’t been taken lightly. Our experts are very concerned with the rapid rate [of infection]. We were alarmed at how everything changed over the past 24 hours.”
V’landys said the NRL was leaving any potential resumption of the season open.
It follows the Australian Football League suspending its Aussie Rules season on Sunday, with A-League soccer the only competition still going, without fans, in the nation.
Football Federation Australia are scheduled to make a decision on its fate today.
NRL bosses have previously said closing down the season would bankrupt the game and push clubs out of business, with lucrative broadcasts contracts at stake.
V’landys said that it was “catastrophic.”
“I don’t think we’ve ever come across a financial crisis like it,” he said. “Rugby league will always survive in some way, but I can’t guarantee it will in the same way. We’re ready for the worst.”
Desperate to stave off financial ruin, the NRL had earlier been considering relocating the entire competition to a vacant mining town in central Queensland.
All the players would have remained there in isolation with games played at a nearby venue, but the decision by Queensland to close its borders put paid to the plan, with V’landys saying the NRL did not have enough time to carry it out.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but