Culture

South Australians Have Been Warned To Avoid Eating Chips After Touching Sweaty Balls At The AFL

"This weekend Adelaide Oval will implement an MC Hammer policy."

by Claire Keenan  4 June 2021

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A word of advice to AFL fans: Always sanitise your hands before eating your hot chips, especially if you’ve just found yourself catching a rogue ball.

At least, that was the advice South Australia’s Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier has given to anyone heading to the Adelaide Oval this weekend.

During a press meeting yesterday, Spurrier warned spectators about the dangers of catching a ball this weekend: “Regardless of COVID, this ball has been touched by many sweaty men on the field.”

And without breaking her straight face, Spurrier continued to tell fans to “sanitise your hands before you start eating your chips”, while a man in the background understandably lost his cool — like the rest of us watching this unfold.

Earlier this week, South Australia gave the green light for Victoria’s Collingwood AFL team to fly to Adelaide for their game against the Crows on Saturday, despite Victoria’s current COVID outbreak and remaining lockdowns.

Spurrier threw out some health advice ahead of the game on Wednesday, after the announcement had first been made. “If you are at Adelaide Oval and the ball comes towards you, my advice is to duck and do not touch that ball,” she said.

But yesterday she seemingly wanted to elaborate on the issue a bit more.

“Just to reiterate, I’m not a football player and in fact whenever a ball comes towards me — whatever sort of ball, whether it’s a basketball or a football — my inclination is to duck,” she said.

“People in my department today tell me that there’s about 50 per cent of people that really try madly to get the ball… And 50 per cent that are like me and just duck.”

On a more serious note, Spurrier also emphasised that the players in the upcoming game “do not have COVID”, and that if anybody was to test positive “the game would be cancelled”.

South Australia’s borders remain closed to Victoria due to the state’s latest COVID-19 outbreak.