Due to strongly suggested measures to ensure health and safety by various levels of government and their affiliated health boards, the C-F-L has pushed back the start of their 2020 season until at least July.
Commissioner Randy Ambrosie released a statement to that effect Tuesday morning, saying that the league sees that the country has sacrifice and hard work to do to fend off the novel coronavirus, adding that they will continue to respect the suggested measures as well as the cities who have banned sporting events until the end of June. Calgary and Toronto did that, although Toronto Mayor John Tory did say sporting events in private facilities didn’t fall under his order. Tuesday’s move by the C-F-L follows last week’s postponement of training camps that were slated to start May 16. The regular season was set to begin June 11. Following is Commissioner Ambrosie’s statement…
Like our fellow Canadians, we in the CFL are striving to meet today’s challenges with both pragmatism and hope. We are pragmatic enough to see our country still has sacrifice and hard work ahead of it. We urge everyone to heed the direction of public health officials in the fight to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Our hearts go out to the families who have lost loved ones. We salute the heroic efforts of those on the front lines of our health care system and our supply chain. And we are grateful for the leadership being shown by all levels of government. We respect the decisions being made by the federal government, provinces and municipalities on behalf of our safety and we will continue to follow their directives. These include indications from Canadian cities that they will not allow sporting events to take place before the end of June.
While it is now clear that the 2020 CFL season won’t start before the beginning of July, we are committed to working with our teams, the Players’ Association, TSN and RDS to play a full season or as close as we can come to one. We recognize this may require some creativity and we are preparing for multiple scenarios.
We realize there are more important things on Canadians’ minds right now than games of any sort. But we also know Canadian football has long been a source of pride and unity for our country and – when the time is right – we can play an important role in its recovery.
Until then, let’s all be pragmatic enough to do what we need to do to stop the spread of this virus and protect one another. And, at the same time, let’s keep our hopes high.
– Randy Ambrosie
CFL Commissioner
