Hoops

NBL Imports - Travel Restrictions

It's not a huge issue, it will just make for interesting rumours:
"Player X is rumoured to be in country and going through quarantine in a Sydney hotel"

Obviously clubs will have to play it a bit smarter, there'll be no more new imports playing whilst still jet-lagged. And yes, no more leaving it to game 20~21 to decide to replace somebody.

Plus the actual logistics may be expensive and complicated. You may find that it's actually hard to get a player to the point of departure.
Flights will presumably be way less frequent and more expensive.

Mike....you are an idiot

In the case of immigratiom/travel, I believe that "essential" basically means , essential to the industry concerned. Hense how we get any imports in, any time.

koberulz - Victoria has been carrying out community testing for the last 4 weeks, throughout the 'hotspots'. They've had teams in shopping centres and other community hubs, offering tests to everyone who wants them.

That's been in addition to their continuing testing of symptomatic people.

Restrictions began in the 10 'hotspot postcodes' on 30 June - 18 days ago. New case trends appear to have peaked and turned down in a couple of the local government areas concerned (Moonee Valley and Moreland), but are still increasing in the others. (Victoria don't publish postcode data on new cases, just LGA data.)

Whole of Melbourne lockdowns were imposed on 8 July - 10 days ago. The hope is that new case numbers will plateau in the next week, according to Victoria's Chief Health Officer.

NSW have now detected new cases in the same area (Casula) as the Crossroads Hotel and Planet Fitness clusters, but which are apparently not linked to those clusters. i.e., potential undetected community transmission.

The big question is how proactively Victoria is testing. Initially you had to have symptoms to get tested, so there was a two week lag between lockdowns and a drop in cases. If that's still the case, then the numbers right now are still pre-lockdown and thus not a massive concern in terms of dragging things out. If they're more up to date than that due to asymptomatic testing, that's a much worse scenario.

As per posters above, there's no problem with getting imports into the country, other than the need for them to test negative and spend a couple of weeks in quarantine. Clubs won;t be worried about the couple of thousand that will cost them, per import. Although it may mean imports are less likely to be game ready when they come out of quarantine. So the point above about getting import selection right is a good one.

A bigger threat to NBL is the risk that state and territory border restrictions may still be in place come December. Victoria will be in lockdown for at least another month and presumably will take a month or so after that to ease back restrictions. That'll take us to the end of September. Borders with other states and territories might open up a month or so after that, depending on case numbers in Victoria. So end of October. That'll be only 5 weeks before the NB: season is due to start. That's a best case scenario and presumes the NSW outbreaks don't explode like Victoria's have. It also presumes no further major outbreaks arise. It also presumes rapid re-opening of borders if and when the current outbreak is controlled.

If you think the above is too pessimistic, then consider this. In the initial wave of COVID-19 cases, Victoria's average new cases per day peaked at 56 on March 27, then fell to 2 by April 28 (a month later). In early June, that average was around 6 per day and SA said it would reopen the border a month and a half later - i.e., reopening borders 12 weeks after Victoria's 56 per day peak. That decision was rescinded within 3 weeks, after Victoria's current outbreak began. In the past week, Victoria's averaged over 270 new cases per day (five times the initial wave's peak) and it's still going up.

I think the NBL should be nervous.

Yeah let's just continue to increase the amount of handouts we get and the country goes further and further into the financial shitter. Brilliant.

I think that the “essential worker visa” is going to be harder to put in place than what everything thinks.
Not because it’s hard to do on its own accord - but because it raises the floodgate arguments/preferential treatment.
It’s becoming a brewing issue in NZ (or soon to be). Essential workers coming into the country but partners and other family members been kept out. It could get messy.

Morrison was very clear about this from Day 1- an essential worker is someone with a job. I know that sounds ridiculous, but he was saying basically, all work is important and the economy needs to keep running, so keep doing your job.

In other words "Essential" is just a spin word to boost morale in the population.

Import selection will be more crucial than ever, due to likely ongoing travel delays meaning extra difficulty in switching imports mid season.

What will change is that teams will want to nail the import selections. No cutting mid-season and rushing a player in.

Nah, lock down those airports!

Sorry Nick, no flights to Europe

Welcome Duop

14 days in a hotel, not that hard to work out is it?

Ha ha, yeah, nah. Keep those borders closed please.

Connor henry in the country after coming from America

Must of been lost on the way, pretty shattered for dell! Hopefully he can prove his worth and sneak in somewhere in the second round!