Catastrophic, a wipe-out, and no time to debrief.
That is how three club CEOs from three different sports have described the winter they’ve just experienced.
“We’re not going to get back to pre-COVID settings until 2023,” Brendon Gale, chief executive of the AFL champions Richmond Tigers, said.
“God forbid that we ever have to do this again,” Rosie King, chief executive of the Super Netball champions the Melbourne Vixens, said.
“Financially it’s just been a wipe-out,” Cameron George, the chief executive of NRL side New Zealand Warriors, said.
All of them looked worn out, none of them wanted 2020 to be repeated, and yet each of them sounded like proud parents when they spoke about their team’s resilience on The Ticket’s annual CEOs panel.
The Tigers and Vixens both spent time in Queensland-based COVID bubbles while the Warriors spent the most time away from home — in lockdown from mid-March to October after travelling to Australia for round one of the NRL, then finding out New Zealand had shut its borders.
‘They just had to work it out’
The Tigers boss said the season “was really quite affirming in that it just highlighted the importance of the environment of the football club”.
Some off-field incidents potentially threatened to impact Richmond’s title defence, although Gale said the club took responsibility, highlighting the growing importance of “self-understanding and self-worth” in all elite sport.
“Having a sense of who we are and what we stand for and what makes us ‘us’ [is important] … we tell our own stories,” Gale said.
“We’re not defined by others, so I think as the media becomes more fragmented, and social media — there seems to be a lot of anger — … we’re in a world of perpetual judgments and scrutiny.
Vixens boss King pointed to club-wide welfare as one of the major issues to emerge.
“I think we had a really good set-up for the wellbeing for the athletes,” King said.
“They had independent support, as well as within the hub itself, but maybe not quite as much access for the staff and coaches.
“I think in hindsight … we would make sure that our staff knew that they were part of that wellbeing experience as opposed to it being categorised as ‘athlete wellbeing’.
“There were definitely swings and roundabouts of emotion because you put people together for that period of time and there’s going to be a niggle every now and then.
“At the end of the day, they just had to work it out.”
‘Mentally that’s going to wear on you’
The New Zealand Warriors are still dealing with the mental impact of being away from home for seven months.
While some families joined players in the COVID bubble in Australia, there were others who were not given visas by the Australian Government and had to remain behind.
When the season ended, players flew back to Auckland to enter another 14 days of self-isolation before being able to return home.
“From mid-March right through till mid-October our guys lived a restricted lifestyle, so mentally that’s going to wear on you and it’s quite challenging,” George said.
Losing a coach mid-season added further strain.
“We’re putting a lot of things in place now to make sure we’re coming out of it really well. That’s the most important thing,” George said.
“We’ve put a lot of investment and time and resources into it.”
The Vixens have gone straight into contract negotiations with their players for next season, which King describes as “a really cruel end of the season”.
“What you have is this clash now of having to go into player contracting and player negotiations, so it’s almost like you don’t have a full stop,” she said.
“I was reflecting with our coach and contracting manager … and you could really see the exhaustion that they’ve come out of this experience in Queensland and they really haven’t had the chance to have a proper debrief.”
Financial hit ‘huge’
One of the biggest hits has been to budgets — every team in every competition will be coming to terms with a new reality.
King says the staff at the Vixens all took pay cuts and “threw whatever we needed to” so the team could focus on the competition in Queensland without having to worry about controlling purse strings from a distance.
The rebalancing of the budget and the long-term impact of the season that’s been start now.
Gale said Richmond “can’t sugar coat it”.
For them, the financial hit “has been huge”.
“We’re in the business of mass gathering,” he said.
“So that has a catastrophic impact on our business.
“We’ve had to make really hard decisions about standing down staff and redundancies.
“The next two years are going to be really tough.”
Meanwhile, George said without financial help provided by the NRL and the New Zealand Government, he was fearful the club might fold.
“Financially it’s just been a wipe-out,” he said.
“We haven’t had a home game all year.
“Our members and our corporates thankfully stuck with us.
“There was a percentage that asked for a refund, we get that.
“Thankfully the NRL has really helped the clubs … without that help, honestly, I don’t know whether we’d be here. It’s been really tough.
With a slight pause, a dash of trepidation and a lot of hope, he added: “We’re looking forward to what lies ahead”.
