Thursday night's scheduled season opener between reigning premiers Brisbane Lions and Geelong Cats looked certain to be postponed once Lions head coach Chris Fagan spoke out in favour of canning the match, not least because the two clubs have a bye in Round Three that always looked the perfect slot for the game to be rescheduled to.
League bosses had reportedly mulled the prospect of moving the Gold Coast v Essendon match back 24 hours to Sunday evening, when conditions in south-east Queensland are expected to ease, but the consequences of Essendon having just four days off prior to Round One - during one of which they would travel back home to Melbourne on a Monday - meant this was an implausible compromise.
The postponement of the Brisbane v Geelong fixture appeared all but certain after Fagan's comments on Thursday morning.
"I'm a people first person," said the 63-year-old.
"It's not a tropical thunderstorm, it's a cyclone. I have never been in one, so I don't know what to expect. But I've seen the carnage they've caused at different periods in Australian history.
"I'm not too keen on the idea of things going ahead if it's going to be like that. It can't, can it? ... The sooner the decision is made, the better."
With as much as several hundred millimetres of rain expected to fall across some parts of south-east Queensland between Thursday and Saturday, the decision was made early on Tuesday afternoon to also call off Sunday's match at People First Stadium to avoid any potential travel chaos for Essendon as well as ease the pressures on local emergency services.
"Out of an abundance of caution and after ongoing communication with the Queensland Government, the Bureau of Meteorology and Stadiums Queensland, the AFL made the decision now to ensure the health and safety of clubs, players, officials and – importantly - the wider southeastern Queensland and northern NSW community remains the priority," stated the AFL in a press release on Tuesday afternoon.
"The AFL will announce the alternate schedule for these matches as soon as possible as we continue to work with clubs and venues on possible scenarios. The rescheduled matches won’t be played during Opening Round."
Whilst a Round Three clash looks almost certain for Brisbane and Geelong, particularly with just two games scheduled for the Sunday, Essendon and Gold Coast have their byes in different rounds, making an opening for their rescheduled fixture far more difficult.
It is reportedly the first instance since the 1963 season of a VFL/AFL match being rescheduled due to the weather.