Canberra Cavalry pull out of opening ABL series due to COVID-19 restrictions

The Canberra Cavalry were supposed to begin their ABL season against the Perth Heat at Perth Ballpark on Friday night.

But border restrictions forced the club to withdraw as Western Australian officials force anyone coming from NSW to quarantine for two weeks following a cluster of COVID-19 cases on Sydney's northern beaches.

Anyone arriving in WA from NSW is required to self-quarantine for 14 days and get tested on day 11.

The restrictions mean 18 of the Cavalry's 24 players were deemed ineligible to fly into WA without quarantine, given many of the club's players are based in NSW.

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Cavalry officials worked into the early hours of Friday morning trying to find a solution.

Among the options tabled was sending the available Cavalry squad members to WA and scraping together a group of local Perth-based players to fill out the roster for the four-game series.

But the push to fill out a squad boasting unknown players could have sparked questions about the Cavalry's brand identity, with the ABL working to determine the outcome of the Canberra-Perth series.

Sleep-deprived Cavalry director Dan Amodio says fielding a team would have bordered on impossible having worked until about 4am AEDT to save the series.

"Once WA changed their restrictions for NSW to a low-risk state, it just meant we couldn't travel there," Amodio said.

"We were up late last night, working with the ABL, working with the Perth Heat, trying to come up with some sort of alternate solution which allowed us to get there, but there just weren't any realistic options for having Cavalry baseball out in Perth this weekend.

"It's unbelievably disappointing. As a team that lost an entire home series due to circumstances totally out of our control [last season], we know the pain and this is really disappointing for everybody.

"We don't have any other options as an organisation because we're not able to travel freely there.

"The ruling states if you live in NSW, you can't go without a two-week quarantine. We've got like six guys who live in NSW, like David Kandilas and Boss Moanaroa, that fly in for the games.

"We also have players that live in Queanbeyan, which technically means they're not able to go. Technically people who knowingly interacted with people from NSW can't go. One of our coaches lives in Queanbeyan, so he was at team training all week.

"We really only had a couple of guys from Queensland that would have been eligible to go. We tried to come up with a solution, we just weren't able to do it."

The cancellation of their opening series is a big blow for a Cavalry outfit which has had its backs to the wall this year.

Canberra was bolstered by three Brisbane Bandits three development players and Donald Lutz to Canberra for the season, while the Sydney Blue Sox offered short-stop Travis Bazzana for the Perth series.

There were fears the Cavalry would be unable to field a team in Perth with five imports still completing their two weeks' quarantine, and now the situation has effectively been taken out of their hands.

Perth will instead face Brisbane's futures team in an exhibition game on Friday with additional games set for Saturday night.

"All ABL teams understood the need to be flexible this season and the way the ABL created the schedule has allowed Brisbane to come in at short notice," Heat chief executive Steven Nelkovski said.

Sydney's game against Melbourne was set to go ahead as scheduled at Blacktown International Sportspark on Friday night.