Fallon left the Hawks at the end of 2019 to play with HDFNL club White Hills, while the Collins brothers, McPhee, Bacon and Atherton signed with Lockington-Bamawm United.

With the HDFNL season cancelled the Hawks could try to entice the players back to Canterbury Park should the BFNL decide to play in 2020.

AFL Victoria has implemented a new COVID permit which means players can be placed on a permit to leave their current club if that league has abandoned its 2020 season.

After October 31 the permit expires and the player automatically returns to his original club.

"We haven't progressed any further past waiting to get a call on whether the season goes ahead,'' Matheson said.

"Our priority is to get a season up and running. It's hard to do too much when you don't know if you're playing. We've been training and we've had really good numbers on the track.

"If a player from outside the club wanted to train with us to keep fit it's hard to squeeze them in because of the restrictions of 20 per group.

"We have about 50 players on our list, and you always have a few miss training because of work or illness, but it still makes it hard to get everyone into two groups of 20."

Matheson was worried some of his players would struggle to return to training after such a long break during the COVID-19 lockdown.

He's been pleasantly surprised by the reaction of the Borough playing group.

"After the break there was some concern about what sort of uptake you'd get from the players,'' Matheson said.

"There was a worry that some guys mightn't come back because of work or they'd found other things to do.

"Training has been really good and numbers across both grades have been really strong.

"The boys have loved being back around the club and I couldn't be more impressed with the way they've handled it all.

"It just shows how important the footy club is to young guys in the area.

"If we were able to get a confirmation on a starting date that would boost enthusiasm even more."

Matheson said a potential two-week period of contact training before round one wouldn't be the perfect build up for the season, but the Borough players would happily accept it if meant the season went ahead.

"It's not ideal, but it's the same for everyone,'' Matheson said.

"We'd just have to find some ways to manage how we do things. We'd just have to be smart about the way we train.

"It certainly wouldn't stop us from playing."

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