Burns has departed the Newcastle Jets and returned to Europe after the season was shutdown because of the Coronavirus.

The Irishman played 16 matches for the Jets on loan from Hearts.

Burns admits playing games behind closed doors was the "worst experience" of his career.

"Initially, I thought we would get the league finished," he told The Irish News.

"We played games behind closed doors but it was awful. It was the worst football experience I’ve had. It’s funny because I played in school games for St Malachy’s when there was nobody watching…

"It was maybe because we were playing games in these huge stadiums. It also looked terrible because we were the only league playing matches at that stage whereas everywhere else had stopped.

"The reason the league was shut down was because there were border restrictions from state to state. So you can’t travel from Brisbane to, say, Sydney, so that causes huge problems.

"The week before it was called off we flew from Sydney to Adelaide, came back and flew to the Gold Coast to play Brisbane. We were in five airports in a week during a global pandemic. It didn’t make sense."

But Burns loved his time in Australia, despite the abrupt ending.

“It was how quickly things stopped. We were training for a game on Monday and it was shut just like that and everybody was trying to get flights home on the Wednesday," the defender said.

"It was a very sad way to go because I loved my time in Australia. There were so many things I wanted to do. And I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to a lot of people because you didn’t want to be in contact with them.

"I’ve a lot of friends from the Catholic Church near where I was living, but a lot of them are elderly and the last thing I wanted to do was be near them."