Today should have been the biggest day on the Border's sporting calendar, the culmination of the Ovens and Murray Football Netball League season, with those fickle friends of ecstasy and agony meeting on the big stage.

But the reality is that you would have done well to see so much as a dog walker strolling past the Lavington Sports Ground, just over a week after the season was officially cancelled.

In truth, many players and coaches had mentally clocked off long before the denouement was delivered by O and M chairman David Sinclair.

"An easy decision to arrive at but a brutal one to execute," was how he summed it up.

"I remember the first break we had was May 22 when we had an interleague bye. We were scheduled to start the next weekend and that's when it came out there were COVID cases in Melbourne.

"It was a sick feeling in the stomach.

"I knew the merry-go-round was ready to start and it was going to be a rollercoaster ride to try and get through to the end of the season. Not long after that, Victoria went into lockdown and that was the first time we put the competition into recess.

"We started again with the double-header at Lavington. Craig Millar, our general manager, and the clubs did a fantastic job to be able to pull that off and at that stage, we were looking to play all of our games in NSW."

The O and M board normally meets once a month; already in 2021, there have been 25 board meetings.

"It's exhausting," Sinclair admitted. "It's emotionally and mentally draining to be continually talking about it and trying to navigate your way through it. Some of those board meetings were quite robust. Not everyone's on the same page so there's a lot of mental anguish involved in just pulling people from one direction to another.

"Last year, we hadn't played a game, therefore no-one was really conflicted but once we'd played the first seven games this year, it became evident who the top sides were. That really impacted on clubs and administrators, knowing 'we're a chance this year and we'll do anything we can to get there.'

"From a league point of view, we were the same: the season has started, we need to get a result. The whole way through, that was front of mind."

Running the region's premier sporting competition brings with it a level pressure to make the right calls in the big moments.

"You understand how much this competition means to the community," Sinclair said. 'That's evident because the amount of publicity and media this competition gets is extraordinary.

"It was important we were seen to be doing everything possible to ensure we could get a result.

"I do a lot of walking and I go to a gym class two or three times a week. I need to do those things for my own mental health, I guess. It's a couple of hours when I can divert my energy into physical activity and get away from it.

"But nine to five and even after hours, lots of phone calls, text messages, conversations, meetings and pretty much all about the one thing.

"Everywhere I went, people were, rightly, quizzing me about it all the time. People want to know what's going on and you're Johnny-on-the-spot as the leader of the organisation so, of course, you're going to be asked. You've got to be patient and give people the answers they're looking for.

"Not only that, it's also the media. I work in the media and I've got enormous respect for all the people around here - they've all got a job to do and they all want to know what's going on - but I couldn't begin to think how many radio interviews I've done, how many newspaper interviews, how many interviews on our own network at PRIME, all about the same thing.

"I don't think once have I said to anyone 'I'm sick of talking about it', I fronted up to every one and I did what I could to keep the message out there and keep people informed and buoyed that we were going to get a result."

The league was prepared to play finals behind closed doors, with all games played in Wodonga, but the one thing which wasn't going to change was the fundamental structure: five clubs, competing over four weekends for the ultimate prize.

Talks have already started around the proposal to introduce a by-law from next year, giving the O and M board greater flexibility to make operational changes on the run if COVID was to rear its ugly head again mid-season.

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Its impact on the league's balance sheet is clear.

"Sponsorship and finals revenue are our two major sources of income," Sinclair said. "We've got two full-time employees so to not have finals income for two years, which is normally in the vicinity of $130,000-$150,000, we've had to make a lot of changes to mitigate the impact that's had on our books.

"We'd have taken around a $50k hit by playing finals without crowds but we were prepared to do it.

"Through great leadership in the past, the league is, or was, in a very good financial position leading into COVID so it's not as if we didn't have the money there. If we weren't going to spend our reserves on running a finals competition, which is 'poor business', when were we going to spend it?

"We'll make a small loss this year. Last year we took a much bigger hit, about a $40k loss, but at this stage (in 2021) we're on course to have a $5k loss. To be able to get through these two years taking a hit of about $50k is extraordinary and we couldn't have done that without the support of our sponsors. If it hadn't been for that, those losses would have been a lot bigger.

"By and large, we've done pretty well to get through but we wouldn't want to navigate through this for a third year without finals."

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