JETS ironman Nikolai Topor-Stanley feared he may have played his last game of professional football after the A-League was shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The NRL and AFL had made public their intentions to resume competition.
But there had been nothing but silence from Football Federation Australia after the league was suspended on March 24 and players and staff stood down.
"The whole process when we were stood down was a mental battle in terms of would we even play football again," Topor Stanley said. "There was no clear answer. Things were changing every day. That was the hard part, the uncertainty, the rumours ... other sports were signalling their intent to get back playing. There was silence on the football front."
Topor-Stanley is part of the players' union executive and was involved in negotiating a pay deal and contract extension to cover the remaing part of the season.
However, FFA were dealing separately with broadcaster Foxtel. Those talks came to a head on Friday when Foxtel agreed to a new deal for the remainder of this season and the entirety of the next at a reduced rate. The renegotiated contract will deliver FFA approximately $27m in cash for next season as well as another $5m worth of advertising.
Clubs are yet to learn what their share of the TV revenue will be and what implications the new deal will have on next season's A-League salary cap.
The previous six-year deal, worth $57m per season in cash and contra, gave each A-League club $3.6m per season to cover an annual salary cap of $3.2m.
"To put it simply, yeah it was a relief," Topor-Stanley said of the new TV deal. "Obviously, there are details to come out with regards to what it looks like for players. It has been the elephant in the room. Players wanted certainty, players wanted some sort of security on what their future looked like."
The Jets resumed training last Wednesday and restart their campaign against Sydney FC on July 21.
"There has been no easing into it as there normally is with a preseason," said Topor-Stanley, who has played every minute of every game for the past three seasons. "It was straight back into heavy work because we have to play in less than a month. Tempo has been high. I think we did 10km on Saturday at training."
With the new broadcast deal covering 12 months, Topor-Stanley said there was an onus on the players to showcase the game.
"That is the reason why the players were so keen to finish off the season," he said. "We knew that was our best bet to get the product back out there. Be on the front foot and show that football is an attractive sport and do our part to get football back on TV."
Jets players were given training programs to follow during the shutdown.
"I have two young children and it was a good opportunity to spend more time with them," the 35-year-old defender said. "That was a positive. You can't have too much time off, especially at my age. It is that much harder to get back into good shape."
