Border closures

are getting ridiculous.

I am not opposed to border closures to prevent the spread of Covid19. I am opposed to border closures for some and not others - specifically footballers. Why should footballers be treated any differently?

Even if they are required to quarantine for fourteen days why should footballers and all the officials and support people who are with them for a match be considered "essential"? They are not essential. Football is nothing more than a game. 

Yes, I KNOW  "people love their footy". I KNOW for some people it is the highlight of their day, their week, their year and their life. It is still just a game. Even my football mad cousin - the one who was once a selector for a major football team - agrees that the present situation is ridiculous. 

There really should have been no football at all this year. It is a "contact" sport. I didn't notice the players wearing masks. The training sessions must have involved breaches of "social distancing" because the matches which have been played certainly did. 

And now they are playing the so-called "Grand Final" outside the state it is usually played but in a state which still has some cases. They are going to allow a sizeable crowd to attend the match. After all, this is football. Football is so important.

It seems it is more important than medical emergencies. I wonder how the mother who was not able to cross a border and consequently lost a baby feels about the match? I wonder how much a woman who has a few weeks to live feels about not seeing her daughter for the last time. What about the farmer who hasn't been able to check his cattle and the people who have lost their jobs (in aged care) because they live on one side of the border and worked on the other? How are schools who have students and staff straddling the border coping? There is the daughter whose mother has MS, whose father has had surgery and whose sister is disabled. She cannot visit them to help. And what of all those other people who live on one side and work on the other?

Brother Cat lives in an area where they have had no Covid19 cases. We are all thankful for that but we have no idea when he will be able to visit the Senior Cat. No, we aren't complaining but it does make us acutely conscious of people who have a more urgent need to cross a border.  We are also conscious of all the people who live alone in the state still under lockdown. They have not even been permitted to have a single visitor. Imagine being shut in a tiny flat in a tower block unable to go out - except for essentials - or have anyone come in. Is it any wonder that mental health issues are on the rise?

But footballers can go and play a close contact game in another state. Why?