Following a meeting with all the teams in the league, the Turkish American Football League, TAFL, has cancelled the season for the second year in a row.
In 2020, the TAFL managed to get through one round of play before having to cancel the season due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Although the COVID-19 situation in Turkey has eased and as of July 1, restrictions will be more relaxed, according to one of the coaches, many of the teams did not feel there was enough time to prepare in what was to become an extremely shortened season. Several alternatives were presented and a season start of September 4 was proposed, but ultimately, the majority of the teams voted to cancel.
According to another coach who wishes to remain anonymous, many of the teams had conducted zero offseason preparations and would simply not have been ready to play, even with a league start two months away.
“It’s mainly about roster depletions, lack of offseason roster building and lack of preparation on the some of the teams’ part to where most of them felt like they wouldn’t put out a good showing this year compared to others. The reality is this was a team/federation political struggle where multiple teams felt it was more beneficial to them to wait it out until next year and not have to put their squads on the field in 2021 since they hadn’t prepared in any way.”
Field availability in the fall was also another factor which had a bearing on the decision with the TAFL having to compete with both professional soccer teams and the university league teams for fields, both for practice and games.