The Auckland Tuatara are set to sit out of the upcoming ABL season. Photo: SMPIMAGES/Baseball Australia
The Auckland Tuatara are set to sit out of the upcoming ABL season. Photo: SMPIMAGES/Baseball Australia
The Auckland Tuatara have withdrawn from the upcoming Australian Baseball League season due to concerns with Covid-19 restrictions, leaving their future in the competition in jeopardy.
New Zealand's only professional baseball club today formally confirmed their decision to opt out, having initially advised the league of their intent to sitout the season on Monday.
At that time, they were strongly advised to reconsider their position.
Having gone ahead with it, they could now face the wrath of the league, as withdrawing from the season is a breach of their licence agreement and could see that licence revoked.
Baseball Australia chief executive Cam Vale was not in a position to answer questions when approached by the Herald on Thursday, but released a statement indicating his disappointment at the situation.
"The reason for this withdrawal is best summed up as being due to mismanagement by Auckland," Vale said.
"Whilst the ABL and the other teams see the strategic importance of a New Zealand based team in the league, the ability for Auckland to compete in future seasons is now in serious doubt. The current ownership is in breach of their ABL licence agreement. They will be given 28 days to address this.
"Decisions on their future involvement will be made by the league and other teams in due course through the Board of Directors of the ABL."
The Tuatara, who were a semifinalist in last year's competition, are not the only team to withdraw from the season, with Geelong-Korea also opting out.
Los Angeles Dodgers prospect Jared Walker had agreed to return for the Auckland Tuatara should they play this year. Photo: SMPIMAGES/Baseball Australia.
Going ahead with the upcoming season would have meant the Tuatara would have had to base themselves in Australia much like the Warriors did during their NRL campaign. The Tuatara had verbal agreements with a number of players both local and abroad to play in the upcoming season, but under the impression there would be baseball in Auckland.
With that no longer possible, the majority of those players were unable to commit to playing for the franchise this summer. Many of the local New Zealand players would also be unable to play due to work commitments and the need to quarantine in and out of New Zealand as well as playing the entire season in Australia.
It meant the Tuatara would have to find local Australian players, not currently contracted to any other clubs, to continue playing in the league this summer and the Auckland Tuatara board felt that would undermine the standards the franchise has set to this point and would make it harder to be sustainable.
In a statement released by the club, Tuatara chairman Noel Davies said they exhausted every potential angle to get a season played but the impact of Covid-19 has just been too big a hurdle to overcome.
"Our hands were tied thanks to the Covid-19 outbreak and the restrictions and limitations caused by it," Davies said.
"The travel restrictions, additional costs associated with travel, quarantine costs, player availability, lack of commercial sponsorship in Covid-19 times and the ongoing risk with committing to costs that cannot be recovered if we proceed any further formed the basis of the board's decision.
"We are absolutely gutted. We've poured our heart and soul into trying to push ahead with a season. As the situation has constantly changed we have adapted with it, working in conjunction with the ABL and our rival teams as well as the Government and Sport NZ but ultimately it just got too challenging.
"The board felt we had to draw a line in the sand and, with time fast running out and travel restrictions still in place, we had to assume that our season would proceed under the current environment. There was also the potential that any further outbreaks of Covid-19 on either side of the Tasman could curtail the season beyond the league's control.
"That was too big a risk to our ongoing survival. We want to be in the league for a long time and taking the gamble to try and push ahead would seriously jeopardise that."
However, Vale suggested the situation should have been better handled by the Auckland franchise.
"Whilst Covid-19 is proving extremely challenging, all ABL teams committed to this season on four separate occasions, as recently as Monday, November 2," Vale said. "Teams have been given multiple opportunities to change their position, of which Auckland haven't wavered from this model up until this week.
"Therefore, issues cited by Auckland such as quarantine and flight costs, whilst challenging, should have been better managed and addressed weeks if not months ago. Alternatives were presented to Auckland to mitigate these costs, they chose not to do."
