Austrian football ground to a halt after LASK's empty home horror-show against Manchester United in the Europa League back in March. It was hard not to feel sorry for LASK with their biggest game falling right on the threshold between "carry on as normal" and "shut it all down", meaning that the atmosphere was all wrong on the night.

In any case, two months later here we are, and Austrian football is gradually gearing up to go again. Good thing too, with reports suggesting that only Salzburg, LASK and Sturm would have ANY liquid capital left at all if there are no games to be played in the pretty near future, dire times indeed.

The teams have returned to training under careful conditions now, and the government are not going to get in the way of games behind closed doors, but with plenty of hoops to jump through, not to mention a massive amount of Covid tests needed (at team expense) it doesn't look like we'll be underway any time very soon.

In the second division the story is even more murky, with legal threats from promotion candidates Ried and Klagenfurt, an application to join the Bundesliga for a 14 team league next year if the 2nd league doesn't resume, and all sorts of differences of opinion on whether the league should even resume at all, given that there would be no relegation, no fans and no TV rights deal anyway. All football below that is done for the year in any case.

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On the up side, we have kept busy during the lockdown, and there is plenty out there to watch and listen to! First of all we'd like to say a massive thanks to all of our Patreon supporters, your help has been much appreciated whilst we've had no football to cover. 

We've had some exclusive videos and extras, as well as early access to episodes available for our patrons in recent months, and between our Patreon exclusives and our public podcasts and YouTube videos we've hopefully had something  for everyone:

• A special remotely recorded episode looking back at the Top 10 moments since The Other Bundesliga began
• Our France '98 lookback video (now available to download as a podcast here)
• Video interviews with Stefan Schwab & Samuel Tetteh (now available to download as podcasts here)
• A video episode on the tantalising (yet unlikely) prospect of an Austro-Swiss Alpenliga
• An episode on how the league could conclude the Austrian season

On top of that our social media has had the #AustrianStadiumTrophy; attracting thousands of votes to crown Austria's best ground, and the #VirtualOtherBundesliga; completing the season on the PS4 with players and teams engaging on their Instagram accounts as the goals have gone in!

All in all it's just a bit of fun to pass the time, but it has kept our Twitter account at over 1m impressions for the months of lockdown, and seen our Instagram site steadily grow too, so thanks for continually getting involved, and as always let us know what kind of coverage you would like to see in the future!