ANGLESEA coach Paul Nigro has called on AFL Barwon to give clubs a clearer picture around contracts, salary cap, player points and fixturing as soon as possible to help clubs prepare for 2021.
Nigro, who has been re-appointed for next year, says last year’s semi-finalists are keen to start assembling their list.
“We want to get to our playing group sooner rather than later to give them reassurance of how 2021 is going to look,” he said.
“Most clubs, including ourselves, you’d be expecting to retain 90-95 per cent of your list, I would have thought.”
Among the first players Nigro will speak with are veteran duo Dale Carson and Zane Vail.
Carson turned 36 last month, while Vail will be 38 when the 2021 season begins.
“I’m certainly not going to have those conversations now,” Nigro said.
“I’m going to let the dust settle and see where those guys sit; there’ll be no pressure.
“Their bodies, ideally, should be OK. It’s just whether they’re willing and able and their state-of-mind has them ready to go again.”
Nigro says Anglesea will wait until it gets a better indication from AFL Barwon of what a modified competition will look like before committing to playing.
A potential proposal was unveiled late last week following the decision to cancel to the 2020 home-and-away for the BFL, as well as the GFL, GDFL and Colac and District league.
“We’re digesting that, and we’ll get together as a group and see how that looks, and get a feel for what other clubs are going to do as well,” Nigro said.
“Going back to the original decision (to cancel the season), I think it was fairly unanimous that most clubs’ decided to opt-out of playing for the year.
“How that modified version looks going forward – I think it’s well-structured, but whether it’s viable and too late, I’m not too sure.
“Grounds would be an issue, but moving forward it would be a great little concept to run in pre-season.”
Nigro said the decision to cancel the season didn’t come as a surprise to his players.
“Our players were satisfied the decision had been put out there,” Nigro said.
“At the stage it had got to, to come back in the middle of July to play a shortened season would have been very difficult, I would have thought.”
Twitter: @tom_king79
