This year was unprecedented – a season disrupted by the global COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0 Thankfully, to the best of our knowledge, no members of the Australia Table Football community contracted COVID-19.\u00a0 However, we were all affected in some way by the impacts it had on our lives and the way we lived them in 2020.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to thank everyone for their compliance with restrictions and patience with returning to COVID safe competition.\u00a0 The health of our community should remain our top priority.<\/p>\n
One of the rare highlights for the year in Australian Table Football was the 2020 Australian Grand Prix held in February at the magnificent Lakeside facilities associated with South Melbourne FC.\u00a0 It was fantastic to return to this location for a FISTF event for the first time since the 2018 Asian Cup.<\/p>\n
With the FISTF season changed to a calendar year this simplifies some aspects of our communication and membership with ATFA.\u00a0 Membership will now align to a calendar year.\u00a0 Due to the disruption of 2019-20 season preventing competition for most of the year we are pleased to announce the 2021 memberships to ATFA will be free of charge.\u00a0 We hope this may also enable use to expand our reach into new and returning players.\u00a0 It is a credit to the ATFA Committees over the years that the organisation is able to be able to accommodate this.<\/p>\n
2021 will no doubt continue to raise challenges as the world continues to battle the pandemic.\u00a0 Significant doubt remains at present regarding the hosting of the Asian Cup in Japan and the World Cup in Italy against the COVID-19 backdrop.\u00a0 Locally, Australia is making significant progress in managing the pandemic and there now appears to be a possibility to return to hosting FISTF events in Australia as domestic borders re-open and restrictions ease.\u00a0 We must all remain vigilant to the necessary controls and compliant to restrictions for the health and safety of competitors, their families and the wider community.\u00a0 I will continue to provide advice, when requested, to clubs and hosts of events, in developing COVID safe plan that they may require.<\/p>\n
I look forward to seeing you all again, and returning to safe competitive action.\u00a0 But above all, stay safe and healthy \u2013 both physically and mentally.<\/p>\n
Adrian Connolly<\/p>\n
ATFA President<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This year was unprecedented – a season disrupted by the global COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0 Thankfully, to the best of our knowledge, no members of the Australia Table Football community contracted COVID-19.\u00a0 However, we were all affected in some way by the impacts it had on our lives and the way we lived them in 2020.\u00a0 I\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/subbuteoaustralia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/subbuteoaustralia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/subbuteoaustralia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subbuteoaustralia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subbuteoaustralia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/subbuteoaustralia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5525,"href":"https:\/\/subbuteoaustralia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5524\/revisions\/5525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/subbuteoaustralia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subbuteoaustralia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subbuteoaustralia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}