The 2020 season was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which was formally declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020, eight days prior to the scheduled start of the AFL premiership season and 18 days prior to the final round of the AFL season.
AFL
Prior to the commencement of the season, the fixture was shortened from 22 matches per team to 17, under the expectation that matches would be forced to stop at the peak of the disease.[2]
The season commenced on 19 March as originally scheduled, but the introduction of restrictions (and later of formal quarantines) on interstate travel, resulted in suspension of the season after round one.[3] During that round, matches were played in empty stadiums for the first time in the league's history.[4]
Throughout the season, matches were played for a shortened length of 16 minutes plus time on per quarter, instead of 20 minutes plus time on. This was originally done at the start of the season, in the hope that playing shorter games could facilitate more frequent games than weekly, maximising the games which could be played before the anticipated suspension of the season.[5] Though the initial run of games lasted just one week, the shortened game time was retained after the season's resumption to allow make-up games to be more easily scheduled between rounds when matches were postponed or refixtured.[6]
On 15 May, as most states began easing restrictions, the league's plan to resume the season was announced: clubs began non-contact training from 18 May, and full contact training from 25 May, ahead of resuming competitive matches from 11 June, with the revised fixture released gradually throughout the year, and changing regularly and often at short notice when the situation forced it.[7]
The sizes of allowable crowds changed as the season progressed, with early season Queensland and New South Wales crowds limited to only a few hundred, while half crowds were allowed in the largely virus-free Western Australia from Round 7.
Following a virus outbreak in Melbourne in June, Richmond's base of operations was relocated to the Gold Coast, alongside all nine other Victorian clubs.[8] The club played the remainder of their home games in the state, other than when travelling to other virus-free locations.
