It’s obviously been a dynamic 48 hours, week or fortnight, however you frame it up. What is your understanding with the fluid situation as it stands at the moment, the absolute latest that you’re hearing from the AFL?

We are preparing to play next week in front of no crowd. We’ve been told we have to be agile because things are changing really quickly and probably to be prepared for the fixtures to change and perhaps be more compacted in the early part of the year.

What does that actually mean? Are they looking at playing three games across two weeks? Are you talking about that sort of thing or are we going to see the venues of games change? What do they actually mean when they say the fixture might change?

We haven’t been really given details. I think it’s more around concepts at this stage and they’re working behind the scenes feverishly to come up with something. I’m anticipating that we’re going to be preparing for both of those things, potential changes to the gaps between games and possibly where games are played and fixture.

Is it possible that they will try and compress the season to a 17-game season where everyone plays each other once, they are able to put the brakes on things for five or six weeks if they need to and then play a finals series after that? Is that one of the concepts that has been floated by you?

No. I think the ideal position of the AFL is that the full complement of games are played, plus finals, and that we used best efforts as a footy community to achieve that outcomes if it’s possible.

Obviously we’ve known about Coronavirus for a little while and there has been this crystal ball gazing for a little while as to how it could potentially affect everything and everything has happened really rapidly in the last two or three days. How long have West Coast as a club and the AFL as a league been planning for possible contingencies? When did this first rear its head in your meetings and people start saying this is a possibility and we need to look at how we are going to deal with this?

As a football club we have been ‘what if-ing’ it for probably about four weeks as to what may happen if certain things eventuate with the spread of this terrible virus. As a league, they’ve been keeping in contact with us constantly, but it has elevated over the last week or week and a half as things have gone on and governments have made decisions. There have been lots of changes worldwide, both in sport but more importantly around communities in different places around the world.

It’s great that we can isolate the players ad try and look after them as well as we can or as you can as a club, but they do go out into the real world and interact with people who are out there interacting with different people. It’s much like the six degrees of separation. What advice do you give to your players? What do you say to them to try and give them the best chance to avoid it right now.?

We are looking at maximising to the best we can some sort of social isolation short of quarantining them into living quarters and working quarters. It’s impossible to totally achieve that, but our suggestions have been around hygiene, they’ve been around dos and don’ts around where to go and what to do and what to avoid. Our doctors, obviously, have been heavily involved in that process. As a footy club unfortunately we’ve had to close our sessions. We’ve had to on medical advice, cut back on signing sessions for our players, attendances at our various community commitments, which is really killing us – it’s a very big thing for the West Coast Eagles, our engagements with the community – but we have to do that. Attendances with sponsors and the like, they are all being cut back as well unfortunately as well, but it’s necessary from a medical point of view for the well-being of our players.

Has the prospect of charter flights for your away games been discussed with the AFL?

It has, yes. That’s something we are exploring and working out how Virgin Australia might assist in this process. We’re not travelling in week one, so I suspect that there’ll be an ongoing dialogue and we’ll work through what that looks like for our round two game and moving forward. No doubt a charter is something that we are looking at. It is just difficult economically to achieve all the outcomes.

Channel 7 are reporting that they’ve got this exclusive document that is being circulated suggesting teams are being told they could player three to four games in a three-week period (with) five day turnarounds, potentially shortened matches and adjusted rotations as part of the broader solution to where we are now. What’s your understanding on that and as a very experienced GM of football, how feasible is that for the competition and clubs and team?

I haven’t seen that document. I’ve had some really productive discussions with the league, in particular with (AFL General Manager of Football Operations) Steve Hocking and (West Coast Eagles CEO) Trevor Nisbett has had some really informative discussions with the other CEOs led by Gill (AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan). The detail is still being worked on. We are being told that we need to be really flexible and agile. If we are going to look at the things you’ve just mentioned it’s going to require use of your whole squad and you’re not always going to be able to play your best 22 each week because they are not going to be available for health reasons given their age and the wear and tear factors. We’re going to have to think very carefully. We obviously don’t like anything less than a six-day break, but it’s something that I think is going to be upon us. We’re going to look to minimise those for the health of our players but we also need to accept that there’s going to be some pretty short stints between games.

We know that one thing the AFL Commision did throw around over the last couple of days as this sort of came upon us was the possibility of top-up players and extending lists to try and give clubs more player availability in the event of infections. Did that filter down to club level or did that not make it that far?

I think that’s only concept stage at this point in time and we need to see the detail around that, particularly who is going to pay for it given the economic consequences of it and also what effect it might have on the WAFL competition in our particular case as well. The concept of more players to get through this period does make sense, it’s just how it is achieved in a fair way.

I read Adam Simpson earlier on in the week on the AFL website speaking about the internal trial (match). Jack Darling, Bailey Williams and Jeremy McGovern were all trying to ensure they were fit enough for round one. How did they go on Friday?

All well actually. It was so pleasing to see all three boys out there, Jack and Gov in particular got through pretty large volumes and Bailey is still building. But Jack and Gov probably exceeded our expectations to a degree, particularly Gov. It was exciting to see them up and about. I thought they both played well and are in a really good position to take on round one.

Josh Kennedy, we’re hearing there’s a bit of an elbow problem there? How is he and do you expect him to be fit and available to play against Melbourne?

Yeah, he’s well. We’re managing Josh. He got a knock on that elbow, but if we would have had a game he would have played on Friday and we are expecting him to be available for round one. He did a really high volume session from a running perspective, but we wanted to keep him out of the bumps and bruises that was a pretty full-on internal (match) on Friday.