Djokovic

It's not really surprising that Djokovic thought that all was grand really.

As you know Australia has a Federal (states) system.

Each State has its own parliament as well as there being a national parliament.

Djokovic had been given the ok by Victoria State and Tennis Australia by being granted an exemption (two level medical board granted this including one from the State of Victoria) to play at the Australian Open (reason speculated that he had a recent Covid infection)

The Australian Prime Minister, Morrison (Federal level who control the borders) also said that they would go along with the state decision - as "that's how it works" apparently!

In fairness, he was pretty fcuked over by the politicians as soon as there was a bit of public backlash

But when Djokovic got to the passport window they decided to change their mind on what they (Federal) had already said.

Then Federal gets back onto State and say - "Listen, we've got Djokovic here but don't like the cut of his jib on this reason for getting around the vaccine requirement for the Visa to get into Australia, Will you back him though on the Visa thing seeing as you were involved already in approving him to play in the Australian Open in Victoria"

Victoria state came back "Eh no actually isn't that your job?"

The state was the second stage of the panel approval process already on giving him the exemption to play in the event, in the state of Victoria, but "things had changed" by the time they were asked (different people of course but still same level of approval and he would have been in) by Federal Border Force when Djokovic at the airport to give the go-ahead and started playing, "not our job", that's Federal.

Nobody wanted to be seen to approve him at that point, most especially politicians!

Victoria / Melbourne is already riddled with Omicron (> 20,000 cases in Melbourne alone yesterday) which as we know spreads quite well through the vaccinated so Djokovic would not be making any difference there

The public backlash is more about current and past poor pandemic decisions (complete foobar on PCR testing there at the moment and huge shortage on Antigen tests with price-gouging) - the public are mad

There is also a federal election coming up that has to be held before the end of May!

There are also 3 to 5 other players who got in to Australia already on exemptions and are set to play, at least 1 (maybe more) of which used the same reasons for exemption as Djokovic!

yeah, what the other poster said is not true in his case, he travels with his coach (goran ivanisevic), his physio and his trainer.

his family (including loose cannon father) are also there.

he flew in on a commercial flight.

of course he has a sports agent somewhere also but his core "team" is the above.

he's trying to break the record for the most grand slams.

Djokovic, Nadal and Federer are all tied on 20 slam titles

Djokovic's best slam record is in Australia where he has won 9 titles already

that's why he wants to play

yeah, and he's the no.1 player in the world

many players can't even afford to have their coach (if they even have a full-time coach) travel with them full time.