Some of Wagga sporting clubs' futures hang in the balance as they face an uncertain future following unexpected additional costs related to COVID-19 restrictions and a time-consuming battle to comply with those rules.
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Other sporting bodies are worried about the impact mandatory vaccinations might have on players.
Many clubs could struggle to remain operational after enduring serious losses of revenue, extra costs for safety and public health measures, and a loss of volunteers.
The Australian Sports Foundation has conducted a national research study to help determine the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on community sport and discovered Australia's 70,000 community sports clubs face concerns in financial instability, declining participation and declining volunteering.
With the cricket season set to start, Wagga City Cats president Owen Thompson recently received some directions from Cricket NSW on how the new season might look in relation to possible mandatory vaccinations being enforced.
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"A lot of stuff has got lumped on us and now Cricket NSW has said that players must have at least one jab to be allowed to play," Mr Thompson said.
"We haven't seen the details yet about what happens with the people that are not jabbed.
"As an administrator trying to do the right thing, that is really difficult and we can't control anything until we get further advice.
"If they're going to be making it mandatory that would mean we're supposed to police it, so we're hoping to have some rules in place before we get started."
Another sporting season only weeks away from beginning is futsal, an indoor soccer competition.
Wagga Futsal president Sam Gray said that trying to comply with a range of restrictions had been difficult in preparing for the season.
He said "several thousand dollars" extra were needed just to cover the cost of cleaning materials.
However, Mr Gray said being unable to open the club's canteen would prove to be the biggest blow as its takings were used to help reduce players' fees.
"I think it's an uncertain future at the moment until we get concrete guidelines on what we can do and how we do it and when we can start," he said.
"We budgeted on expecting to spend an extra $1000 but it cost about $5000.
"Wipes, sanitisers, bin bags, cleaning and drying bibs and the extra expense of getting an EFTPOS machine cost a lot and then there's the huge loss from the canteen as well.
"Our finance levels are a bit harem-scarem at the moment, so the extra costs this season will be a huge challenge."
Passionate about the sport, Mr Gray said he has explored all avenues to keep playing costs down, but the loss of the canteen's profits was causing him some worries.
"The profit from our canteen keeps the player costs low and subsidises that and any money it makes goes back into reducing playing fees," Mr Gray said.
"We lost that last year and this year there will be no canteen again.
"We are supposed to have trials for the nationals on November 7.
"That weekend would have seen huge money in the canteen and helped a lot of people play at a reduced cost."
Futsal and cricket have some hope of being able to hold full seasons, but Group Nine, Southern Inland Rugby Union and the Farrer and Riverina leagues were among the winter codes to have their competitions abruptly wiped out when a snap lockdown was called and community sports were cancelled.
It was a decision that frustrated Farrer League team East Wagga Kooringal and its president Paul Bourne.
"To get to the end of it and then through no fault of our own, we didn't even get the chance to run around at the finals because they were cancelled is disappointing," Mr Bourne said.
"We had the best part of the year off in 2020 and we lost in the 2019 grand final so the team was super keen to redeem themselves this year.
"It was unknown whether the finals would be off or on and that affected some mentally, personally I struggled with that.
"I was disappointed that all community sport was cancelled, but in some ways it was just a relief to know."
An expected decrease in playing numbers and volunteers is also causing some clubs a headache on the brink of their new seasons.
More than 500 players participated in last year's futsal competition, however Mr Gray is expecting a decline in participation rates with players and volunteers being unable to arrive early to help set up and having to leave immediately after a game.
"We've already noticed a slight drop off in playing numbers," he said.
"Mums and dads would take their kids to the game and the grandparents would stop by as well, but now only one parent or guardian is allowed per player, so that's how we lost a lot of participants.
"The number of volunteers has dropped too, from about 10 volunteers down to the same five people every week."
Mr Thompson is also preparing for some volunteers to leave before a cricket ball is bowled.
"We've done a bit of a survey at our club and we're not seeing a great number of people who are anti-vax, but one or two volunteers are saying they won't be getting jabbed, but no players as yet," Mr Thompson said.
"I wouldn't want the job of policing it and policing the opposition too.
"The five other clubs in Wagga will be going through the same thing."
Mr Gray agreed that enforcing the COVID rules would be a difficult path to navigate.
"The most horrible part was the COVID marshall having to police people and ask them to sit down and copping abuse for it," he said.
"We did have trouble at the start but eventually everyone got the hang of it."
Mr Bourne has already endured adhering to the COVID restrictions before the Farrer League season was called to a halt and has a rough idea what other clubs about to start their seasons will be up against.
He praised all the Australian football clubs for the part they had played in keeping the community safe throughout the season.
"Training had been one of the things that has cost us extra as balls had to be washed at every training session, before and after and after every game," Mr Bourne said.
"Standing at the door signing in had to be policed as we didn't want to do the wrong thing by the community.
"The biggest challenge was organising cleaning, policing the entry and QR code sign in, but I think all the clubs managed well.
"Our secretary Peter Amos put his hand up for that and then we had to sanitise rooms and that gave us extra cleaning costs.
"If I was to pluck a figure of how much extra it cost us with our football club with this whole COVID thing, it would be up to $10,000."
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