It was the news most were probably expecting but it doesn't make the reality any less difficult to swallow.
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After a couple of months of no play though with the hope that the season might be resurrected, the decision has been made.
And that is that the Ovens and Murray Football League's 2020 season has been cancelled.
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It's certainly a momentous move but as the league has explained, without crowds the financial burden of trying to continue this year made any attempt to get matches played untenable.
The COVID-19 pandemic has already inflicted a considerable burden on the communities of the Border region, from that moment now months ago that social isolation became the new norm.
With that social isolation came the requirement for many sectors to effectively shut down: cafes and restaurants were a no-go zone, for one, because of the particular risk in spreading the coronavirus.
Shops closed and a whole range of other industry were impacted, while school students also bore the brunt of the need for us all to keep our distance.
We have all been buoyed no doubt by the recent easing of restrictions that have allowed many businesses to begin earning some income and made life for us all a little more easy to handle.
But of course, as the current spate of outbreaks in Victoria - or more so, in suburban Melbourne - have demonstrated, the risks are nowhere near over.
The spate of community transmissions, rather than the early cases of returned international travellers, is certainly a salutatory reminder of hard work ahead.
It's just a pity that the panic buyers of Melbourne appeared to have resumed their ridiculous spending sprees.
We have to accept that returning to the "old normal" is simply not possible until the day that a vaccine becomes available.
And that means the thing so many of us love and which brings community together - our football and netball competitions - have to do the same, for the safety of all must be paramount.
There is no other possible choice.