Australian Open officials have to be careful going into debt to attract tennis superstars

In the fully vaccinated future, we will no doubt look back on the time of COVID-19 as a period of personal and communal sacrifice.

Lost jobs, shuttered businesses, cancelled weddings, unattended burials, sombre masked strolls and, worst of all, a tragic mortality rate.

We will recall that community sport was cancelled or truncated, athletes were quarantined in hubs and major events played out before empty grandstands.

As the sacked coaches and auxiliary staff and sports-deprived fans in the worst-struck cities can attest, sacrifice has not been equally shared.

But in most cases there has been a sense we have all given up something to create that sense of “new normality” or to produce the conditions in which that would be possible.