"I am optimistic and as confident as you can be, but we continue to take the advice of the government and the medical officers and today we have a level of confidence that things are going the right way. But I always have that asterisk," McLachlan said. The bullishness comes after several days of optimism at all levels of government about improved conditions, and as Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Thursday the government's "intention has now been turning to the road out, having worked through the road in". The likelihood is that football will return through games played at three hubs around the country, and there will be no crowds possibly for the whole year. McLachlan also said: There would be a national draft this year but it would be a slightly different format and, without being definitive, indicated the draft age was likely to remain the same.

List sizes were likely to be cut or changed in structure for next year.

AFL football would be different next year – "it won't be less, it will just be different" – and a working party was looking at changes for the game for 2020 and 2021.

Once football resumes, the intention is it does not stop until the 144 games remaining in the season are played.

The competition will not stop for 30 days if a player tests positive – as had been said would be the case prior to round one – because protocols for isolation and managing players were different now.

It was doubtful the league would extend seasons 2021 and 2022 to seek to recoup lost revenues from this season as there were a range of contractual and logistical impediments to doing so.

Loading In a media briefing to offer an update on football, the biggest news was the pending definitive date for a return to playing this year after pessimism when the game was thrust into limbo that it might not return at all this year. The playing hubs where games are held in several different locations, and to which clubs relocate for extended periods, appears a likely avenue to returning to play. "I think it's incumbent on us to look at every option and that ranges from playing the way we have historically to various levels of quarantine, and we are working with the right people in government, bio-security experts and medical officers to get a considered view about the right way to take us forward," McLachlan said. "The decision we make will have the support of the relevant government authorities and their medical officers.

"Today at mid-April it feels possible (to play all remaining 144 games of the reduced home-and-away season). Loading "We are not looking at shorter seasons or anything else." McLachlan tried to nuance the language around planned cuts to list sizes, talking instead of a different structure of playing lists at clubs. It is difficult to escape the idea that the primary list of contracted players will be smaller, and that there will be access to players on reduced or shorter-term contracts. "There's 22 players playing every weekend under a new list size or the current list size," McLachlan said.