THERE'S currently no plans to move the 2020 Astley Cup from its regular timeslot in term two but the next few weeks will be telling for what this year's edition of the schools competition will look like.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The three schools involved in the competition are carefully monitoring both the spread of coronavirus and government advice to decide what they'll do.
Bathurst go into the competition this year against Orange and Dubbo chasing a fourth straight title.
The Astley Cup hasn't missed an edition of the event for close to a century, and Bathurst High School principal Ken Barwick said there's no plans at all to change that fact.
"We're awaiting further advice on things like excursions and sporting competitions," he said.
"We were thinking we'd be moving it to term three but we were actually going to see what happens in the next four to five weeks and try to leave it where it's meant to be, and that's in this term.
"It's a positive sign with kids coming back to school, and if things go well in that transition process and the transmission rates of COVID-19 then you would expect sporting competitions to be the next things to be opened back up.
"We have every intention of not cancelling the 2020 Astley Cup at this time."
The next option for the schools, in the case of this term not being viable, is shifting the event to term three.
That raises a new issue of the competition affecting year 12 students during one of the most critical times of the year - their trial HSC exams.
However, there is a window which would allow less impact on the senior competitors.
"We've tagged the possibility of moving it to term three. You don't want to upset year 12's last year of school, in term three, week 10 and trial HSC exams normally finish around week six," Barwick said.
"There's a small window in weeks seven, eight and nine of that term where you could run three ties. That would also work around year 11 exams and things like that as well.
"However, that's not concrete. These are all just ideas. We're doing everything we can to make sure that this year's cohort and the towns don't miss out on an incredible event."
There's positive signs for the Astley Cup based on the latest piece of government advice surrounding the coronavirus.
On Tuesday it was announced that from this Friday two adults will be allowed to visit other households in New South Wales.
Further to that, NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian also stated that schools would resume on-site learning from May 11.
"It will be staged for the initial fortnight, and then based on those results, we'll be able to update the community on how quickly we can have full-time attendance," Berejiklian said in her statement to the press.
"Again, that will be based on how things go, but we're hopeful that students will be getting full time face-to-face teaching during and definitely by the end of term two."
